I feel that during this course I have concentrated more on my lesson planning and the positive outcome of that has been my timing.  Previously, when I didn’t plan so thoroughly I found that some activities would go on longer than I had expected or that I had given students too much time to complete a task.  After thinking about the material, language and methodologies, I effectively ‘felt’ my way through each lesson and the timing of each stage.  This was very often successful, however occasionally I wasn’t able to cover everything I had intended, or covered everything with too much time to spare.

Thinking about my timing in lessons meant that I had to reflect on my teaching to determine when the timing was going wrong.  Now I feel I am better able to judge the timing of different activities at different levels and this enables be to better judge how to differentiate between weaker and stronger students.

In saying this however, I feel I could further develop my ablitiy to successfully differentiate betweek level and strengths and weaknesses.  I feel that I am mainly differentiating between differences in general English level and speed of students completing activities, but I would like to focus more on differentiation on specific, more atomistic, weaknesses.  For exampl where some students in the class have severe handwriting difficulties and others don’t.   More importantly I’d like to learn how do differentiate effectively for learning difficulties.  So far in FE I haven’t had many students with specific learning difficulties, however, this is likely to change due to expeosure, and I would like to be confident that I can do this successfully when the need arises.

Now, I have more experience I have used differentiation in a number of ways, however I believe I could still improve this area of my teaching.

Mainly, what I do when differentiating is to make sure I have a clear Idea of level differences and strengths and weaknesses of a group, and to make handouts, worksheets easier or more challenging. I do this by adapting the material for different learners. For example, with gap-fills I might provide some of the answers for students who don;t work quickly, or for students particular with spelling issues, I often provide some of the letters of the words they have difficulty with so they are only expected to remember how to spell the more obvious parts. For stronbger stduents I tent to give them extra activities and exercises to keep them going why they might otherwise be waiting for the weaker students to finish. These extra activities are more open-ended, and more challenging.

In addition to materials, I modify my spoken instructions and assist individuals after giveing instructions, and when activities progress, to ensure everyone has understood the tasks and can complet the tasks successfully.

Doing this, it has become more and more obvious why differentiation is necessary and so I am keen on finding out more ways to better differentiate and so make all tasks for my learners achieveable.

Initially, given my background in IT I thought that I wouldn’t learn very much during the session. However, I was surprised by the content in the session and realised that although I did occasionally use ICT for teaching |I was under using it and hadn’t thought of how flexible it could be. I had been using ICT to present and practice language in a controlled way. I have used my laptop with a data projector as a glorified OHP and have got students to use various software packages to practice language and write essays and letters etc.

During the session I learned how blogs could be created for entire classes and interesting activities they could do with blogs which would enable student to share ideas and learning as well as practicing their skills.

I was interested in part of the session that dealt with collaborative docs. I liked the idea that students could collaborate on written tasks and projects even when they couldn’t work face-to-face. Students could work on their projects in their own time separately, and edit and amend each other’s work before getting back together to work more in college.

Another part of the session I liked was the presentation on how students can use instant messaging to have conversations. I have since used this in class as a fun way of practicing email / chat language. Whole conversations could be printed out and checked and corrected.

One of the most important points for me was that in addition to practicing language skills, and using ICT, students are able to maintain a clear record of what they have done online, and on the student folders so that we could go back and look for areas for improvement. Doing work in this way means that students don’t lose their homework because they are kept on bits of paper which can easily get lost, and ICT provided a more motivating and fun way of reviewing your own learning.

I feel I am very good at explaining grammar.  I actually enjoy reading and stuying grammar (and linguistics in general).  I give my students clear explanations of grammatical structures and focus on how and when structures are used in natural situations.  I am careful not to give example of grammatical structures that merely exemplify form.  I detest the examples in many books that seem to forget that students need to be able to make use of these structures in the real world.  So, I focus on realistic contexts for everything I teach so that all language learned has a strong relevance outside class.

I am very interested in phonology and voice use, and so love designing and giving lessons on pronunciation that are fun, relevant and useful for student’s listening and speaking skills.

My weakness are related to mainly to planning, and this is an area I really want to focus on during the course.  For me, teaching happens in the classroom so I often find it hard to plan carefully what I want to teach.  This has the effect that, after class, I often feel I have missed opportunities to explore certain areas, to fully predict difficulties, and due to tiem constraints I don’t consider differentiation when planning materials.  I also think this can mean that I pitch my lessons slightly higher than I should and therefore, in class, some activities can drag on longer than intended.  Timing is also, therefore, a weak point, and I feel that my lessons are not snappy often enough.

I also rely to heavily on teaching language rather than focusing on the necessary skills.  In general English classes there is not enough work on reading and writing skills, and too much on grammar, vocabulary and speaking skills.  However, this is not the case when I am teaching exam course, for example IELTS.

Not sure about you, but I imagine creating the Blog is going to be the easier part of the DTE(E)LLS course. The hard bits are sure to come.  Looking at the timetable and the “syllabus”, I think we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.

I’m sure it’s not luck we need, so I’ll wish everyone all the best on our adventure back on the wrong side of the classroom.

Pip