Teachers and Lesson Planning

Teachers and Lesson Planning
-A SAMPLE LESSON PLAN TEMPLATE-

As a road map for car travelers in a long trip, a lesson plan is, for teachers, by all means, a must-have and a must-prepare. A lesson plan is that little helper for Santa Claus, but this one is the teacher’s instead. It consists mainly of aims that a teacher should achieve and that are knowledge not known to their students before and hoped to be known at the end of a session or a multiplicity of sessions.

A lesson plan specifies the where, when, what to do, how to do it and who does it. It is about the where to start and end, the when to start and end an activity or a lesson. It is, by far, specific as far as the question of what to do, how to do it and who does it (Teacher or students) is raised.

A professional, well-structured, confident is that teacher who gets his lesson plans into their class.

The following URL link gets you a sample lesson plan template:

http://www.box.net/shared/3krqtrzsdx

p.s. Next lesson plan template will be competency-approach based

By: Nouamane ERRIFKI

Interactive WhiteBoards

Interactive WhiteBoards
(IWBs)
Or the ‘Smart Boards’

Once and when I was all in the process of checking my inbox, I stumbled over an e-mail of which title goes as: ‘IWB’. Well, as a matter of fact, there wasn’t only one e-mail of such a title, there were plenty others a thing that triggered my curiosity. I tried to guess its meaning and I failed. I read the e-mail and I didn’t get it. Desperate, brain frozen and frustrated even, I tried to personally decipher the meaning of that acronym by digging it. And you know what did I find? It simply stands for ‘Interactive White Board’.

Caption: An Interactive Whiteboard

In fact that finding still didn’t quench my desire for knowing at the time. So I decided to go on through another research on Google to further understand what they mean by that ‘IWBs’ of theirs. The first things I knew is that it is a new technology exploited in classrooms and the interactive whiteboards are also named ‘Smart Boards’, things I didn’t know before.

In one of the recordings related to our subject, Sara Walker, 7 years of experience in ICT, defined the ‘IWBs’ in simple terms: ‘(the interactive whiteboard) looks like a huge computer screen on your wall. It’s slightly bigger than a normal whiteboard that you would write on, but it just looks like a flat computer screen stuck to the wall. The screen is top sensitive.’

Technically speaking, ‘An interactive whiteboard is a device that interprets a projected two-dimensional surface that interacts with a computer's desktop. A typical use is as an electronic whiteboard but it is generally an interactive type of computer screen.’
(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)


Dazzling, isn’t it? Let me succinctly rephrase all of this for you!
An interactive whiteboard consists of two items: a computer and a top-sensitive whiteboard (that’s why it is called ‘interactive’ for its being sensitive to touch). Interaction, here, is three dimensional in the sense that the whiteboard interacts with the user and then with the computer’s hard disk. In other words, whatever you have got in your computer can be manipulated by you using your fingers or a special pen on the interactive whiteboard. Thus, your digital teaching resources, activities, videos, songs, graphics, drawings, even dictionaries that are stored in your hard disk are made available for your in-class teaching purposes. Even other facilities like the Internet are accessible. The News, TV shows also can be used as authentic materials. In brief, it is the world outside getting inside your classrooms ladies and gentlemen!!

To conclude it, watch this video and you get everything you need to know about these ‘Smarties ‘.

Remember that there must be a pedagogy behind everything we do in class; even when using a fine technology as fine as the Interactive Whiteboards.


By: Nouamane ERRIFKI

The Methodology Series

DM stands for the Direct Method
-1-

Teacher’s goals in using this method
Enabling students to communicate in the target language. To that end, they, students, are to be made to think in the target language through much exposure to the studied language and not involving the mother tongue at all, if possible.

Teachers’ roles
* still assumes a position of authority
* directs in-class activities

Students’ roles
Less passive than they were in the GTM as far as they are prompted to communicate by the T.

Interaction patterns
* Teacher → Students: Most common as interaction is often initiated by the teacher.
* Students → Teacher: Less common, but students can initiate the talk by asking questions.
* Students → Students: They can also converse with each other to a certain limit.

Students affective aspect, is it considered?
There are no principles of the method that relates to this side.

Language and culture views
Language is primarily spoken more than written. That explains why students are taught common, everyday speech of the target language.
Culture is given a much more important stake ( if you consider everyday speech as part and parcel of every people’s culture)

Language areas emphasized
Vocabulary (dangling more towards everyday life speech) is emphasized over grammar. This latter is taught inductively.

Language skills emphasized
Speaking is emphasized over all other skills. This does not mean that reading, listening and writing aren’t taught. Usually, reading or writing learning is based upon what has been introduced and studied orally.

Position of students’ primary tongue
All classes are taught exclusively in the target language, and it is recommended that students’ mother tongue not to be used in class aiming, thus, at achieving a native-like fluency.
Even thinking in the target language is fostered and favored to achieve the aforementioned goal that of a native-like fluency in using the language.

Evaluation
* Students are asked to use the language, not to demonstrate their knowledge of it.
* Students can be interviewed to assess their oral performance/ fluency.
* Students can be asked to write a paragraph about something they have studied.
, etcetera.

Prepared by: Nouamane ERRIFKI
References:

Diane-Larsen, Freeman. Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. England: Oxford University Press, 1990.

The Methodology Series

DM stands for the Direct Method
-2-

Errors
T. urges his students to self-correct using different techniques.

Typical techniquesReading aloud
Students take turns in reading aloud sections of a text, dialogue or a play. The teacher, after every section, uses realia, pictures, mime or examples to explain.

Question and answer exercise
This exercise is exclusively carried out in the target language. It consists of questions to which students are to find answers. These latter should be in full sentences to practice new vocabulary and grammatical structures.

Student self-correctionSome techniques for students to self-correct:
1- T. asks students to make a choice between what they said and another alternative (this is also a way that can be exploited to know whether it is a mistake or an error.)
2- T. repeating the mistake with a questioning tone to draw the student’s attention to the mistake.
3- T. repeating the student’s sentence only to stop just before the mistake/ error.

Conversation practice
Only a particular grammatical structure is stressed at a time. It goes when the T. asks questions using a particular grammatical structure and students should answer them. Then students start questioning each other with a focus on the same grammatical structure.

Fill-in-the blank exercise
An activity where items, in the target language, are missing. Those items required to fill in the blanks are to be induced from previously presented lessons. They are not explicitly handed as it was the case for GTM’s fill-in-the blanks exercise.

Dictation
T. reads the passage three times:
1st instance of reading is for listening only
2nd T. reads slowly pausing after each phrase for students to write down the passage.
3rd this last instance of reading is for students to check their work/ passages.

Paragraph writing
Students are asked to write a paragraph, in their own words, about a subject connected to the theme (s) of the reading passage.

Criticism to the Direct Method
It was a success in private schools, but a fiasco in public education because of(s):
1- Budget Constraints,
2- Classroom Size,
3- Time,
4- Teacher Background (usually, non-natives)

Prepared by: Nouamane ERRIFKI

The Methodology Series

GTM for the Grammar-Translation Method
-1-

Teachers’ goals when using GMT
* A fundamental aim of learning an FL is to make learners able to read and write literature of the target language. To that aim, vocabulary and grammar rules are heavily emphasized. Form rather than function of the language is of utmost import.
* It was also believed that the study of an FL through its literature is a good mental exercise that would develop learners’ thinking.

Teachers’ role
· The authority of the class (do this and do that),
· The know-all,
· The omniscient who knows everything about his subject, and even about other subjects.

Students’ role
* The Ss. are passive. They do what the teacher instructs them to do so as they know what she/ he knows,
* Ss. are mere recipients to the knowledge transmitted by the T.

Interaction patterns in a class where GTM is implemented
* Teacher → Students: one way communication, domineering.
* Students → Teacher: quasi-null, no initiative is taken on the part of Ss. to participate.
* Students → Students: rare, if ever. That could be blamed on lack of activities that involve group work or any other form of cooperative learning.

How students’ feelings are dealt with
Nothing that can be of examples to consider as far as this question is raised then. There were no principles touching Ss’ affectivity.

Language and culture
Literary language is given a much more important stake to the detriment of the spoken form. And culture consists of literature and fine arts.

Language areas and language skills emphasized
* Vocabulary and grammar.
* Reading and writing to the detriment of speaking and listening.

Position of primary language
* It is predominating in GTM classrooms,
* It is used in explaining the target language clearly through translation.

Evaluation, How is it achieved?
* Written tests of translation (from target language into primary language and/ or vice versa).
* Questions requiring application of grammatical rules/ taught patterns.
* Questions about the target language.

Mistakes, how are they tackled?
· The correct form is supplied by the T. (no original techniques of correction were used).
· Correct answers and reproduction are an obsession to a GTM teacher.

Teaching/ Learning process characteristics
1. Students are taught to translate from one language to another.
2. Students attend to Grammar deductively (rules are presented first, then examples to support the rules and which, in turn, should be followed as a pattern of application).
3. Memorization of native-language equivalents for the target-language vocabulary.

Prepared by: Nouamane ERRIFKI

References:
Diane-Larsen, Freeman. Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. England: Oxford University Press, 1990.

The Methodology Series

GTM for the Grammar-Translation Method
-2-

Typical techniques
Translation of a literary passage
An activity (in-class or out-of-class) that consists of translating a reading passage from the target language into the students’ mother tongue. Translation could be written as it could be oral and the substance reading passage can be either originated in some works in the target language literature or written by the teacher himself to include certain structures and vocabulary. The latter, grammatical structures and vocabulary, is the subject of subsequent lessons. Worthy of note, at the end, that no translation is fair enough not to distort original meaning; that’s why idiomatic expressions are not translated, in this activity, in a verbatim way, yet a meaning-translation is favored.

Reading comprehension questions
As a guideline of import, all questions should be answered in the target language. These questions are not random, they follow a certain structure based on the principle of ‘grading’ the task or otherwise named ‘complexity levels.’ Mindful of such a principle, comprehension questions are threefold:

1- Receptive Qs: where students are required to answer using information contained in the text. That’s a kind of bottom-up answering.

2- Inference Qs: questions that need answers based on students’ understanding of the reading passage.


3- Pragmatic Qs: are those questions that require students’ use of their grey matter and experience in order to answer. They can also be called: ‘productive questions.’

A sample of such questions:
1-a- Read the text a sufficient number of times and give it a title?
1-b- What is the gist of the text?
1-c- What is the foremost concern of scientists as far as the Bird Flu is concerned?
1-d- What are the potential symptoms of the Bird Flu in humans?

2-a- what do the following words refer to:
Them (para.2)
Them (last para.)
This (last para.)

3-a- Do you think that the Bird Flu will be stopped or continue spreading all over the world? Explain?

Antonyms
An activity in which students engage in finding antonyms to a list of words by reading the passage.

Synonyms
Akin to antonyms, but, this time, students try to find synonyms to a whole list of ‘Lexis’. Worthy of note, here, at this stage, that these lists are later to be memorized; a thing that constitutes what is labeled, ‘rote learning.’

Cognates
An activity in which students are taught to recognize cognates by learning spelling and/ or sound patterns that correspond between L1 and the target language.
E.g. possibility → Possibilidad.(true cognates)
Obscurity → Obsecuredad.(true cognates)
They are also taught to differentiate between true cognates and false ones. False cognates are those that do not correspond in meaning.
E.g. Actually → Actuellement (false cognates)

Deductive application of a rule
After students understand the deductively (rules first, then examples) presented grammatical structures, they are asked to apply these rules to new examples. Exceptions to the grammatical rules are also noted.

Fill-in-the blank
That consists of filling the blanks in a succession of sentences with new words or items of a particular grammatical type (as prepositions or verbs…)

Memorization
Students memorize both lists of translated vocabulary and grammatical rules or paradigms as well.

Use of words in sentences
Students, in this activity, contextualize the newly learnt words in sentences to show their understanding.

Composition
The teacher usually suggests a topic to his/ her students to write on. This topic has to do with the theme of the reading passage.

Précis
Sometimes the T. assigns a précis of the reading passage instead of an activity of composition.

Criticism to GTM
It stresses memorization through rote learning. It does barely anything to enhance students’ communicative ability in the target language.

Why is it popular despite its drawbacks?
• It requires few teaching materials.
• It requires few teaching skills on the part of teachers.
• Tests are easy to build and scoring is objectively carried.

Prepared by: Nouamane ERRIFKI


References:
Diane-Larsen, Freeman. Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. England: Oxford University Press, 1990.