PIDP 3250 Instructional Strategies
---Course Journal Assignment 1
OBJECTIVE:
Teaching in class is an art. Effective
teaching and learning needs joint effort from both teachers and students. Recently,
students’ engagement has been regarded as an indicator of successful classroom
instruction. What is students’ engagement? According to the Wikipedia, student
engagement occurs when “students make a psychology investment learning.” Then
how to stimulate students to devote themselves to the class is a key problem
worth studying. If teachers are good at applying those positive instructional strategies
in class, the teaching process can be smoother and consequently the performance
of students can be improved greatly. Based on the textbook, good strategy can
promote students’ motivation and active learning, which are two key factors for
students’ engagement. To enrich the class, teachers may use various approaches
to make teaching interesting and meaningful.
REFLECTIVE：
After reading the first four chapters,
I realized that there is much work to be done to improve my teaching. I have
been teaching ESL for more than ten years. When I looked back to those years, I
found that the most difficult part in my class is how to attract students’ attention
to my class. Examining it closer, I think there are several factors for my
problem. First, I haven’t changed much of my
teaching style during the past few years. When I was in China, my main role
in class is “Lecturer”, which means I just delivered the materials in front of
the class and students were busy taking notes. Sometimes, the whole class was
very quiet; while sometimes, the class was really noisy. One of the disadvantages
of teaching in traditional way is that the teachers are really tired by
teaching and lecturing continuously; meanwhile, the students feel so boring all
the time that they are easily distracted or fall asleep. When I taught those undergraduates,
the attendance rate was good; however, they couldn’t concentrate long enough
for the whole class; When I taught graduates several years later, most students
who attended to my class can focus their attention on my teaching; unfortunately,
the attendance rate was not satisfactory. To be frank, I tried to change my way
of teaching to some extent. One is to ask my students to explain the part of
the textbook by themselves. I found when one of the students taught on the
platform, his/her classmates may pay more attention to what he/she was talking
about. Generally speaking, it was a good practice for both my students and me.
The negative side is that it is a little time-consuming, because I have to highlight
the key parts once more.
INTERPRETIVE:
To be qualified instructors, we should
try our best to strengthen students’ engagement by using various ways. First,
create a positive environment—class community in class. Only when students
feel emotionally safe can they actively take part in class activity. Good atmosphere
and classroom community are good to maintain enthusiastic and productive students.
Once the students have a sense of belonging, they would like to share, to
assist, to discuss, even to debate with classmates freely, which could
successfully attract students to their work. Second, set optimal level of challenge
for students. Only when students feel intellectually safe can they
learn willingly. Too difficult tasks can only frustrate them and those too easy
one may make them bored. Therefore, the initial easy tasks can be followed by
some tough ones. On one hand, students may feel fun by overcoming obstacles
step by step; on the other hand, students may help each other in their own
community. Third,
timely assessment and feedback are necessary. Students need feedback
from their teacher for further improvement. From my own experience, a student
may study harder when he/she gets more attention from teachers. As a result,
talking with students and giving some positive suggestions and feedback on study
now and then may encourage them to focus on study more. Of course, there are
many other helpful ways to stimulate students’ motivation and make learning
less boring, which need teachers to practice and study further.
DECISIVE：
I have learned much more by reading the
first four chapters. After reflecting, I will do more research on instructional
strategies. First, I value the thought of creating classroom community.
Apart from the academic teaching, I will devote myself to setting up a positive
class atmosphere for students feeling safe. Once they feel comfortable and
believe their teacher, I think that these students may invest more energy and attention
into class. I can also establish class-community outside class by using modern
technologies. I may use social media (such as blog, Facebook, twitter, wechat,
etc) to let students share, discuss, and learn after class. Second, I
may use multiple ways to deliver my teaching. For example, I may
propose more open questions for students to do critical thinking instead of
telling them the answer directly. In addition, “the memory parts” in text book
impresses me a lot. I know I can help students enlarge the amount of
vocabularies in my ESL class by using comparison and contrast. For example, I
may ask my student to contrast the following words as “contract, contact
compact, and connect”; or compare “ferry and fair”; “burrow and burro”, etc. Third, feedback
and assessment are essential parts of teaching and learning. From the
book, I learned various forms of assessment, such as summative, formative and educative
assessment. I also realized how important the timely feedback is. Objective
& efficient feedback can let student know how well they are doing and how
they can do better. For example, if a student comes to class early, I can talk with
him/her on class performance and the space for improvement.
In short, to be a qualified teacher
and to make students focus on learning for a comparatively long time, I have to
explore more colorful strategies constantly to meet the needs of students
with different ages.
Reference
Taylor，L &Parsons, J.(2011) Improving Student
Engagement Current Issues in Education,
Volume 14, Number 1 Retrieved Sep 13th, from http://eddev.niagaracollege.ca/content/Portals/35/NiagaraCollege/pdf/teachinginternationalstudents/Improving%20Stuent%20Engagement.pdf
Elizabeth F.Barkely
(2009) Student Engagement Techniques: A handbook for College Faculty
Adam
Fletcher Defining Student Engagement: A
literature review Retrieved Sep 13th
,from http://www.soundout.org/student-engagement-AF.pdf
Tristan
de Frondeville (April, 13, 2014) Ten
steps to Better Student Engagement
Retrieved Sep 15th from: http://www.edutopia.org/project-learning-teaching-strategies
