For today’s class, we had a plenary session called “Burning Questions” with our trainers and fellow teachers Katerina Ashiotis, Peter Demetriou and Marian Loughran. We were asked by Simon Goodier to post “burning” questions related to teaching and learning on an online “question wall”. A total of 13 questions were posed on the “question wall” and below is a list of the said questions:
1. How do we make sure the quality of teaching/training that we give is actually at the same level of standard with what is expected by the content teachers or the employers out there?
2. How do I apply differentiation in a class of more than 40 students?
3. How do we motivate students who refuse to participate and talk in class?
4. What are the best approaches to teach a class of more than 50 students?
5. When is it suitable to apply drilling?
6. Is mobile learning used in WESTMINSTER KINGSWAY COLLEGE? How does the teachers monitor mobile learning?
7. Do you give online assessment to your students? If you do, how do you do it?
8. Do you apply blended learning where you have certain number of hours teaching in the classroom and the rest you do the teaching online?
9. How do we monitor the progress of this program after this?
10. What are the challenges you faced implementing this methodology in WESTMINSTER KINGSWAY COLLEGE? And how do you measure success?
11. Should we involve learners as equal partners where they can collaborate with their teachers and schools to design more personalized and useful curricula and lessons? If yes, how do we do this?
12. Does group work help motivate weak students in a class?
13. How do we teach effectively to a large class of 30 - 40 students (sic)?
Due to time constraint, we were only able to discuss several questions; despite this, some interesting insights were exchanged and the trainers offered some useful commentaries regarding their own classroom practices. We were able to collect several of these insights to be shared with readers of this blog.
Should we involve learners as equal partners where they can collaborate with their teachers and schools to design more personalized and useful curricula and lessons? Collaboration is very useful in finding out what useful things that learners need; however, care should be taken so that the teacher is still in control of lessons and the class works together towards a common outcome. Both teacher and learners should also be aware of the various roles played by external stakeholders in providing education to the said learners and thus the teacher needs to find the correct balance between meeting learners’ personal needs and those of different external stakeholders. In contrast to Malaysian student bodies, local student bodies play more active roles in their respective institutions
How do we teach effectively to a large class of 30 - 40 students (sic)? It was revealed that most participants do teach several classes with large number of students, some more challenging than the others as some participants have very limited amount of contact hours with their students. There are no easy answers to this as no two situations are different. One, can however agree that a teacher can effectively utilize certain techniques available to him/her such as using task differentiation as well as creative class arrangement to meet needs of all learners.
Do you give online assessment to your students? Surprisingly, Westminster Kingsway College does not do that although they do have an online learning platform where teachers can engage students with extended learning activities. While polytechnics have already embraced similar approach to extended learning, community and vocational colleges have yet to do so and it may be something that both institutions can consider in near future.
Apart from the discussion above, we also talked about how we can create environments similar to that of London’s in order to create or simulate total immersion of our Malaysian learners. While it is true that it might prove harder to get our learners to use English in their daily lives due to certain circumstances, teachers can still get around this difficulty by using authentic materials and creating purposeful activities to maximize students’ chances of using English in the most authentic manner. Another interesting thing that came up during our discussion is how we can also make assessments more meaningful and whether we should use assessment as a mean to an end or to promote learning beyond formal lessons.
Written by:
Charles W.K. Cheng (Semporna Community College)
Mohd Fadzli Zulkeflee (Pasir Gudang Community College)
Carole,
ReplyDeleteOut of all the topics that WKC had shared with us in Penang and London, which would you consider to be vital for us to share with our colleagues for CPD.
We appreciate all the positive feedback given during our micro teaching sessions and presentations. From the trainers' perspective, which aspect should we try to improve.
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