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Lesson 3. Handout 1

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14 views3 pages

Lesson 3. Handout 1

Uploaded by

jsa3594
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Handout 1

Task 1: Let’s read Andrea’s story!

My name is Andrea Robles, I am an English Teacher from Iquique, Chile. I consider


myself a teacher who looks for new things, ideas, techniques and I tend to reflect
about my teaching practice.

“I decided to start this research because I had a puzzle about my wrapping-up


activities. I felt that my closure was not efficient or maybe my activities did not
engage students until the end to ensure their learning and the reaching of my class
objective: I realised that I tended to prepare my classes giving special emphasis to
the warm up and the main activities and I wondered if the wrapping up was as strong
as it should be.

But my first question was: What is a wrapping-up? I had an idea about it: a
wrapping-up for me was the last activity of the class, in which students verbalise,
show or present what they learned. But maybe it was not. So I started surfing the
web in order to find some information about it. I found a website,
www.busyteacher.com. That website has many articles written by teachers about
different topics. Fortunately, I found one that concerned the topic I was looking for. In
that article, the teacher mentions that a wrapping-up is the last activity and it must be
done by the students. In this part of the class the teacher has the role of a facilitator.

In that point I felt that what I thought was similar to what that article said, so I felt
kind of relaxed to be not so “lost”. However, something that called my attention was
that the teacher has a secondary role as a facilitator and that the learners are the
protagonists and the most important of all is that the information must come from the
students and not from the teacher.

After that action, I decided to also ask some colleagues about this topic. I thought
that their opinion could be useful because I still had questions that I needed to
answer. I asked them the following:

1. What are the components of a wrapping-up activity?


2. Is it important to wrap up a class? Why?
3. What are the main difficulties you face in this phase of the class?
4. How do your students react when you wrap up classes?

Their answers, overall, were that the components of a wrapping-up activity are (a)
remembering the objectives; (b) naming the contents of the class; and (c) making a
summary of the class. Two thought that wrapping-up was not very important but two
felt it was important, for the teacher to know up to what point the objectives had
been reached and for students to clearly know what the class was about and if they
had reached its goal. The main difficulties reported by my colleagues with regard to
wrapping-up were lack of time and student misbehaviour, with students typically not
paying attention to this part of the class.

After this short questionnaire, I understood even more clearly that students’
participation is crucial – this part of the class has to be motivating and student-
centered – and that one of the most important problems is time. I also realised that it
is very important to keep in mind the class objective at all times, so I can know how
much my objectives are achieved.

I reflected on my teaching practice and I identified some of the features of my


wrapping-up activities and compared them with how I thought a good closing should
be:

My closings My ideal closings


I tended to ask open, undirected All the children should have the
questions, not using nomination in this part chance to participate.
of the class.
It lasted 5 minutes. They have to show their learning.
I tended to use the same questions class Motivating activities.
after class, with the result that my students
knew that the class was about to end. My
questions were: ‘What was the class
about? And what can you tell me about
this class? What did you learn?’
“I decided to interview them, so after each Activities that help them to
activity we did with background music, I remember the contents the following
asked them about how they felt, if they had class.
trouble concentrating, if they felt the music
helped them complete the task and so on.”

After all that process I decided to start my “real research” – that is how I call it –
which has relation with my students. Firstly, I wanted to know more about how my
students react at the end of the lesson. So I did a class and I asked a colleague to
observe me doing the class, paying special attention to the wrapping-up and the
reaction of my students. He took some notes and we had a meeting to share the
findings.

I did my class and I noticed that my students were not really engaged with wrapping-
up. Moreover, not many of them wanted to participate and some of them did not
listen to their classmates talking about what the class was about. In fact, the ones
who participated in that stage were the same ones who really like to participate
usually without me asking them directly.

After that, my colleague and I had a meeting and he said that he noticed that most of
the students started tidying up their desks and getting ready to leave and only a few
paid attention.

That was it … something clicked in my mind! I felt everything added up – what I felt
was right: something was not working in my closing stage.

The next class I gave students a piece of paper and I told them to write what
happened the previous class, I did that in Spanish so all of them had the same
chances to express their ideas. These were my findings:

 23 did not remember


 3 did not answer
 8 answered correctly

Most of the students did not remember and those who did were the ones who really
like to participate in classes.”

Task 2. Based on the stages above, read the summary of the things Andrea
did during her exploration and match them with the corresponding stage.

Task 3. Think of your teaching experience.

• What will you research?

• What interests you most?

• What can help you become a better teacher?

• How would you like to improve your teaching through your research?

Based on these questions, choose one area that you want to research. Write it
down.

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