The NETS-S that I am most interested in learning about and
implementing in my classroom would have to be the second point, Communication
and Collaboration. I feel that this, at least with older students I have
taught, has been a part of my teaching career as I have done the poorest.
Most of my career as teacher in Korea has
been with very young children, usually kindergarten. For the most part I have
excelled at keeping them captivated and involved in the lessons. With older
children, however because have had a little more of a problem and many
times I have resorted to doing straight up lectures without much group work or
back and forth discussions between teacher and student or
between classmates. This has been, in part, because of the difficulty of
the lesson, a low level of English skills, and unrealistic expectation
but also a large part of the
problem has also been my lack
of ability to draw them into the lesson, make them want
to involve themselves, and help them become
engaged in the lesson. I'm hoping that through some of the tools and skills I
will hopefully learn in this course I can improve on this.
Although my experience in teaching older
children and young adults has been limited I expect to teach this age group in
the future and, of course, would like to be successful in doing so. While teaching young children the lessons have
been more rewarding and fulfilling for both parties when everyone is engaged
and collaborating together rather than a ridged one sided lesson. I've
been excited with some of the technological tools and methods that have been
discussed in the first Saturday of class and reading I have done. The rest of
the course and this program should be enlightening.
I hope I am able to help you find some resources that will help you and your students.
ReplyDeleteHey Sean,
ReplyDeleteAlthough Ive never taught children at the kindergarten level (mad respect for you for being able to that BTW), I can relate to you somewhat with respect to not being able to connect to certain students who show little to no interest in your class. You have to realize that even with the best lesson plan, the most engaging games or videos, there will always be some students who cannot reach. It's unfortunate that we cannot really communicate with our students on a 1 on 1 basis to try and find out the reasons why they are the way they are. Keeping your lesson plans very simple, your PPTs filled with vivid images, and playing engaging songs, you are sre to capture the attention of 99% of those little rascals. As for the older students, if they are Korean, youd be surprised how much of the same things they like as their kindergarten counterparts :) At least...thats what Ive noticed!!
May the force be with ya!
Hey Sean, I have taught kindergarten, middle school, and now at a university, and Michel brought up a great point, no matter what age, students just want to be engaged. You will just be turning a picture of a cartoon from kindergarten, into a picture of a k-pop star for middle school/high school, and another celebrity for university. The key is to just know your audience. Finally, never get discouraged, some students just won't want to connect, don't let the rest of your class suffer on three students when you could be reaching the other 37.
ReplyDelete