This Wednesday’s (25/04/2012) 12 pm chat topic was “what’s in your essential teachers kit” all the things you wouldn’t want to be without in the classroom and it generated over 500 tweets! That’s a lot of items!

Main themes:

• What is really essential?
• What do you take into every lesson?
• How is your ETK different for different ages.
• What mindset do you bring with you into the classroom?
• Hitech vs low tech [replacing paper resources with tech]
• Teaching online as opposed to offline
• Resources, such as photos, postits, dice, mini whiteboards etc that can be used for many different activities.
• What students bring vs what teachers bring
• Items for CPD and Language clarification during the lesson.
• Resources as only the physical embodiment of the mentality and ideas we enter the classroom with.

Some tweets:

Essential:

Language items:

For Activities

Hi-tech:

More abstract

What do you get students to bring?

[blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/#!/NikkiFortova/status/195112715176521728"]

[blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/#!/E_L_Academy/status/195113345098067968"]

Always on you:

[blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/#!/michaelegriffin/status/195106106253651969"]

Reflective practices:

Wouldn’t be #ELTchat without Dogme

[part of the helping students to blog series]

One of the biggest problems facing bloggers in general (as well as running a blog for your students) is getting people to comment. Often the hardest part is just getting the first comment.

In fact, this was my problem. Despite setting tasks, regularly updating the blog to include a summary of the lesson and homework tasks. At first, these pages had lots of views and students, although not commenting or posting via the blogs they were at least making use of this record. Of course, over time these views dropped off and STILL no one was posting a comment. So I had few options.

• Keep doing the same path.
• Give up (it does take extra time)
• Try something new to encourage more engagement.

Why aren’t they commenting

I choose the third as, for the reasons I mentioned previously, I think blogs are useful for students and I am sure that some students want to try it they just need to overcome some hurdles.

1. General inertia
2. Shyness
3. Lack of technology know how
4. No one else is doing it.
5. Don’t like the idea of blogging

What can we do to change this?

In the last case then there may well be nothing that could be done and in the case of a 1-2-1 students I would certainly consider stopping using the blog. However, although the current need or desire may not be there, in the future this need or desire may arise and so having the system in place, demonstrating it, and potentially having the testimonies of the other students might be enough of a kick.

Other than that we can.

1. Make it anonymous at first
2. Teach students how to use the technology (via blog posts, guides, screencasts etc)
3. Get one comment and more will flow
4. Remind students of the blog during classes
5. When someone does comment, reply to their comment on the blog and bring it up in class.
6. Incentives for comments (like bribing with chocolate!)
7. Ask students what they think about the blog, if they like it or not and why they are/aren’t using it.

I tried a mixture of these and different approaches produced different results for different students (suggest the amazing possibilities that individuals are, indeed, individuals!) but the factor that actually had the strongest effect was saying that I would give my students a chocolate if they commented on the blog. This then lead to some of my students coming up to me after class and confessing they had tried to use the site and then had problems. Because of this I could then assist them after class and help them learn to post a comment or create a post.

This won’t be true of every students, another student has decided she likes the blogs, likes the pictures of the boardwork and extra tasks I set via it, but she doesn’t want to or is unable to post comments or posts on it.

What approaches have you used to help students comment? What have you found effective? Do you have any extra ideas?

After the success of my last post on What Schrodinger’s cat can teach us about lesson observations I thought I’d look at another physic principle. Once again via the wonderful resource of one minute physics. Today’s lesson is the uncertainty principle.

Lesson observations, in every guise, can be a bit like trying to measure a waves frequency and location at the same time. Tricky.

How do we choose what to observe?

When an observer comes into the classroom they may have some element of teaching to focus on due to a variety of reasons.

• The Observee ask for the observer to focus on something
• As a follow up to a previous observations
• Following suggestions on an observation sheet
• The observers pet topic of the month.
• Observer picks up on any/everything they can during the lesson.

Observing just two elements of a lesson?

It is possible to observe multiple elements of some lessons, for example staging of a lesson (and how rigidly the observee sticks to a lesson plan)  and another elements of, say, how included the students are in the lesson.

However, some elements are harder to observe at the same time as each other and we don’t always just observe two elements. This is especially true if the observer just comes in and tries to pick up on something from being there. They may notice one thing but be blinded to another because of the first thing they notice.

The prime example might be, “How does the teacher help weaker students?” The observer might be focusing so much on what the teacher is doing that it blinds them to the students level. As such, it could be possible to fail to pick up on a weaker student in the class and then not notice how the teacher assisted (or didn’t) this student.

In general, I like the option to ask a teacher observing me to focus on a question I have about a group (usually classroom management and motivation for teens, grading language for lower levels, and often whatever I’ve been thinking about recently), but I also really appreciate a follow up on previous sessions to see how progress has been made. Although, this is specific to senior observations, I haven’t really had a chance to experience many peer observations and don’t know my preference here.

As for when I conduct peer observations, I generally come in with an issue I’m wondering about and observe the other teacher in light of that. How do they cope with this problems? And what can I steal off them (I’m a massive thief really).

What about you? How do you decide what to observe? Do you find it easy to observe more than one thing at once?

I have a confession to tell you. But first let me set the scene.

Advance learner's dictionary by @sandymillin via #eltpics

The situation

A little while ago I had to cover three advance lesson for a teacher who was going away. I was presented with a load of material to use on Conditionals (as the students were very rusty and needed to revise) and even a possible lesson plan. Looking through with my very critical eyes I decided that there was no guided discovery just presentation, there was too much material and that they could achieve similar/better results via a more discussion based approach (with the guise of a get to know you activity) and then we could compare dreams, regrets etc.

Now, I should add that I don’t normally teach higher level students, the vast majority of my groups are Intermediate or lower.

I had also heard that the advance students spent too long in open class discussions and that this meant some of the weaker quieter students didn’t get to speak. So my mission was to have a lot more small group discussions.

The result

The results were mixed but one thing was for sure. All the groups still spent a very long time in open class discussion and in many of the groups, the weaker students didn’t get to speak. This was partially due to some very bossy strong students who, when I set the groups, stated that they wouldn’t break into small groups. However, it was also because they acted interested in me and asked me questions. I know I should have probably shut them down and let the students break into groups, but I fell for it.

The students still seamed to enjoy it and some of the groups improved their conditional work but results certainly were mixed.

However, my big reflection was about open class discussion and in particular advance students.

• Is it more common to spend longer in open class discussion with advance students?

• Is this possible a good thing?

• Are there any tips to help encourage the weaker students to contribute more in opinion giving class feedback?

• What other differences should a teacher adopt when teaching higher level groups?

There is a very famous thought experiment called Schroedinger’s Cat. Rather than try to explain it myself here is a nice little video that explains it far better than I could.

This makes me wonder about teaching observations.

A class might be great or awful but observing it can certainly change a good lesson to a bad one or a bad lesson to a good one.

• Students can panic
• Teachers can panic
• Teachers can try to impress
• Students can “behave” where normally they wouldn’t

As such we can say that a lesson being observed can produce both a higher and lower quality performance and, depending on personality type and observation conditions it will affect which results come out.

Different factors in Observation

• Warning over observation.
• Consequences of observations.
• Frequency of observations.
• Style of feedback post observation.

these can all affect the observation due to:

If a teacher receives plenty of warning then they may well do extra preparation that they would normally, however without being warned they may panic.

If they are high consequences then the teacher may panic more, but they may also put more effort in.

If a teacher is observed more frequently they may feel more relaxed, and more used to the whole process. On the other hand they become tired of the whole system and feel it unnecessary.

If feedbacks are basically telling off sessions by another name then a teacher may panic more during the observation (especially after making a mistake) or the teacher becoming more defensive when being observed.

However, if the feedback session are encouraging and draw out good points as well as areas for growth then the teacher may enjoy the process more, though could possible just ignore the feedback.

My Observation preference

Personally, I love observations and have tried to encourage an approach where a teacher can observe me with as little warning as possible. This is possible due to my many observations as a new teacher here in Dnipro where the consequences were clearly laid out as being for our development and not likely to result in a sudden termination of contract.

As such, I now no longer desire the softly softly approach and would rather have a much more confrontational approach picking up on all the little things I could do better. I know what I do well (obviously, I wouldn’t object if you mention it again) but it’s what I don’t know that I’m doing badly or not as well as I could that I need help with.

So, just like in physics being observed affects the results we get. How can we make our teaching observations lead to the best outcomes? Over to you.

My classroom (London) at IH DNK

There has been a lot of work done on how our environments affect our behaviour and decisions.

I was reminded about it this week thanks to Seth Godin’s post looking at  choosing the location for your business or activities wisely and on John Saddinger’s post about creating an environment for candour. These posts reminded me about the impact that a classroom environment can have.

When people are in a classroom, they act like they expect to in a classroom. There maybe some slight regional, cultural or personality differences (the good student vs the class clown) but they keep to their expectation.

On the one had this is a wonderful thing. We are here to learn. This is a place of learning. Students come and take on the role of a learner.

However, it can also prove problematic.

What about students/cultures who have  different behavioural expectation  from which we want to cultivate in our classrooms? Students who are taught never to speak or give their opinion in class but studiously read and repeat chorally after the teacher.

What if their previous experience has all been negative and their student identity and role is of one who struggles?

Some activities are worse than others

If we want to do a roleplay or talk about a certain topic then the overriding narrative of being in a classroom will compete with whatever idea or environment we try to produce. Using accurate prompts, materials we can find outside the classroom etc can help a poor illusion of the desired environment and dynamic.

[It’s one of the reasons that during our Russian lessons we are often made to go into shops/restaurants etc to use the language we were learning. It made it real and not just for the classroom. ]

Off site business environments can suffer and be helped by this clash of environments. On the one hand if we are in a place of business then it creates a sense of that environment. However, then we can have the lack of a learning environment and even have the same senior/junior dynamics that are in place of the business.

Have you ever had a class in a coffee shop or outside? Unfortunately, I have ever been allowed to take my students off site but I am sure it would be as different as when I’ve gone for drinks with my students. Different language comes up, different needs are present.

Is it really that important?

Despite all this my students do seem to be able to relax, get into their characters in roleplays, open up, overcome previous poor learning experiences so I wonder. How important is it? How much of an effect does it have?

At the top of the page you can see a pic of my classroom and it certainly looks different to a standard Ukrainian classroom and maybe that helps. Personally, I’d like to have more colours in the room and pictures round the class. This is especially due to the fact that I teach Kids, teens and Adults there.

So I want to end this post with a challenge. Post a picture of your classroom and say what environment you think it gives.

I’m sure you’ve had that moment. You’re busy getting everything together for your lesson that you just don’t think about it. Then you get into your lesson, relax into the flow of the class and it hits you. Those 12 cups of coffee you just drank have caught up with you!

You need the loo and you need it soon!

Maybe I have a weak bladder but this is certainly an issue I’ve encountered on more than one occasion.

I usually revert to the childhood methods to help.

• Don’t think about needing to pee
• Don’t think about water in any form!
• Cross your legs
• Move round the classroom
• Or if things are really getting bad the patented “pee dance” (I believe it was very popular in 2005 to do to drum and bass)

However, sometimes it doesn’t help! On one occasion I have had to walk (very awkwardly) to the toilet after setting a task to avoid wetting myself.

Of course, needing to pee isn’t the only reason to rush out of a classroom. I have also had an incident occur where I had to rush out so that I wasn’t suddenly sick in the middle of my class. I managed (again) to hold it to the staff room toilet.

This make a nice change to when I was at university doing rowing training and ended up throwing up after a circuit training session. Right in front of my fellow rowers. All the guys were very impressed that I pushed myself so hard…in fact I had just eaten something very unhealthy before training!

So come on. Own up. Who has been here before too?