What time is it? (An integrated skills activity for telling the time)

I implemented telling the time topic to my 6th graders class using paper watches. The focus of this activity was communicative practice, involving speaking, listening and writing. 

Everone wore paper watches, walked around the class and asked each other for the time. Then the students recorded the times that they heard from their friends on their handouts. the handouts had two columns; one coloumn is for the names and the other is for time. My students loved this activity and everyone completed the task communicatively.  

Changing the Educational Paradigms

      I think that this video such an eye opener about the current education system. Current education system doesn't give any change to students to improve their creativity and find their intelligences and interests. Students divide into their age groups instead of their abilities. "One size fits all" approach obligate all students to take the same 'standardized' exam, so in order to pass the exam and deserve a god job in the future -students are being conditioned that if they had high points 'standardized' exams, they would deserve a god job in the future-instead of finding out their interest and abilities. I think that one size fits all approach is hitting the nail on the head. It kills creativity and critical thinking skills. Inevitably, many potentials are being killed day by day in the current system.

       Ironically, even if I support the idea that encouraging divergent thinking and creativity, I will have to apply current education system's standardized curriculum and exams in my future classes. I think -unfortunately- without reforming public education system, teachers have to be a part of this standardized education system.

Are There Any Best Method?

      From my methodology courses, I've learnt so many different methods in which related to teaching English in classroom.  so here is the some questions; Are there any best method, How can we decide which method we are going to use, Which method helps learners to learn best, Do we have to insist on using only one method in our classrooms? These questions bring some conflictions to me as a prospective teacher. There are several methods and all of are applicable in the classroom environment, so which criteria should I consider to choosing a method in my future class?  I think that actually this step requires experience. Probably, I will find my own method as time goes on when I begin a career. Becoming aware of methods has some advantages for me to take a step back and think critically. According to Larsen-Freeman and Anderson (2011), a study of methods is invaluable in teacher education. By becoming clear on where they stand, teachers can choose to teach differently from the way that were taught. A knowledge of methods is part of the base of teaching. With it, teachers join in a community of practice. Being part of a discourse community confers a professional identity and connects teachers with each other so they are less isolated in their practice. A knowledge of methods helps to expand a teachers' repertoire of techniques (p.11-2). Having examined that becoming aware of the methods provide teachers many advantages in professional area.
        It is obvious that there are different kind of learner type and every individual has unique learner style. There might be different multiple intelligences in the classroom in the classroom. In that situation, using one method and same kind of materials don't foster learning progress. In this respect teachers should  shape any method by considering the learners and teachers' own understanding, beliefs, style, and level of experience (Larsen-Freeman et all. 2011).  It can be said that teachers  and students are human beings with their own beliefs, feelings and opinions. Analyzing learners and acting according to their learning style facilitate learning and engage them in leaning. For example, using grammar translation method for young learners doesn't make sense or using TPR method is not logical for adult learners. That is to say, "applying a particular methodology thoughtlessly to any and every context we come into contact with may not always be appropriate. What we need to ask ourselves, therefore, is how to decide what is appropriate, and how to apply the methodological beliefs that guide our teaching practice" (Harmer, 2007, p.77).
       In the light of different characteristics of learners, their cultures, second language acquisition processes and needs, teachers should ask themselves to what are students' needs and what should we offer them. Also Harmer (2007) stated that methodology is just one factor in language learning. Other factors may be important, and other methods and approaches may be equally valid. This can be said that apart from the choosing methodology, there are also different factors that having influence on second language acquisition such as learners' input and output, cognitive effort, lexis etc.
       In a nutshell, it can be said that there are no best method in language learning. Studying methods can help teachers articulate, and perhaps transform, their understanding of the teaching-learning process.

Sources:
Harmer, J. (2007). The practice of English language teaching. Harlow, England: Pearson Longman.

Larsen-Freeman, D. &Anderson M. (2011). Techniques and principles in language teaching. New York, N.Y., USA: Oxford University Press.

Be Creative: Jigsaw Story Writing

 Most students don't like writing activities in class, because during writing activities they have difficulty to engage the tasks. Using creative activities get students' attention on task and they make the lesson more entertaining for them. I want to share one of my writing lesson plan. I use jigsaw activity for this lesson.This activity helps them to work collaboratively. Also, it is very communicative!

Step 1: Put your students into groups of three (the diagram below shows the arrangement of the groups).

 Step 2: Give each group one of the pictures, so everyone in the group has the same picture, pictures contain one event of the story, to discuss and write.

Step 3: Working together within their group, students write a paragraphs describing in their picture.

Step 4: Reorganize the groups of five (the diagram below shows arrangement of the groups). Each student having description of one part of the story.

Step 5: Ask students to assemble the parts into a narrative, making necessary modifications to generate a logical story.

I prefer an adventure story for the jigsaw story writing. The pictures are at the bellow:

Do teachers promote growth mindsets in teaching?

      It is a critical question that we need to think about it as teachers. There are many students that they have a fixed mindsets and they don't aware of their talent and capacity in which they actually can expand and improve them. For sure there are multiple intelligences, so every individual has unique learning styles and strategies, and they are better in especially some fields. For example, some are good at math, some are good at literature or music. But why not student who have mathematical intelligence also good at literature as well as math?      
       As a matter of fact, almost all students limit their self efficacy and teachers don't encourage them about their efforts even if they fail or they make mistakes. Many teachers act only grade oriented and praise students for their high grades such as they put a smile near the grade on the paper, they have favourite student who always get high grades or they give tangible rewards (such as chocolates or stickers) after activities to who finished the first and correctly. Inevitably, students begin to acting and thinking only grade oriented, their biggest goal is getting AA :) Inevitably, their mindsets are fixed. When they make mistakes or they failure to a task, they forget their efforts and not consider their progress. They predominantly think that "I need to get high grades", "Which subjects we have for the exam", "If it is not gonna be in the exam, I don't need to study". As a result of this grade oriented system, students compete each other, they don't focus improve their skills, strategies and growing their mindsets.
        If we reward students' strategies and progress, praise their efforts, show their improvement, encourage them about not to afraid of making mistakes and failure as teachers, we can change their mindsets. They can get smarter and they learn something on their mistakes. 
       I have a teacher that he is very disciplined about his courses. I failed in his class last year and I assumed that I am not good at English Literature, so I'll never be successful in this course. This year, I am taking this course again and I am really working hard. One day before the lesson he said "your progress is really good, you are doing very well", he encourage me about my effort, in consequence of this praising I've started to think "yes, I can do better". He has changed my mindset about his course and I've realized my progress.
       In sum,  we can create more productive teaching environment by praising students' efforts and progress. If we believe that effort is more important than high grades and, so our students will.

Constructivist Approach

The teacher is consistent with the constructivist approach in the video. Sarabinh emphasises the importance of group discussion in the classroom in order to develop students' interaction with each other and the teacher as part of either whole class activities, small group activities. They practice using language in a variety of context developing many different skills as they do so. One of the advantages of constructivist approach is that classroom bases on student-centered. In this way, classroom is more focus on students learning than on teacher teaching. Students' language use and language development are foster in constructivist based classroom environment.
I think that it is not necessary to any drawbacks this kind of teaching environment. With the help of constructivist approach, students have control over their thinking skills. What I liked the most is that in the video, teacher is like a conductor of a symphony. In the future, I think that I would be comfortable using constructivist approach.

Differentiated Instruction

     Each and every individual has unique features and different learning styles, strategies and intelligence. There are different kinds of multiple intelligences such as visual, kinesthetic, interpersonal etc. With regard to educational area, we should aware of this differences and take a step considering the different learner types. I think that personalizing tasks depending on students interest and learning styles can foster learning period and makes task more meaningful for them. when the tasks are meaningful and address students interest, they can learn naturally.
     From my previous experiences, I had never have teacher who considers our interests and learning styles, and encourages us to complete our tasks.  We had always same kinds of materials that we were responsible to them. Inevitably, learning was not meaningful for us and it was boring. We acted only grading focus in lessons and there were competition that "who gets the highest point". Actually, now, there are still this kind of competition among students and I don't think that teachers differentiate the task depending on the students profile, that's why sharing and collaborative working are not common among us.
    In the future, I am planning to differentiate tasks considering the learners' learning style because it is much more beneficial for students' learning processes. By doing so, I think that teachers more helpful for their cognitive developments

Collaborative Teaching and Learning

     I think that collaboration between colleagues has many advantages among teachers.Collaboration helps teachers to share their experiences, ideas and plans. teachers can improve teacher retention and and teacher satisfaction. With the help of the collaboration, especially novice teachers, can improve their awareness about teaching and they can get the opportunity to get smarter together. Collaboration can be done by doing brainstorming, reflection session before and after school, study groups and conversation about teaching. Also, teachers are better prepared to support one another's strengths and accommodate weaknesses. Working together, they reduce their individual planning time while greatly increasing the available pool of ideas and materials.
    Aside from teachers, students can cooperate improve social and interpersonal skills and help them each other to better understand the material. They can perform team learning effort. Collaborative learning helps them to increase their learning.

Superteacher

     There is a website that you can style a hero and choose characteristic for it. Here it is my Superhero Teacher :) I created her considering some characheristics that teachers should have. I preferred wearing mask to her because teachers are good actors/actress that s/he should never show own personal feelings in some situations. For example, sometimes problematic situations may occur between two students in the classroom. Even the teacher knows what is the source of problem/ who created this problem, s/he should not show his/her feelings and give a chance two students to explain themselves equally or teacher should leave his/her personal issues behind the classroom door and act normally.
Also, I preferred cloak for her. The reason why I chose cloak that generally we are role model for students. Teacher should solve problems and answer the questions very gently. Especially for young learners, not only in the classroom but outside the classroom they need us. When required we can provide some kind of supporting to them outside the classroom.
Furthermore, I chose clock and springs because we should have time management skills. Having good time management skill makes our life easy and springs symbolizes jumping skills metaphorically. That is to say, in some situation students need the teacher while doing individual project during the lesson and they might need some help. In that situation, teacher can come to help for all students.

Instructional Goals and Objectives

      As a student I am familiar with instructional objectives that my instructors give me within the course syllabus at the beginning of the semesters. I have chance to know where I am going and what is expected to me. In a more professional manner, what are instructional objectives? " A learning objective is a statement that specifies in behavioral (measurable) terms what a learner will be able to do as a result of instruction. It describes the intended outcome of your instruction rather than a description or summary of your content. It is but one of several steps that should be followed when developing instruction. Instructional objectives provide both you and your students with section direction. " (Morrison, 2004, p.1)  Sharing instructional objectives with the students is important, because when we shared instructional objectives with them, number of things happen; 1.)Better instruction occurs 2.)More efficient learning results 3.)Better evaluation occurs 4.)Students become self-evaluators.
      Instructional objectives can come from numerous sources such as textbooks and syllbi, Internet and state and national standards. Also, there are some important points for giving instructional objectives. They must be student-oriented, not a teacher-oriented. For example; "Teacher will teach present perfect tense" is not a good instructional objective. Instead of this "Students will be able to use present perfect tense by producing 100% grammatically correct sentences" is overtly student-oriented and effective instructional objective. Additionally, instructional objective must be clear, understandable and observable. Key to an observable objectives is an observable verbs such as describe, use, list etc. Bloom's taxonomy verbs list can help us to write clear instructional objectives.

Furthermore, there are three simple steps for writing effective instructional objectives. These are; specify the general goals, break down the goals into more specific, observable objectives and Check objectives for clarity and appropriateness. A final check of your work may save you the embarrassment of trying to explain your students what it was that you really meant to say.
And what is more? Well-defined instructional objectives can help us to focus our planning, planning effective instructional events and planning valid evaluation procedures. The process of writing instructional objectives force us to decide, out of all the material to be covered.  Also, well defined instructional objectives can be a great help to us and our students during the teaching process.

Effective Teacher

     As a student of teacher training programme, I've begin to set some criteria on my mind about which characteristics make teacher effective and efficient. I think effective teacher should be well-prepared for each and every lesson and s/he makes difficult topics easy to understand by using examples, details and analogies. Also effective teacher makes materials not only understandable but memorable. Furthermore, teaching is not meant to be teaching only information and definitions. An effective teacher should be energetic and dynamic person. If s/he enjoys teaching, also students enjoy learning; thus, teacher creates dynamic and lively teaching environment. As long as students love learning, teacher can be more efficient in the classroom.

     Also, good classroom management skill helps teacher to be effective in the classroom. It is important to set some classroom rules at the beginning of the semester and make them to understand classroom policy, but these rules shouldn't be too rigid and being nice to students is important. If teacher cares students and their different needs and respects their personalities, students understand this, so respectful teaching environment will occur automatically. In addition to them, if teacher keeps any reflection journal, it will help him/her in the future. Teacher can see what s/he have done so far, where s/he is going to etc. I think that this kind of reflection is important because teacher can evaluate his/her teaching and criticize him/herself easily.
   

My Teaching Beliefs

     I am a third grade student in EFL department.  I have taken many courses about teaching strategies and educational psychology courses up till now and as a requirement of my department I will continue to take these courses until I graduate. As far as I learn teaching methods and teaching strategies from my courses, I've begun to having an idea about how effective teacher should be and I've started to construct my own teaching beliefs.
     As we predict that teaching belief is a very relativistic concept and it can vary from teacher to teacher. From my standpoint, effective teacher should analyze him/her learners such as their learning styles, educational backgrounds and English competency level of the students etc. By doing so, teacher can state what students needs clearly and s/he can be more helpful their learning processes. Also, according to my teaching beliefs, a teacher should be an ice breakers in the classroom. In some cases, students might not want to be a part of the activities or maybe they have less communications among them. In these cases teacher should be an ice breaker and create a more friendly atmosphere to draw their attention. Group work may be one of the good solution in that situation. Additionally, I always support student-centered classroom environment and inductive learning. Instead of make students memorize  the information, teach students how they use what they learn is a better strategy from where I stand. In that way, they store the newly learned information in their long term memory. I hope that I will apply this in the future.
     What I want to add for them is that every teacher should update him/herself and keep up with the improvements in educational area. Today we are living in the technological age. It is a very good way to using more authentic materials in the classroom to get students attention. If only using text books may cause losing students attention to the lesson, but using authentic materials keep their attention and can provide different point of views to them.
     As a prospective teacher, the more I learn the more I set up my own beliefs. Now, I am continuing the learning and I have change to observe different teachers' teaching strategies. I hope that in the future I will be helpful my students learning processes in a more professional way.