Week 13

BUILDING COMMUNITY IN THE CLASSROOM

As teachers, it is a very difficult job to take a group of different students and teach them in ways that meet all of their needs on every level: academic, emotional, and social.

In the classroom, part of the teacher’s job is to provide opportunities by which students can help and support one another, and at the same time learning.

By building a community in the classroom, teachers produce a general and predictable cultural understanding that helps children feel associated to others. It is important to make the students feel relaxed and help them create a home-like surroundings, and make them feel the same sense of trust in school as they do at home in order for them feel certain and able of doing stuff and share their thoughts.

Week 12

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT MANUAL

The manual is a very useful tool for teachers to better improve and manage the classroom effectively. By successfully managing your classroom, teachers can increase student success and create a productive and cooperative learning environment.

Effective behavior management plans allow students to get the most out of their time spent in school and ensure that teachers maintain their sanity. Through effective classroom management, teachers can create healthy and mutually respectful relationships with their students, and allow students to build positive relationships with their peers. It also ensures that students interact appropriately, allowing them to create and strengthen relationships with others.

Week 11

Assessing learning

Assessing learning can be considered one of the most important tasks in the process of teaching, but it may become a very complex task taking into account the fact that all learners are different and that all teachers teach differently.

The main purpose of learning a language is communication and today especially here, in Costa Rica what students are studying for is simply to pass a test in the schools and not to really apply what they have learnt, hence the importance to reconsider the ways we have been assessing students.

The whole purpose of assessment is to improve and help the students to tackle the areas to better and fortify those in which they are doing fine already. Therefore, any test that fails to do so is not appropriate. Therefore, sometimes instead of traditional methods of assessments, alternative ones may be used instead. Portfolios may be one of the best types of assessments because they evaluate the student’s progress, and performance over time.

Therefore, it is necessary to assess learners, but it must be done with the appropriate methodology, and techniques.

Week 10

How to motivate learners?

The acquisition of another language is a long process and it requires patience and perseverance. Therefore, teachers must learn how to instill in the students intrinsic motivation that will make them learn easily to communicate in another language.

Some ways to motivate students to learn is to point out the higher goal of learning a language, and why it is so important to do so. We must encourage them to use language in real life situations, and even to begin thinking in the target language.

Other ways to motivate the learners are the following: to make creative activities, student centered approach, active learning involved. Tell them what the ultimate outcome will be if they really learn how to communicate in the target language.

All these united with the effort of the learners, teachers and parents will yield good fruit motivating everyone to do his/her job, and to succeed in the learning of another language.oHoHdr gherijfhie8b1b

Week 9

Syllabus

The main purpose of the Practicum is to apply and solidify what you already know, and to acquire more knowledge and experience in the vocation of teaching. The reading places emphasis on the teaching philosophy of every teacher, and that is so because on that will depend how the teacher will instruct, how his or her values will affect directly or indirectly all he or she does.

Feedback is one of the main reasons why the Practicum is done. Through videotaping and other means the facilitator and the classmates, and the student himself or herself will analyze the work of the teacher. Then they will try to evaluate and help him or her in the process of teaching.

The whole Practicum experience should be one of the few in the career that will enhance and empower the future teacher to face confidently the classroom.