Dear FLE425 members,
In this post, you need to describe TWO puzzling teaching/learning situations that you have experienced in the practice teaching school in detail, which you find hard to understand and to take action against (an event which you do not know what to do). It can be concerned with some aspects of your own teaching practice, the mentor teachers' classroom practice, their attitudes towards students,their philosophy of teaching,the student behaviour in class, or your own questions about how to act in a certain classroom-related situation. You need to do this in groups (i.e., the group you are doing your school experience with.
Hi everyone,
ReplyDeleteNaile and I want to learn about your solutions to our problem:
We have students whose level is elementary, but we have some students in our classes whose level is much higher than elementary. As a result, while we are (or our mentor teacher) is teaching something, that topic seems so simple for them that they get bored. On the other hand, these are the students who participate in the lesson more actively so if we give them another task we lose our best participants to our lessons. we want to ask your solutions for that.
ne de olsa akıl akıldan üstündür:)
Hi Seda and Naile.
ReplyDeleteI know it is a bit! late to give some advice at the end of the semester; however, you can always encounter such kind of a problem in your future teaching life. First o all, I think that in most of the classes there are some students who perform better compared to the general in class. Since they finish the tasks earlier they get bored easily and lose their motivation. In such cases we definitely shouldn’t ignore these students when they finish their tasks. Assigning them with new tasks would be like a kind of punishment for the students on the other hand. In these cases, we may ask them to help their friends with poor performances or we can provide them with some extra enjoying materials with which they can busy themselves while waiting for their friends. These materials may be a word puzzle, an English magazine or some interesting readings etc.)
Hi Everyone!
ReplyDeleteWe (Burcu, Pelin, Aysun) also encountered an important problem in one of the classes we made observation. The teacher made an examination; however he didn't prepare the questions himself; instead, he used the question prepared by the other English teacher in the school. After the exam, all the students were angry with the teacher, because there were many questions from different subjects that were not covered in the class before. When they objected to the teacher, he just told students to calm down and that he would prepare easier questions for the next exam. What do you think about this situation? Should teachers share some materials related to the exam or do you think they should prepare each material on their own? Would you share your exam questions with the other English teachers in your school?
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ReplyDeleteHi everyone,
ReplyDeleteWe had a problem in our practice teaching. When we asked questions to our students, they avoided answering our questions, even the simplest ones even if they knew the answer for these questions. We tried to elicit correct answers from them but in the end they didn’t answer at all. As far as we examined the class of the mentor teacher, they avoid answering questions of his as well. When we asked a question to the class, they remained totally silent; however; when they worked alone, we saw that they knew the answers and they could easily answer the questions on paper; but when we asked they seemed to be reluctant to answer it. We were puzzled with this problem. Can you help us solve this puzzle? We are grateful to your comments. Thanks in advance,
Best regards,
Asiye Baştürk
Görkem Beydilli
Mustafa Çavdar
Ahmet Bülbül
Hello again,
ReplyDeleteWe observed that the students did off-task behaviors such as daydreaming, chatting with peers or studying other subjects in our practice teachings. They easily lost their interest and attention. Then, whatever we did in our teaching didn’t help us attract their attention. We selected enjoyable activities, we tried to be friendly and active in our teachings, however, it didn’t work. Our mentor teacher himself had such problems in his class. In one of his lesson, one of the students started to deal with solving math problems, he warned her but we think that this is not an effective solution to our problem. This can be the problem of yours as well. What do you think how we can solve this problem? We are curious about your ideas.
Thanks in advance
Best regards,
Have a good holiday…
Asiye Baştürk
Görkem Beydilli
Mustafa Çavdar
Ahmet Bülbül
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ReplyDeleteHi everybody!
ReplyDeleteFirstly, we wish that you have the least anticipated problems during your instruction or easily deal with them in the future. Eda and I faced a problem in our first teaching experience. We were talking about past form of the verb "to be" and asked students to give some example sentences. One of them built a sentence like "She was burned..." and we simply told her that the sentence was built in passive voice. But some of the students didn't get the idea. We wonder if it was right to tell the students that it was passive voice, because it led to some confusion among the students. We want to know what is the best thing to do in such a situation or what would you do if you were in our shoes?
Eda CEYHAN
Duygu CAN
Hi seda and Naile I think it is a very important problem. The students whose levels are higher than the other students can be bored and have low motivation. I think it is better to ask these students help their friends who need help.
ReplyDeleteNuray Behti
Hi all,
ReplyDeleteWe observed an important problem. The students have a high level of text anxiety. We observed that the mentor teacher threatens the students by preparing a hard examination for them or giving them low points in the exam. She uses the examination as a tool for punishing or praising the students. We imagined that we had such students who have text anxiety. We need your advice to find out some strategies in order to decrease our students' test anxiety.
Zeynep Çiçek
Müge Ateş
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ReplyDeleteHi Eda and Duygu,
ReplyDeleteI think how to respond to the answer "She was burned..." depends on students' pre-requisite knowledge. If the students know about passive voice I also would remind them how we form passive voice and the function of "was" in passive voice. If the students do not know about passive, I would say "we are dealing with the verb 'to be' but she used the verb 'burn'.
Zeynep Çiçek
Hi everyone!
ReplyDeleteWhile we were doing our teaching task, we were teaching "have to". It was an inductive teaching; we read a passage which includes "have to" structures. Then they deducted the rule and made lots of practice. But later, one of the students asked in Turkish: "Hocam "have to" ne demek?" Then we tried to answer by saying "If there is a rule, we use 'have to'". She asked "Hocam rule ne demek?” We tried to explain it in other words such as necessity, obligation, compulsory, etc. But they did not know what they mean. So we had to explain it in Turkish although we avoid using Turkish in classes as much as possible. So in such a case, how would you explain the meaning of “have to”?
Hülya Akkaş
Yağmur Adsan
Nilüfer Alkın
Hi everyone!!
ReplyDeleteIn our class there were some students whose level were higher than the whole class. While we or the teacher was teaching, they were engaging in other things rather than the course. However they know what was being taught so we were confused about how to respon to those student. Should we warn them to listen to the lesson or not? This was the first problem. The second one was use of the mother tongue in the class. Our mentor teacher were using English only when we were in the class, do the class was totally confused when were talking in English. In some cases it was impossible to continue the lesson without using using Turkish. In this case what would you do?
Banu
Dilara
Esranur
Duygu
Hi every one in our class we had a student who was visually-impaired. And in our teachings we had problem to teach to him. He is actually an intelligent student but because he cannot see he is not able to see the board and, he cannot use the course book. so, what will we do in such a case if we have a handicapped student in our class in the future, can you give advice to us?
ReplyDeleteHülya Akkaş
Nilüfer Alkın
Yağmur Adsan
Hello everyone,
ReplyDeleteIn our classes, there were some students who were totally indifferent and did not care about what the teacher was doing. It was apparent that they were not listening to the teacher or doing the exercises. They sometimes did not even open their books until the teacher warned them. The teacher sometimes asked questions to them in order to keep them awake and they tried to give answers. However, after some time, they stop listening to the teacher again. Sometimes the teacher turned a blind eye and at those times, those students did not make any noise or annoy others. They did not interrupt the teacher; however, we think that a teacher needs to find some ways to help those students take part in the lesson. How can we achieve this?
Gül Bıyıkoğlu
Özge Ceren Çelik
Hi everyone,
ReplyDeleteIn our class everybody loves speaking too much. So we do not have any problems when we are giving a speaking activity, however as you all can guess we cannot make everyone speak altogether at the same time. They speak in pairs or groups of three or four. They are willing to speak but not listen to their friends! We warn the ones insisting on not listening to but this time the others cannot start speaking because of the chaos. So we need your comments and some solutions for the next term and our professional teachinf lives.
Pelin Aşçıoğlu
Ruken Ay
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ReplyDeleteHi Zeynep& Müge,
ReplyDeleteI think there is nothing you can do about it. But maybe you can warn your mentor teacher about it, but in a very very polite way of course as she is a superior of you. But if we imagine that you are the real teacher of this class I think you would not do such a thing. Even if you do, as a teacher you will know there are so many test examinations to enter a school and once you realize it is a bad thing for them, you would stop doing that.
Pelin Aşçıoğlu
Hi Burcu, Pelin and Aysun,
ReplyDeleteDuring our observation, we checked many worksheets, and quizzes. We saw that teachers could share their data for such cases. It is disturbing that students tried to answer the questions although they did not know how to do.
Anyway, we are totally ooppsed to the idea of sharing the same data for "examinations" because every class is a different world. They cannot be the same. At first the teachers and their styles are different. This is laziness nothing more.
As student teachers we do not have any right to say aomething about it. We can just motivate and encourage the students. We are happy to see such a share from you. Thanks and good luck
Bilge, Sezgi, and Sena
Hi everyone, once
ReplyDeletewe had a nice observation, however, we also faced with minor problems. The most prominent problem was our mentor teacher. she does not interact with us. she can easily ignore us. she does not give feedback to us after our teaching tasks. she did not give any comments after we read the students' quizzes.
she is also serious duirng her lessons. we cannot even have an eye contact. we feel very insecure asking questions to her.
she does not wonder anything about the tasks we have been doing since the observation started. we cannot feel engaged in the real classroom environment because of her attitudes in general because we feel uncomfortable. what do you suggest for us?
Bilge, Sezgi, and Sena
hi aysun.
ReplyDeleteI think this situation is really a bad one. In practice of course the teachers can share materials and exchange their views.Hovewer this particular situation is extremely different.Testing the students from the areas that they haven't even encountered with shoul not be seem logical to anyone. This is really discouraging. I think the students have right to open an ivestigetion about that teacher.When we come to the solution, the teacher shold not such things first and he must be careful about the regulations. he better praepere his own exam if he is mot following the same program with the other teachers.
hi everyone!
ReplyDeletein our class it is sometimes really to hard to control the class especially in speaking activities. as soon as they hear that this is the speaking activity they start speaking without even listening the instructions.once they start talking it is almost impossible to stop them. as we are not their own teachers they do not listen us athough we try to apply different strategies.Do you have any idea about what can be done in this situation?
The problem we encountered with Ceren is about the discipline issue. According to the feedback we received from our mentor teacher, we should have been very strict towards the students in order not to have classroom management or other problems. Do you think we should aim to be ‘buddies’ with our students, which may damage our ability to control the classroom; or we should be tough, which, on the other hand, may make them demotivated in the lessons? We expect your suggestions.
ReplyDeleteÖzge Ceren Çelik
Gül Bıyıkoğlu
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ReplyDeleteHi everyone=),
ReplyDeletehere is the situation I experianced...
I was teaching the vocabulary about working abroad to the 10.th grade students in Bahçelievler Analtolian high school. At first students were wiling to participate or at least listen to me but when we were about to write the examples that I expected from them t-here was a silence. No one answered and ı did not know what to do. I had to writre all the examples on my own and it was very annoying and dissapointing.
Looking forward to your answers=)
Hi ,Seda and Naile=)
ReplyDeleteAs far as I see you have a mixed ability class with different levels of students. One solution for this problem may be tp include P.P.P in your teaching and to have one or two challenging tasks for the class. Another thing is that you can encourage group work and/or pair work in order to keep the higher achivers busy and make your lesson more effective and enjoyable.