Self-Reflexion Principles of a Good Teaching Practice

Noe Moises Ramirez

01/01/2014 Teaching Pactice I

Principles of a Good Teaching Practice Introduction This is a paper where I have arranged my teaching practice based on the principles of good teaching practice, approach, and how I will use instructional technology. There are three questions that are going to be developed in this paper. They will be answered with the description of how I am going to develop my teaching practice. Also, I will be reflecting on what I am going to do in my practice due to this aspects to take into consideration are the keys to develop and have a successful teaching practice. The questions that will be answered are: 1- What principles of good teaching practice are going to be developed in my TP and how? 2- How my TP is going to be designed based on the approach, methodology, methods, techniques and strategies? 3- How am I going to use IT and teaching English online? These questions will be answered not only in what the principles say but also in the previous experience I have had as teacher of second language, so let us start with the first question. 1- What principles of good teaching practice are going to be developed in my TP and how? Principles of What is going to be How is going to developed in the good teaching developed in the teaching teaching practice / Explanation practice practice / Description 1- Good practice encourages interaction between students and faculty. Interaction between students and teacher: Communication among human beings is essential to overcome situations and in the learning process is not an exception. When teacher interacts with students, listening to their questions, doubts, and demonstrating interest about students insecurities. Students feel more motivated to learn and also to be aware of what they are doing in the class. In (Boynton & Boynton, I would make a round table, in order to hear students expectation and insecurities, the best thing that a teacher can do is to promote this interaction with his/her students through demonstrating interest in their learning, giving them confidence to ask the teacher hoping that he will always be there to clarify their doubts and questions. The way that teacher gives advices to their students is crucial, due to students are humans and as humans they are emotional, as teacher we have to be careful because we could hurt their feelings or make them feel like they are useless, when we try to correct them or

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Principles of a Good Teaching Practice 2005) says how important is this relationship with our students The most powerful weapon available to secondary teachers who want to foster a favorable learning climate is a positive relationship with our students Interaction and collaboration among students. It is better to promote in students teamwork rather than competition like who is the best? due to collaborative learning is better than isolated learning. We as teacher share our knowledge with others so we should do the same with our students we should teach them to help each other, that value of cooperation is the core of this principle. clarify certain doubts, be kind and respectful. Promote this interaction through giving students confidence to ask and give their opinion and being a good listener.

2- Good practice encourages interaction and collaboration among students.

3- Good practice uses active learning techniques.

Active learning techniques. Active learning involves providing opportunities for students to meaningfully talk and listen, write, read, and reflect on the content, ideas, issues, and concerns of an academic subject. (Meyers & B. Jones, 1993).

I remember when I was learning English I used to ask my classmates hey, do you know how to say x word in English? They told me no and I told them. I was sharing my knowledge with my classmates and that is what I want to encourage in my students, well, I will tell them that they have to learn at least 10 words every week and then share them in class with their classmates. Teamwork is other thing I will do if I see students who have more knowledge, I will tell them to help those ones with less knowledge. At the end the most important think that I will do is discussion, discussion is the best way to share knowledge. I have to promote collaboration, interaction and cooperation through discussion and making a friendly atmosphere when you interact with your students, if you notice this principle is linked the first one, if you promote teacher-student interaction you will be able to encourage interaction and collaboration among students. The best way to accurately achieve this principle or to develop it in your classroom is to use the language rather than study it. I will choose those activities that allows communication, that allows to use the language, that allows learning by doing because that is the way language is acquired for natives speakers and it is not a bad idea to
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Principles of a Good Teaching Practice In other words, the teacher must be careful to bore students. follow that path in order to learn a new language. One more thing is that an active learning technique must be chosen carefully based on students needs and characteristics due to a technique can be the funniest in the world but what the students learnt? nothing, this can happen to you. Prompt feedback. When I taught English I used to correct Teacher must give students my students instantly but being careful feedback when they need it. of being polite and that others did not Feedback helps students to made fun of him/her. Also I always improve and to comprehend asked them what they knew about the things faster than as if you topics to take their previous knowledge explain something having and experiences as starting point to nothing else to recall begin the class, this is what I will be attention. This feedback doing. There is other thing that teacher must be instant because the must do and that I will do, too. It is, faster you correct or help after teaching a specific topic, to try to students the less confused link that topic to other one and using the they will be. next topic as feedback of the previous topic, it is like linking topics to each other to use the previous knowledge to make the next one easier to understand, in addition, students will remember what they already seen. Time on task. The way that I would develop this How an institution defines principle is to take my time to make time expectations for students understand everything I students, faculty, explain about the task and how to have administrators, and other a good performance. Other important professional staff can point is that it is important to know that establish the basis for high students are different and while some performance for all. students understand easily for other it is (Virginia Commonwealth more complicated so that is why it is University , 2009). This important that a teacher takes his time means that we as teacher to explain well and clarify every doubt must give students enough and the students do not run out of time time to develop a task and while doing the task required by the also we have to take our teacher. When a teacher will explain a time to explain the task. demined task, he must think as students Moreover, if a teacher wants not as a teacher, this means take the students to have an place of the student and how difficult is
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4- Good practice gives prompt feedback.

5- Good practice emphasizes time on task.

Noe Moises Ramirez Castillo

Principles of a Good Teaching Practice excellent performance give them the time they need. High expectations. This principle of a good teaching practice is based in communicating students your expectation about their performing, in class or in a task. It is easy to motivate students when you for example say I am sure you will come out with an excellent job. you are giving students motivation and also self-confidence. At the beginning of the course tell students your expectations and with emphasis in their strengths and when they are supposed to do a task tell them what you want and that they can achieve what you are asking. for them, sometimes, to understand the teacher and consequently the task. As a teacher you have to believe in people, and believing in something always mean that there could be disappointments. I like to tell my students they have the potential but they have not realized yet. It is good to motivate them at the beginning of the course and at the beginning of an activity in order to get good results, a good analogy of this is how a farmer cares about his crops, if he always waters and fertilizes them, the fruits that they will produce will be reflected in how he took care of them and as teacher our crops are our students we must water them a lot so they can produce great fruits. As teacher you must never give up on a student, it is going to be difficult, very difficult but a teacher must always have high expectation because if your expectations are low the results will be low, too. In order to develop this principle in my practice I have to tell my expectations to my students in their performance. Multiple talents and multiple ways of learning equals multiple techniques this means that if you have students that have many different ways of learning it is our responsibility to indentify them and to adapt techniques to the students need, therefore you can make all students learn, not just a few of them. At the beginning of the course I want to apply a Multiple Intelligence test because (Educational Broadcasting Corporation, 2004) establishes some of its benefits like you will provide opportunities for authentic learning based on your students' needs, interests and talents. After you have the results,
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6- Good practice communicates high expectations.

7- Good practice respects diversity: talents, experience, and ways of learning.

Talents, experience, and ways of learning. This has to do with Multiple Intelligences that basically are the different abilities and characteristics that enable us to develop and understand certain activities easier than other activities and that according to (Armstrong, 2009) are eight: Intrapersonal (self smart), interpersonal (people smart), naturalistic (nature smart), logic-mathematical (logic smart), bodily-

Noe Moises Ramirez Castillo

Principles of a Good Teaching Practice kinesthetic (body smart), musical (music smart), spatial (picture smart) linguistic (word smart). This means that a teacher must know about the type of intelligence that their students have. The teacher must respect each one of these intelligences, the term intelligence is inexact because everyone is intelligent in their own way. you have to decide the activities that are more likely to work with most of the students, obviously, there will be some students that will feel less comfortable with those activities. One important thing is that this does not mean that you will do only activities that fulfill the needs of the majority but do more activities that fulfill the needs of the majority and fewer activities that fulfill the needs of the minority.

(AAHE.org, 2014) 2- How my TP is going to be designed based on the approach, methodology, methods, techniques and strategies? Approach Before defining what is the Communicative Approach, let us define what an approach is and (Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 2014) says that it is a way of dealing with something: a way of doing or thinking about something. According to this definition it is right to say that in the teaching process educators make approaches to deal with different learning situation depending on the goals they want to reach and in this case the approach that is going to be talked is the Communicative approach and it is based on the idea that learning language successfully comes through having to communicate real meaning. When learners are involved in real communication, their natural strategies for language acquisition will be used, and this will allow them to learn to use the language (BBC, 2014). This approach, as its name suggests, is focused in communication, this means that my teaching practice must be focused in using the language rather than studied, in short, learning by doing. I have to choose methods and techniques that fulfill the principles of this approach, for example, one of them as found in (MINED, 2008) the communicative approach emphasizes comprehension and negotiation of meaning more than production of structures. Students can learn to communicate through interacting, and that the appropriate morpho-syntactical structures are developed once the interaction begins. This approach also favors the instructional value of communication. Interaction is the same as communication. Students in the classroom are going to be asked to perform activities that make them interact to develop their linguistic competencies. One thing that I want to be focused in my classes is in language acquisition; let us give you a short definition and distinction between language acquisition and language learning. Language acquisition

Noe Moises Ramirez Castillo

Principles of a Good Teaching Practice is a subconscious process during which children are unaware of grammatical rules; they get a feel for what is and what is not correct. On the other hand, language learning is a conscious knowledge of the new language. Thus now think how children acquired their native language, they listen then speak after read and at the end write, so it is good to start speaking English in the classroom than make them speak and after practice reading and writing. I will take advantage of the fact that they already know how to read and write but if I make them develop their listening skill, it is going to be easy to develop their reading and if I develop their speaking, writing will be a piece of cake. Methodology and Methods Now, that the approach has been defined and clearly exposed, what methods could fulfill these approach? In my case I will choose those methods that enable interaction and use the language in class as means of communication, obviously my students are going to be beginners so I will use a lot of gestures and body language and also realia (physical object to create meaning). My methodology will have a communicative approach which means as said above, I will include methods that promote communication and interaction in the target language. When you use different methods in your class, you are creating a methodology, so I will tell you the methods that are going to be chosen in my classroom based on the Communicative Approach. I will choose the Direct Method, Total Physical Respond, Audio-lingual Method, Desuggestupedia, and The Grammar Translation Method these methods are illustrated by (Larsen-Freeman, 2000). There are many factors that made me choose them. For example, I like the direct method in a personal way because it is really related with language acquisition, if you notice you will be always speaking English, the students will be always listening to you and that is good to someone who is trying to learn a new language. But you must take into a count the principles behind these methods. The way I am going to develop my class are based in the principle that the native language must be avoid and also in the principle that uses objects to create meaning (Larsen-Freeman, 2000, pg. 27), if I cannot bring objects I could just show some pictures or draw on the blackboard and this is what they called realia. The second method I like, and I want to develop in my TP is the TPR due to it is a funny one, and the students hardly can get bored with this method, I really like to move in class, using gestures and body language is a good way to create meaning. In my opinion, one of the best ways to acquired vocabulary is through experience and with this method you create unforgettable experiences besides when someone just looks for a word in the dictionary and the next day the lexicon is gone, he forgets what its meaning was. And this is called meaning in the target language (Larsen-Freeman, 2000, pg. 111). Audio-lingual method, I am planning to use it because just remember how babies learn to speak, they learn by repeating the words their parents say and then after a while that word sticks to their brains and they never forget their pronunciation and this is the principle habit formation (Larsen-Freeman, 2000, pg. 42), this is why this method is

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Principles of a Good Teaching Practice focused in developing their pronunciation. Basically, if you repeat a word you are more likely to pronounce it in the correct way, there are more principles in this method but what I am doing is going straight to the core of each method. Desuggestupedia, this method is an interesting one that I want to use in my TP due to its motivation, confidence, and nice environment that is created in the class. I will spent a lot of time planning my classes and the best part of planning is that you forgot all about nervous and anxiety when performing your class you are more natural in the way you speak and the way you do things. Also this grabs students attention, for example, students know when you have self-confidence in what you are doing and as a teacher I must be careful to show my self-confidence in order to encourage them to have confidence when it is their turn to speak and by this means, you will encourage students to overcome some psychological barriers as low self-esteem and shyness. At the same time using this method the classroom seems to be cheerful even like learning is funny, this method helps teacher to teach student to change their thinking about learning, most of them just think learning equals boredom but as teacher I will demonstrate the opposite using things that are fun and interesting for them, I have advantages over other teachers, I am still young and I like almost the same things that they do. At the end the grammar translation method, I want to use it because this principle is important learn a foreign language to be able to read literature written in it (Larsen-Freeman, 2000, pg. 15). What I am going to do with this method is to use it at the end of the class, English must be taught inductively not deductively which means I do not have to start a class like hello, todays class is simple present, this is use to no, I have to speak so students can see the structure work and induce how it behaves so when I, at the end, explain this structure they will already know how to use it. Techniques and Strategy The technique is what helps the method because a method is the path and the techniques are the steps to reach the end of that path, and the strategy the way how you can develop a technique, you can develop the same technique but the strategy you use to develop it will vary, for example, in the Direct Method I will use this technique called Reading Aloud (Gibson, 2005) suggests that teachers often say that reading aloud can help to practice and improve pronunciation. Specialist books on pronunciation tend to concentrate on segmental and the accurate production of specic sounds, and so only isolated words or, at most, single sentences are read aloud or spoken. This is a technique that makes students or the teacher read aloud, but a teacher can do this by read segments, one by one, past a student in front of the class, or everybody reads at once the technique is reading aloud and the strategy is how you are going to develop the technique. There are several ways to perform a technique and as teacher we must do the one that makes feel students comfortable. Now, you can identify the difference between this two terms let us talk about the techniques that I am going to use, based on the

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Principles of a Good Teaching Practice methods, that are based in the methodology that at the same time is based on the approach. The grammar translation method and its supporting technique fill in the blanks in this technique the students have to fill in the missing spaces with the correct word based on what they have seen. This can be done with many strategies, for example, it could be a reading passage like a short story or a short article and then fill in the blanks. Other strategy, to develop this technique, is for instance, instead of using a paragraph use a song and gives students the lyrics with missing spaces. This strategy is better because it is cheerful and more attractive than read an article that can bore students. Other technique that is appropriate in this method, that I will use, is use word in a sentence, this technique consist in using the new words in a sentence to develop the lexicon and the use of the new vocabulary. I will do it in two ways and these are the strategies that I am thinking, the first one is to give the new vocabulary and show its meaning by association, miming or pictures and relating this vocabulary with context in the whiteboard by myself, and the second strategy is to ask students to go in front and ask them to write sentences using the new words. There are more techniques that can be use like reading comprehension questions, deductive application of rules, memorization, composition and others (Egos, 2014). Some of the techniques involved in the audio-lingual method that I will use my TP are Repetition Drill and Use of Minimal Pairs. The first one consists in repeating after the teacher, but I will use two strategies I will ask my students repeat after me, and also I will tell students repeat after some student but the best way is individually when listen to each students pronunciation. Use of Minimal Pair, are words that just differ in one consonant, example bad and bat. I will ask my students to figure out which word I am saying, this is one strategy to apply this technique and other one is to tell the distinction to my students when they look at the shape of my mouth when I say a word and after cover my mouth so they will only use their listening skill. This are some other techniques that I will use in my TP transformation drill, question and answer drill, complete the dialog, grammar game, others (LinkedIn Corporation, 2014) The techniques that I will use when using the Desuggestupedia are Choosing a New Identity and Role Play. The first one consists in choosing among occupations for example doctor, lawyer, etc and you will describe what you do. My first strategy to develop this technique is to ask students to past in front ask to describe their occupation and the other one, it is the make a sort of short play where they play the occupation they choose this is in groups and they decide what to do but always according to what they decided to be. The role play consists in acting as another person for example, your mom, dad, friend, classmate or even the teacher and you will speak as if you were him or her. This technique is so much fun, because when someone pretends to be someone else they always overreact and that is funny. There are two forms that I think I can develop this technique, I could make couples and tell them to pretend to be your couple or, on the

Noe Moises Ramirez Castillo

Principles of a Good Teaching Practice other hand, I could say okay students pretend to be someone that you want to be, it can be mom, dad, a friend, etc. Other techniques that are used with this method are classroom set-up, positive suggestion, primary activation, others. At the end in the Total Physical Respond, I am going to use these techniques, using Commands to Direct Behavior and Action Sequence. The first one is easy and simple, you just give commands to the students and they will do what you asked, for instance, you say Peter, open the door. I will use this technique and develop it in two ways, the first one with direct commands to one students and so on, they are supposed to do what I request, but if they fail, they are not able to participate again, this will be by turns, and the other strategy that I like the most to develop this technique, it is a wellknown game that everyone knows, I am talking about the game of Simon says, I will be Simon, and the students will obey what I say, paying attention if I say Simon says and the ones who fail, get out of the game. Also I can delegate a student to be Simon and just can watch and be the judge of the game. 3- How am I going to use IT and teaching English online? Nowadays, teachers have more resources to improve their teaching, these resources facilitated learning. Today it is very easy to find information about anything you want to know due to the internet. The problem is that many teacher do not use technology, maybe because they fear to use technology, this is logic, is in human nature to fear what we do not understand but good teachers must overcome this fear in order to be better teachers. The demands of todays world are that you must use technology in your teaching. Before talking about how I am going to teach English online and what instructional technologies I will use. Let us define three terms, the first one instructional technology, according to (Gagne, 2013), includes practical procedures for using existing media to deliver instruction, and also to deliver portion of instruction that supplement the communications of instructor. IT includes practical techniques of instructional delivery that systematically aim for effective learning, being its basic purpose to promote and aid the application of these known and validated procedures in the design and delivery of instruction. The best example of IT is a WebQuest that (Hubbard & Levy, 2006) define it as an inquiry-oriented activity in which most or all of the information used by learners is drawn from the web. WebQuest are design to use learners time well, to focus on using information rather than looking for it, and to support learner s thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation. In short, a WebQuest it is a sort of online class and it is part of instructional technology. Instructional technology is basically teaching online and using all the sources online to teach English. In my TP, I will use WebQuests, websites to learn English, e-books, video websites, and social networks. The one that I want to use the most is social networks, because of my students, they are teenager so it is correct to say that they spend a lot of time online in social networks so I must take

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Principles of a Good Teaching Practice advantage of this behavior. Many teachers see social networks as distracters and useless, I do not. I remember, I saw a video about technology of a teacher and the teacher said that teacher must not keep students away from social networks but to approach learning to social networks. Based in this principle I will say that I want to bring learning to social networks. There are many websites where you can learn English easily and for free, I will tell my students to use them, not because they have to but because they need to, I will tell them how easy it is to learn English but they have not realized yet. I will tell them also the importance of being your own teacher, this means teaching yourself, be aware of your development at school and start to be conscious about what you are doing at school and what do you want, my students are going to be teens so they are near to become into young adults and the purpose of using IT and teaching English online is to make them reflect and being conscious that they can learn by themselves if they have the commitment to do it. In my practice, this websites will help me to improve students proficiency even I will not be there to teach them, by this websites I want my students to learn English not only in the classroom but also outside in their home. Some of the websites that I have decided to use are duolingo.com and busuu.com this websites provide a wide range of resources and ways of learning besides the approach used of this websites is the same as of the one that I will develop in my TP (communicative approach) These two websites also use some of the methods that I already chosen to use in my TP, as I said the approach of these two websites is communicative therefore the methods must be those that focus in communication. E-Learning According to (Holmes & Gardner, 2006), offers new opportunities for both the educator and learner to enrich their teaching and learning experiences through a virtual environment that support not just the delivery, but also exploration and application of information. E-learning essentially is learning in a virtual environment, but here is an important thing, it must not be focused in just delivering information but in exploration and application of this information. The teacher when teaching online, in virtual environments, must be careful in just giving information to his students, due to students can get used to just have the information, read it and that is it. The teacher must encourage students to research more besides the information already given, and also practice it. In this case, English must be practiced, so what I am going to do is to give my students the information they need then ask them to research more if there is something missing and then test their learning, because testing your skills it is a good way to practice what you have learnt.

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Principles of a Good Teaching Practice Blended learning A blend is using the best delivery methodologies available for a specific objective, including online, classroom-based instruction, performance support, paper-based (selfstudy), and formal or informal on the job solutions. Blended learning does not mean to just grab every method and technique you like and use them in your classroom. Blended learning means to choose the correct methods and techniques depending on the objective that you already have arranged. For example, in my TP I already have my objective, my objective is to use the language, not study it, in other words communication, so that was I decided to use those methods that fulfill my objective, one more thing is that my objective is based on the approach of the syllabus. I will use all I need to develop my class well, all the resources that help me and lead me to reach my objective. This is blended learning, mix everything that is useful to achieve a goal.

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Conclusions In order to have a good teaching practice I must use the principles of good teaching practice. If I use them in my teaching practice and try to develop them I will have a good teaching practice. The approach tells you the methodology, the methodology the methods, the methods the techniques, the techniques the strategies. If I follow this pattern I will reach its final component, success. Todays world demands teacher to be innovated and up-to-date and IT will lead you to fulfill the need and requirements of this world. Blended learning is to choose the right resources and methods to achieve your goals. These are the keys to a successful teaching practice.

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