Hello Everyone and welcome to 'The Year Four Blog'. You will be writing to and for each other during your Teaching Practice this semester and during your internships next semester.
So, first of all I think it's important that everybody introduce themselves. Please can you post a comment to this - and please make sure you put your name and college, followed by the topic of your Action Research. For example: Neil, Al Ain, Reading Activities. You can tell us about yourself, about what your are looking forward to on your TP and why you chose your research topic. If you want to reply to someone, just add their name, e.g. To Aysha, Abu Dhabi.
Then come back in a few days and see if anyone has written any comments for you.
Neil
Warda Suliman, Al Ain College, Classroom Management.
ReplyDeleteI am looking forward to have a good experience in my teaching practice this year which different because it is my first time to teach grade 8. I choose my topic because all my college mentors told me I need to learn strategies for my classroom management and I think this is my chance to apply what I learned so far. Wish you all best luck in your teaching practice.
Warda
Hello everyone,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Badreyyah Al Yammahi from Al Ain Women's College. One of my main project in the Fourth year is doing action research. It is focusing on teaching grammar through interactive activities. I am looking forward to have useful experience in my teaching practice this semester. I will teach in a preparatory school. I would like to have a chance to gain more information about my action research.
I hope you have good experience in your teaching practice too.
Fawzeya Nasser, Al Ain Women's College. Classroom management.
ReplyDeleteEach semester we have no choice on our focused area in the teaching practice however, this year we have the choice to make a difference by our research. I choose classroom management to focus on during this year, because it was an issue for me from my previous practices and I think that the class management is the basic of successful teaching and learning classroom. I hope that everyone will have a successful and enjoyable teaching practice.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteNoor Saleh, Al Ain College, Classroom interaction.
I am going to teach grade 4 for this year and I am looking forward to work comfortably with my students, school’s staff and gain new knowledge and experience from them.
I chose my action research about classroom interaction how students interact with each other and with their teacher because motivating the students and increasing the students talking time are some areas that teachers should focuses on.
Hello TEACHERS,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Noura Mohammed from Al Ain Women's College. I am so excited for my next Teaching Practice, i am going to teach grade 9, which is a bit challenging for me, because it is my first time teaching grade 9. i will focus on Assessments in general for my action research and i am so lucky, because my college teacher put me in a school that doing an action research on Assessments as well,so i am so thankful for that.
WISH you all the BEST in your TP ^^ & GOOD LUCK>>>
Maha Mohammed, Al Ain Woman’s College, Reading stories.
ReplyDeleteHello everyone,
This year I am going to teach grade 5 students in Al Zahrat Primary Girls School. I am looking forward to have good experience there and implement effective strategies that assist the students’ learning. My topic for the action research is reading stories and I chose it for several reasons. Firstly, I had many comments on the way that I should draw children’s attention to the story and make them live it. I also got comments on how I could make the story more enjoyable for the students and select books that engage them. Secondly, through my teaching practices, I used to read stories but they were not effective because of my way of reading it or my way of questioning. Therefore, this year I would like to select stories that are effective, enjoyable, and par of the curriculum.
I hope you all enjoy your teaching practice and use new ideas that develop students’ learning ^_^
GOOD LUCK ^_*
Hello everybody, my name is Aysha Al Darmaki I am from Al Ain Women's college. I am a fourth year student; this year I will teach grade 2 at Shamma Bint Mohammed School. My action research is about process writing. I choose this topic because I found it interesting. I want to learn more about writing and what happens to my student when I give them clear instruction about writing. Also, I want to serve my student by improving how to write a correct full sentence and make writing more fun for them.
ReplyDeleteWish you all the best in your teaching practice.
Hessa Salem, Al Ain, Classroom Management.
ReplyDeleteThis year I will be teaching grade 8 at Atika Preparatory school. This is my first time to work with preparatory students and I’m looking forward to this experience. I hope to gain more skills and knowledge that will help me in my teaching. My action research will focus on classroom management, this is a common problem in almost every class and I faced many difficulties in dealing with students’ behavior last year as I taught boys. I will try to use different strategies to prevent this problem and have successful lessons.
Good luck!
Hello everyone,
ReplyDeleteI’m Asma Al Raeisi form AAWC. My action research focuses on CLT theory, acquiring the second language through collaborative and use authentic materials. There are many reasons lead me to choose this topic but the main reason is because one of the areas I need to develop and improve in my teaching is to get the students to produce the target language. I am going to teach grade two students at Shamma Bint Mohammed girl’s school. I hope to have grate teaching experience as well as achieve my goals.
Wish you all the best in your teaching practice.
Asma Al Raeisi
Hello everyone,
ReplyDeleteThis teaching practice I am going to teach grade 9 students in Atika Preparatory Girls School. I am aiming to have a good relationship with both teachers and students. As well as, I want to implement effective’s strategies that support students’ learning. My action research is about assessment. I chose this topic because I believe that assessments are essential in learning process and we have different types of assessments. However, ADEC and new schools model focus on them. Finally, I hope you all enjoy your teaching practice and achieve your goals. ^^
Hello
ReplyDeleteI am Hessa G from Al Aim Women’s College. My action research for this year will be about process writing. I choose this topic because I think I need to learn more about process writing, as well as students need more practice in planning, drafting, evaluating, and publishing their essays. Next week I will start my teaching practice in Attiqa Preparatory school for girls. I hope I have a successful practice there.
Good luck all :)
Hello everyone,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Mariam Al Nuaimi and I am from Al Ain Women’s College. This year I will do my teaching practice at Al Foah Girls School and specifically with grade 4 and 5. My action research is about Reading Stories with Young Children. There are several reasons why I decided to choose this topic, but the main one is that In the past all the reading that I got were from the textbooks “traditional” which mean it was boring and uninteresting and I did not understand what is the benefits from doing it and usually readings were selected based on a language point (grammar) not SS interest. Moreover, the reading is based on exam focus not for meaning or motivating the students. So this year I would like to have the opportunity to try making different activities from the stories that I will read to my student and knowing how it will help them learn more from reading.
Wish you all the best in your teaching practice.
Fighhhhhhhhhto0oooo
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHello All,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Moza Alkendy, from Fujairah Women's College. I've decided to do my action research on assessments. My research focus lies in analyzing the scores of formative and summative types of writing assessments and locating relevant discrepancies in order to be able to help EFL learners increase their opportunity of scoring almost equitable results in both kinds of assessments. This aims at learners being able to produce language they learn in a more proficient manner by utilizing the aspects of formative assessments of writing as tools to progress towards better summative scores.
Therefore, during my Teaching Practice in a preparatory school (teaching grade 9 level), my main concern is going to be about strategies used to improve the writing process with respect to my research question. If anyone has an advice or question, kindly reply.
Good luck all!
Hello everyone,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Aisha Abdullah, from Fujairah Women's College. This year I am going to teach grade five students in Ibn Al Nafes primary school for boys. My topic for the action research is developing young learners' social skills through cooperative learning. There are several reasons for choosing this topic. Firstly, from my previous experiences especially in the primary schools I observed that during working in group some students do not want to work together and they prefer working alone. Secondly, I observed that most of the students in groups depend on high achieving student to finish the task rather than doing the task collaboratively. Also, some students like to work together with their friends only and find it difficult to work with others. Moreover, in group work some students feel shy to interact with teacher. As a result, I decided to search more about how to develop young learners' social skills through cooperative learning. Therefore, this year my main aim is going to be about implement effective strategies and give the student opportunities where they can practice and improve their social skills. I will appreciate any advice from you about the strategies to use
I hope you all enjoy your teaching practice.
GOOD LUCK
My name is Saliemah Obaid, from Fujairah Women's College. My action research is about using music and drama to motivate students to develop their speaking skill in an EFL classroom. My research investigates the effect of using music and drama in the EFL classroom. It also tries to find out new strategies to motivate students to learn the language through music and drama. The aim of this research is to add the joy and change the old routines of teaching speaking. Moreover, it is important to change the classroom atmosphere to motivate students to learn the language. My inspiration for the choice of this topic comes from the my favorite talent which is acting because I believe that music and drama can help in developing students speaking skill. I want to use my talent in my teaching to help my students learn in an interesting way to explore their creativity and imagination to promote students-centered learning and activities. I hope to receive comments from you about any strategies music/drama you have used to encourage speaking
ReplyDeleteHi all,
ReplyDeleteThis is Aysha Saif, from Fujairah Women’s College. My topic of the action research is “applying the multi-sensory approach to improve students’ spelling.” Therefore, my aim is to conduct activities which consider all learning styles which are” visual, auditory, kinesthetic and tactile.” According to my readings, children learn best when they are having fun using all their body parts. The major reason of why I chose this topic, is because I like spelling, I have worked on to improve my own spelling. So, I chose something I like, and then I like to work on and investigate more. Another reason is that, during my previous TP’s I have noticed that some of the MSTs had some errors in their spelling and the students were copying down, which is so terrible. Now, I have started my TP this semester in a primary school, and I will be teaching five graders for the whole year and applying my research on them.
Thanks
My name is Roqayyah Hussain Hassan, from Fujairah Women’s College. My action research topic is about “how integration of science and English can enhance students’ reading skill.” I chose this topic due to observations I made during my last teaching practice, in a school within the “Al Gad” system, where I became interested about how teachers integrate two subjects using English as a main language in teaching. My research focus lies on teaching reading in both Science and English classes using specific strategies in content area, and analyzes the consequences of implementing such strategies in enhancing students’ reading skill. From my readings, I found that most authors claim that, if the teachers are aware of reading in content area strategies, given instruction, and encouraged to implement strategies in their classrooms, the students’ reading skill might increase. I started my teaching practice a week ago, and my action research will be applied on second graders for both semesters. If anyone is interested in my topic,kindly share your thoughts
ReplyDeleteGood luck!
My name is Ebtesam Suliman Al Housani. I am from Fujairah Women’s College. I am teaching grade 6 students in Um Al Alaa’ Prep School for Girls. My action research is focusing on developing my students spontaneous speaking through applying the task-based approach principles in teaching speaking. I believe that spontaneous speaking is an important area of language proficiency that is overlooked in our schools because most teachers are focusing on accuracy than fluency. In addition, I noticed that limited time is given to students to practice and test their ability to use the English language in everyday conversation, and as a result, their self-confidence of using the English language outside the school environment is low. I am not aiming for a miracle, however, my aim is come up with some principles that can be followed to assess students’ speaking and learning in the classroom to make them ready to face the world outside the school.
ReplyDeleteHi everybody
ReplyDeleteMy name is Maryam Mohammed Al Hefaiti from Fujairah Women’s College. My action research topic is “using differentiated instruction to enhance reading ability of struggling readers”. Actually, I chose this topic because in most of our schools they do not deal with students as individuals who have different abilities, interests, styles, and levels. So, by applying differentiated instruction, students have various options to learn and take in information according to their levels, interests and needs. In addition, from my previous teaching practice I noticed that teachers do not pay attention to struggling readers and their needs. However, differentiated instruction can meet the needs of those children. Let me know what you think.
Hello everybody,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Khawla Rashed AlMehrezi, a student from Fujairah Women’s College. I am right now on teaching practice placement at a Secondary school for girls and the focus for my action research will be applied for grade ten students. After many observations, I have noticed that there wasn’t any specific approach that focuses on improving the non-fiction writing for EFL learners. Therefore I chose my topic for the action research, which is basically about ‘improving the EFL learners’ non-fiction writing through applying the process approach’. The reason behind choosing grade ten students to apply this approach is mainly their curriculum, which focuses on non-fiction in all the units and with the all language skills. My main objective for applying this approach is to see whether there is any improvement in the learners’ writing or not. Hope that you will send me comments about strategies to use.
My name is Amal Saeed Ahmed Al Hefaity and I am from Fujairah Women’s College. Currently, I am teaching grade five students at a school near Fujairah. My action research topic is “Developing reading comprehension through varied strategies”. In fact, I based my choice of research area according to my personal experience as a trainee teacher. To illustrate more, as I noticed from my observations in schools that students are rarely engaged to read. Teachers do not provide opportunities to develop students’ reading comprehension skills. The rationale behind this is they think that it is too early to teach young learners how to read comprehensible texts. Therefore, I decided to conduct my action research based on the teaching of reading and in particular how to build up young learners’ reading comprehension skills using different strategies. I appreciate any advice from those doing this topic.
ReplyDeleteMy name is Huda, from Fujairah Women’s College. My action research is focused on improving students' autonomy in writing through the use of writer’s workshop. The main concept around this topic is teaching EFL students the process writing which emphasize five stages of learning , planning, drafting, revising, editing and publishing, that a writer should follow besides the final product of writing. For the past years of my teaching practices, I realized that most English language learners have challenges in writing. The crux of problem lies on the writing strategies that English teachers utilize in their classroom which are likely to be unpractical or do not work. In an effort to keep up with the syllabus teachers seem unaware to their students real needs in writing. Examples of this can be seen where some teachers ask students to copy a piece of writing from the board or rewrite the original form without giving attention to the process of writing.
ReplyDeleteMy main teaching practice goal this year is to establish a writer's workshop for grade seven students on a weekly basis to improve their abilities in writing skills. I welcome any comments please
My name is Amnah Humaid Al Kendi form Fujairah Women’s College. My research focuses on the issues of assessment in the EFL context dealing with using authentic tools in assessing the skill of writing. The reason behind choosing this topic is linked to enhancing students writing performance, that needs to be authentic and realistic. To conduct this research, I am doing my teaching practice in a preparatory school teaching eighth graders.
ReplyDeleteWish you all luck in your social life and academic concerns and if you have any comments about my focus area, you are most welcomed to reply.
Hi all,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Halawa from RAK women's college and I am glad to share my ideas with you. As you know, we focus on action research this year. My action research is about how decoding and reading poems strategies affect students' level in phonology. Although grade 10 students have the ability to write and speak the language, they have common problem that confuse readers or listeners. for example, they do not recoginze the difference between vocied and voiceless sounds. Therefore, this year I am going to use these two strategies beside the course book exercises which focus on phonics and spelling skill.
Wish you all luck and enjoy every moment of teaching practice in schools:)
Hi everyone
ReplyDeleteI am shayma from RAK Women's' college, this year I am teaching grade 8 in Quba'a preparatory school. My action research is about the use of project-based learning approach to support multiple intelligences in EFL classroom. I chose this topic in order to give the learners a chance to make products, expand their knowledge around what they have learned and make the classroom learner centered rather than teacher-centered.
Hello everyone, it’s a pleasure meeting u all :)
ReplyDeleteI’m Asma Abdulla from RKWC, my action research will be about English and science integration in al Gad school and I don’t think I’m the only coz @Roqayyah Hussain from Fujairah is doing the same, only our focus is different as I’m focusing more on their comprehension and use of the language and subject knowledge. But perhaps we can contact each other sometime if you are interested, I think we both will learn a lot from each other :)
P.S I’m teaching grade 2 as well!
As for the rest, I wish you all best luck. Keep working hard, we are nearly there :D
Hi my name is Ruwaya Ebrahim, from Abu Dhabi Women’s Collage. Presently, I am in Al Khadeja Al Kubra School teaching grade five.
ReplyDeleteFrom my previous experience, I noticed that students’ are unenthusiastic to learn and they always depend on the teachers. Additionally, EFL students do not have the ability to reflect on their learning, therefore they face difficulty when they join the universities or collage that give a greater importance to reflection skills. Thus, my intention is to involve the students in their assessment process to enhance learning. As I started teaching practice I conducted my action research and I found the first strategy is useful which is using writing checklist to edit their writing.
I will be grateful for any comments.
Thank you
Thurayya, RAK, Reading comprehension.
ReplyDeleteHello everyone, I am happy to share my topic of action research with students from different colleges. As I mentioned above, my action research is about reading comprehension. In my opinion, reading comprehension allows the learners to improve their skills and abilities in different aspects of learning such as how a text is organized or what does the topic studied is talking about. It also motivate the learners to learn new vocabulary. When I applied my strategies (jigsaw/question-Answer Relationship/Brainstorming) on my students, they showed a sign of improvement in their reading.
I am looking forward to your comments.
Thank you.
My name is Fatema Al Housani, from RAK Women’s College. My teaching practice is in middle school and I'm teaching grade six. My action research is focused on applying collaborative activities (three activities) and realizing the effect of them on the students' participation in learning vocabulary.
ReplyDeleteFor the past years of my teaching practices, I realized that most English teachers follow the traditional way of teaching where they are talking (presenting lesson content) and the student is listening (acquiring knowledge). However, in the very first weeks of my observation this school, I have noticed that my MST did not involve the student into groups where they discuss or produce anything. Thus, my main teaching practice goal this year is to give the student chances (as much as I could) to work as team and be involved more in the learning process .
Please, feel free and welcome to give any comment about the collaborative activities and their effects on the students participation to learn vocabulary.
To Fawzeya Nasser, Al Ain Women's College,
ReplyDeleteIt really is a good topic to choose!
I think classroom management is a skill that is not only learned but practiced daily. However, most of the teachers lose their time disciplining the students' behavior in the classroom. To be honest, last year I was suffering with classroom management issue and I spent most of the time getting the student to behave well. It actually was disappointing unit I found a good idea to solve this problem. I put a set of posters to encourage positive behavior from the children in my classroom and make a reinforcement chart (on a large piece of paper) that praises the good behavior with putting a happy faces for the student. The one, who get most faces, will be the king of the class for a whole day (He/she will have a special treating).
If you are having a problem in classroom management, I suggest you to use this way because I think it worked effectively with me and it could too with you.
from Fatema Al Housani, RAKW
ReplyDeleteHi there,
ReplyDeleteEiman Mohamed, RAK Women’s College, task based learning.
I am teaching grade seven and they are a great bunch of students to teach. I believe that as a teacher I need to bring out the students’ potentials in acquiring the language. One of the sources to bring out these potentials is the course book (student’s textbook), yet the book is designed for all the students regardless of each student’s abilities. Therefore, teacher can go beyond the textbook not neglect its presence, but adopt the content to suit her students’ own style and talent. One way to do that through using the TBL, so particularly I am trying to enhance the use of classroom textbook through task based learning.
Good luck all ^^
Hi everyone,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Fatema Abdulla Al-Neaimi, from RKWC and I am teaching grade 12.
My action research is about learning vocabulary in contexts (reading). That is by following a number of strategies such as guessing from context, analyzing texts, looking at the language forms etc. I chose this topic because I want to help my students with their reading especially on exams, as they are facing lots of difficulties with words meanings and that affects their comprehension of the reading passage. In addition, I would like to let them rely less on using dictionary because it confuses them when it provides unclear definitions and antonyms of words.
Wish you all the best ^^
I am Shaikha Ali Al-Shehhi from RKWC.
ReplyDeleteActually I am teaching grade 8 students. It’s my first time to teach this age group. In fact the biggest problem I'm facing with my students is "working in groups". Most of the students don't like working in group and if they work they keep doing the work by themselves or with their friends only. Therefore I chose this topic to be my action research issue. I believe that working in groups is very useful for the students in several ways. I am using different strategies in order to encourage the students to share their ideas with all the group members, to learn from their peers, to develop their communication skills and to deal with different personalities.
Wish you all the best ^.^'
Best regards, Shaikha
Hello everyone, my name is Shamsa Khamis Al Mehairi form Abu Dhabi Women's College.
ReplyDeleteThis year I am going to teach grade 5 students in Al Zafarana school primary school for girls. I believe that I will have a great experience on this teaching practice. One of our main projects in this years is to conduct an action research and the topic I decided on is how to make reading enjoyable, I think that reading has a great effect on the students learning experience. By conducting this action research I hope to make reading an enjoyable experience for the students. Good luck everyone on your teaching practice and I hope that it will be a great experience for all of you.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Hend Mohamed Al Sharhan from RAK Women’s college. I teach grade 8 in one of RAK’s public schools. My action research’s topic is about reading comprehension. When I first observed my students at the beginning of the teaching practice this semester, I found that many of them don’t understand what they are reading so I planned to use some strategies to aid my students’ reading comprehension such as the questioning and the KWL strategies. I believe that students should be trained to use a variety of strategies that aid their reading comprehension because I think that this will help them in their college life where they will have to read,study, and comprehend texts for different subjects.
Good luck
Hend
To Amal Saeed Ahmed Al Hefaity
ReplyDeleteHi,
My name is Hend Mohamed AlSharhan and I’m from RKWC.
Your topic is similar to mine. Both of us will discuss the strategies that can improve the students’ reading comprehension. We might be used different strategies but the main idea is still the same.
I totally agree with you when you mentioned that teachers who teach primary students don’t give much attention to the comprehensible texts because they think that primary students are too young for this kind of texts. I think that there are some other reasons for that such as the syllabus that only includes narratives and stories that don’t require much comprehension.
However, I think that this is reflecting negatively on the students because many of my students who are in grade eight don’t know the basic skills and strategies that they have to use to comprehend texts. I believe that if students are trained or at least given an idea in their primary years about the strategies that they can use when they are reading text, this might reflect positively on their reading comprehension.
Thanks
Hend
Hi everyone
ReplyDeleteI am Fatima Al-khatri from RKWC, this year I am teaching grade 10 in Zainab Secondary school. My action research is about reading fluency “how to help the students to be a good reader”. I chose this topic because I notice that the students have many problem in reading fluency after I observed them. I used many different resources for them to read such as fairy tale or poems.
Wish you all luck and enjoy every moment of teaching practice in schools:)
Hi everyone,
ReplyDeleteI am Fatema Almansoori from RKWC, this year I am in Um Al-Darda School and I teach students in grade 6.
My action research is about encouraging students to participate in the classroom. I chose this topic because as I observed my classes I noticed that the students did not participate. They just listen to the teacher and wait to hear the answers. I thought about many and different strategies that could help me to encourage the students to be motivated to participate. For example, I apply different interaction patterns to let the students participate and do the tasks. In addition, from time to time I mix up the class so that they will work with different students. The important thing that I work on it is that I try to prepare different activities even if the students did not try them before. These activities include games, puzzles and also the students do them in pairs, in groups or individually.
I wish you best luck and I appreciate any comments.
Thanks
Fatema Almansoori
Hello girls,
ReplyDeleteMy name is shamma Alshamsi from RKWC im teaching grade 5 this year. My action research is about using teaching literacy through drama. I chose this topic because I feel that culturally we have a problem in using the language confidently in public. So I thought that using drama will make the student gradually use the language freely and make them gain confident. I will use different strategies and methodologies like miming or dramatize a story, role-play, radio play and puppet shows. Also im integrating songs and rhythms to wider the student knowledge and experience in using the language.
Hi Saliemah Obaid I think we have the same objectives which is motivating speaking by using drama. I hope we get the chance to exchange strategies, material and resources that will be helpful for us both to have a constructive experience, And to learn from each other
And just want to Compliment in Badreyyah Al Yammahi topic because as a teacher we know that grammar is not a fun subject to teach so researching on using interactive activities is very useful.
Thanks
Hello everyone,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Hana, from RAK Women’s College, oral use of target language.
This year I am teaching grade three students in Um Al-Darda School. My action research's topic is about using different strategies to enhance grade three students to use the target language during the lessons. I will use three different strategies which are drills, pair work information gap and show and tell activity.
When I observed grade three students, I noticed that they did not try to speak English during the class and most of them spoke in Arabic whether to communicate with the teacher or to each other. I also observed that there are some excellent girls who are shy to present themselves in front of the class and participate. So this year I will try hard to use the strategies that I mentioned above in order to help my students to speak English and use the target language that they have learnt.
Wish you all the best =)
To Noor Saleh, Al Ain College, Classroom interaction.
ReplyDeleteI am Hana from RKWC.
I totally agree with you when you said " ….motivating the students and increasing the students talking time are some areas that teachers should focuses on". I think teachers should focus on this area because, as I observed, most lessons today are teacher centered rather than students centered where students can learn more and use the language.
This year I will focus on using different interaction patterns or different strategies in order to help grade three students to use the target language. I think we are both looking forward to help our students to communicate with others by using the target language, so I am very glad to share with you my experience and my opinion.
Regards,
Hana
To Roqayyah Hussain Hassan, I really liked you topic and I think we need to think of Math as well. As you said if teachers are aware of reading in content area strategies, given instruction, and encouraged to implement strategies in their classrooms, the students’ reading skill might increase. I really wish you luck in your Action Research and please can you tell me what strategies did you use and you felt it might improve students reading skills. I am just curious about the results. Wish you Luck again.
ReplyDeleteTo Fatema Almansoori from RKWC. I agree with you that we as teachers need to improve student performance in the classroom and encourage them all the time to participate in the classroom activities. I am doing the same topic as you, in the beginning I was focusing on classroom management, but when I observed my students I noticed that they are not motivated to English lesson at all so I thought of using different activities to encourage the students to participate in the lessons. I am still having this problem with some student even when I encourage them or even give them more time to think of an answer, they don't participate. For example, today we have a speaking activity about describing one for their classmate and the other student have to guess who is it. one student refuse to speak so I encourage her to listen to more than one of her friends and she needs to prepare her self. After that, the student came out with a written note and she started to describe one of her classmate. I was really proud of her because she kept saying I don't want to and I don't know how but, after a little push she made it.
ReplyDeleteWish you luck in your research.
Hello Moza Alkendy, from Fujairah Women's College.
ReplyDeleteAs I introduced myself I am Fatima from AAWC. I am very pleased to see other girls from different college sharing the same topic (assessment) with us (me and my colleague Noura). We have the same topic but we do not decide yet what we specifically will consider for the next semester. However, this is my third weeks in Aatika Prep School for girls. This school is one from ADEC new model schools and it is under Nord Anglia Educational Company.
On the other hand, what I interested me especially for might helps me in my topic is they introduced a new type of assessment which called ECART that stands for English Continuous Assessment Rich Task. It worth 50% of students work and it based in their topic (Narrative). Generally, they (students) have to produce a piece of writing which has to be only in these four topics: writing a comic strip about adventure or a biography of any UAE adventurer/hero. Moreover, or choosing to write an adventure story and make a model of the hero. Finally, they can produce a film on an adventure. In other words, they have to create the film as if you are a movie director. In my opinion, I like this idea of assessment because it will help them to know how to search and gather information. Also, it will teach them how to reference and on the other hand, girls are motivating so they are active and new model school wants learners to be motivated and be active rather than teacher do all works.
They have 5 weeks to finish this assessment and when they finish they have to present it in a small presentation. This type of assessment called assessment for learning because it helps students to improve themselves.
Finally, this is a brief idea about what is going on in my school about assessment and how to assess students progress.
Thank you and feel free to ask me any questions about assessments.
»» ŚĦĄÄĸħĄ Ăĺ ŠħĕĦĦĩ , RAK, Oral communication skills~
ReplyDeleteHi there,
This is our second chance to meet students from different colleges. Do you remember last year girls? Time really flies. I recognized some of the names here that I worked with last semester, and here we are again. Anyways, I am Shaikha from Ras Al Khaima’s college. This year, I started to teach grade 12 students in Al Jeer Secondary School. My most important goal this semester, is to let the students speak, speak and speak and guess what , all the speaking is in English. Until now, I can notice the change from the first class I taught till today’s class. They are trying hard to speak all the time in English and am using different strategies to remind them of speaking English language in the class. Even outside the classroom, I spoke English with them and I think I am finding a pleasing results from that.
My action research is all about oral communication skills. Am trying to investigate the students’ problems in communicating with other students in the classroom, and I already started to apply different strategies through several interactions activities.
Feel free to ask me any question,
Have a nice Eid holiday =)
Shaikha Ahmad,
»» To: Noor Saleh, Al Ain ~
ReplyDeleteHi sweetie,
Your topic is close to mine’s. Yes, I agree that teachers should work on increasing the students talk in the class which is done by different interactions strategies. In government school nowadays, from my TP observations, I noticed that the teachers talk is almost 80% in the class which is not helpful for the students at all. The students need to have the chance to speak and interact with others using the target language in the classroom. So lets find some effective ways and strategies on how to make that happen.
Good luck in your research
Shaikha Al Shehhi,
Hi,,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Fatema Mohamed from RAK woment's college. I'm teaching grade 11 students (literature section). For my action research I'm focusing on the students' writing skill. I'm using the writing process strategy in order to find out how it could affect on my students writing level and how it could improve it. I decided to choose this area to work on because during the observation weeks I noticed that some of my students need to work on their writing skills and try to assist them to improve it.
Hi Everyone,
ReplyDeleteI am Zainab Alsayed B.ED student from Abu Dhabi Women’s College. My research focus is to investigate and implement differentiation lessons to accommodate students’ needs for Grade 5 students (girls) in Haleema Sa’deya Model School. The main reason which inspires me to choose this topic is that I am very keen to accomplish students’ needs. Personally I am very enthusiast about implementing differentiation since previously I had some issues in differentiate the lessons so obviously it could help me to improve in adapting activities. It would also assist me as a teacher to be proficient in planning and executing differentiated lessons that fulfill individual’s needs.
Good luck girls and enjoy T.P :)
Hello every one,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Asma A, from AAWC. This year I am teaching grade seven girls at Al Foah school. My action research topic is Classroom Management. As we a are a training teacher the most important thing to learn during our last practise is how to manage a classroom as it is known a successful teacher is the onw who have the ability to control her classroom.
I hope that all of you had a great experience during your TP and learnt alot of course from your mentor teacher there.
wish to share with all of you some ideas about teaching and the action research in specific. :)
Hi everybody (^_^)
ReplyDeleteMy name is Wedad Juma and I am from Ras Al Khaimah Women’s College. I am teaching grade eight students at Al Reyadah School.
Through observing the students in the classroom I noticed that most of the students are struggling with the writing. Also most of them didn’t enjoy it because the teacher mainly writes all the topics for them and the students have to copy it. Moreover, most of the writing samples that I collected from previous year show that the students wrote in the same pattern and used the same words. As a result the main focus of my action research will be writing.
The main reason I choose writing is to encourage the students to be able to write independently and creatively. Another reason is to improve students writing skills.
Wish you all the best ^^
Wedad
To: Aysha Al Darmaki
ReplyDeleteHi Aysha
We share the same thought about improving the students writing. I agree with you on making the writing more fun because this will encourage the students to write.
I believe students have different interests so the teacher have to provide a wide range of topics that suit students age, level and interest.
When I was a student I found writing very boring I wished if my teacher gave us more than on topic to choose or at least choose interesting topics. I hope this will change for our future students and I hope that they will enjoy writing.
Best of wishes and good luck on your TP (*_^)
Wedad
Hello everyone, I'm Alia Al Ketbi from AAWC. My action research is about classroom management and am teaching two of grade 6 in Al Fooah school. However, In my opinion from my observations last years many of us are lack on how to control the students and I faced some problems so, I decided to improve this area because the key point on the lesson is controlling the students then you will be able to do everything you wish.
ReplyDeleteI hope all are having a great experience and a great teachers.
Thank you^^
To Hana from RKWC
ReplyDeletei'm glad that we shared some areas and goals in our action research
I agree with you we always observed teacher-centered lessons rather than students- centered lessons.
However, right now I’m working in school where they have a new partnership whose aiming to reduce teacher talk step by step during this year
I think we both have the same goal which is motivating the students and increasing students talk
hope I hear more about your TP and shared our thought and opining
wish you the best ^^
To shayma from RAK Women's' college,
ReplyDeleteHi Shayma, I like your topic because I strongly believe that students learn more when they produce the target language. Also, I think it is a good strategy to have a student-centered lesson because students will be more motivated to learn with you also you could observe your teacher and try to break the routine because sometimes its boring when they have the same routine everyday so they will be really enthusiastic to your lesson and as a result they will be clsosed to you more.
I hope that my notes have added something good to your knowledge.
Alia Al Ketbi ^^
Hello everyone,
ReplyDeleteMy name is Ayesha Al Romaithi form Abu Dhabi Women's College. This year I’m teaching Grade 4 students in Al Zafarana school primary school for girls. The focus of my action research is getting students’ attention: using behavior management strategies to keep student’s on task. I noticed that sometimes teachers can’t finish their lessons on time for the reason that they spend a lot of time managing students’ behavior. I think it is important for teachers to focus on behavioral techniques because it involves the management and discipline of the students. It also helps teachers maintain management and have well behaved students in their classroom. It is interesting to focus in this topic to help me know more methods and techniques in how to manage my classroom.
To Shaikah Al Shehhi
ReplyDeleteI like your topic which is all about oral communication skills.
You are going to focus on increasing students talk which is an area that the students need
To improve.
I agree with you when you said “The students need to have the chance to speak and interact with others using the target language in the classroom.”
However, it will be quite difficult at the beginning because our students didn’t use the target language very often. But as you said we should give them the chance
I hope we can share our knowledge and teaching methods.
I want to hear more about your TP
Wish you the best ^^
To Amal Saeed
ReplyDeleteI think that your action research topic is close to my topic. I agree with you that teachers do not engage students to read, but for my observations in school I noticed that the New School Model began to implement three types of reading (shared, guided reading and reading aloud). They encourage the teachers to use these types of reading to enhance students’ learning. I think that this is one of the strategies that could help to build up young learners’ reading comprehension skills, because it engorges the students and gives them the chance to experience new things that interest them. Although, it’s a new strategy for both teachers and students but, they got use to it specially the students.
I hope that my comments added something new to you knowledge. Let me know more about other strategies that you or the school use in order to enhance students reading skill.
GOOD LUCK ^_^
Maha Mohammed
To Shaikha Ali Al-Shehhi from RKWC.
ReplyDeleteHello shaikha, I think your action research topic is important to be aware of for all of us. In fact this is what we have been learn through our previous studying years. As a result to have a successful group work you have to manage and control your class. Honestly am facing the same problem with my students', they are not motivated yo work as a group. But I tried to give each group a name and then give them my expectations and rules of how I want them to work as a group. The most important thing with group work is the way you praise them, try not to praise on the work they produce but on mostly on how they discuss and collaborate with each other.
I hope we can get benifit from eachother experiecnce
Thanks :) Asma A AAwc
Hi, my name is Maryam Mohamed, from Abu Dhabi Women’s Collage. I teach Grade Five students in Al Taqadom primary school. My action research topic will be about differentiation. I am going to focus on the individual learners and the different levels of abilities. In the beginning I was confused about action research until I realized that I really need to know more about differentiation. Actually, I have been advised by my Mentors over the previous years to focus on differentiation because I was not applying it. As I started the T.P I started to conduct my action research and I found some different results according to the different levels.
ReplyDeleteWish you all the best.
Hi everyone,
ReplyDeleteI am Meead Abdul Aziz Al Kathairi from Abu Dhabi Women’s College. This year I am teaching grade five students at Halima Al Sadia School (girls). My action research topic is utilizing learning centers to enhance students’ engagement. Actually, I chose this topic as I believe that learning centers has a great effect on the students’ learning and performance. It assists them to be more actively engage which help them to learn best. Also, I chose it because it helps me as a teacher to meet the students’ individual needs through differentiated activities which also help a teacher to meet the objective of the lesson and to target specific learning difficulties.
Wish you all the best in your teaching practice.
Hello everyone,
ReplyDeleteI am Ameera from Ras Al Khiama women’s college
I hope everyone is doing fine with your action research?
Anyways, I am teaching grade five in Al Nakheel Primary School, the first two weeks we had the opportunity to observe our students and get more familiar with any issues they face inside the classroom. While observing, I noticed that my students are lacking important skills of learning which are broadly known as Language Learner Strategies (LLS). I believe that we are all familiar with these strategies and we have worked on identifying and classifying our own learning strategies last year.
O'Malley's (1985) classified language learning strategies into three main subcategories which are Metacognitive strategies, Cognitive strategies and Socioaffective strategies. Students at this age group may not able to learn the cognitive or the metacognitive strategies as it is more advanced skills and adults tend to use it more, thus, my action research focuses on teaching students the socioaffetive strategies to help them understand the implications of learning a second language. These strategies do not only involve student to student interaction but also student to teacher type of interaction, it teaches them how to cooperate and question for clarification. I aim to teach these strategies because it can help my students achieve the goals I planned for them to improve their mastery of the target language.
EDITED
ReplyDeleteHello everyone,
I am Ameera from Ras Al Khiama women’s college
I hope everyone is doing fine with your action research?
Anyways, I am teaching grade five in Al Nakheel Primary School, the first two weeks we had the opportunity to observe our students and get more familiar with any issues they face inside the classroom. While observing, I noticed that my students are lacking important skills of learning which are broadly known as Language Learner Strategies (LLS). I believe that we are all familiar with these strategies and we have worked on identifying and classifying our own learning strategies last year.
O'Malley's (1985) classified language learning strategies into three main subcategories which are Metacognitive strategies, Cognitive strategies and Socioaffective strategies. Students at this age group may not able to learn the cognitive or the metacognitive strategies as it is more advanced skills and adults tend to use it more, thus, my action research focuses on teaching students the socioaffetive strategies to help them overcome the implications of learning a second language. These strategies do not only involve student to student interaction but also student to teacher type of interaction, it teaches them how to cooperate and question for clarification. I aim to teach these strategies because it can help my students achieve the goals I planned for them to improve their mastery of the target language.
To Fatema Almansoori,
ReplyDeleteYour action research is a part of mine as you are talking about students’ participation any my action research is about how to encourage students to participate and engage more in the lesson by using learning centers. I agree with you that until know there are some lessons where the students do not have any role and they are passive and the focus is on the teacher. So, it is so important for the students to be motivated as it helps them to learn best and as you said there are different strategies that you can implement to improve students’ participation and motivation. I believe that learning centers is one of these strategies as you can design different activities with different interaction patterns, different skills and different learning styles and intelligences and you can do that by grouping students based on their level or you can mix them.
I hope that my comments help you in your research. Let me know more about other strategies that you utilize to improve students’ participation and motivation.
Thank you,
Meead
Good luck
This is Ameera again
ReplyDeletesorry, I kind of ruined the organization of the blog!Please forgive me ^^
I just wanted to say that my action research focuses on teaching students the socioaffetive strategies to help them overcome the difficulties of learning a second language
To Amal Saeed Al Hefaity from FWC and Maha Mohammad from AAWC,
ReplyDeleteI guess we all have the same topic and sometimes the similar points. During my observations in some reading classes, I noticed that at the end of each unit there is a story and guess how the teacher read it to them?????
She did not read it at all!!! Students should read it silently and solve the questions that are related to the story on the WorkBook!!
I think that not a good way of teaching stories for young children, because young students should know the process of reading and try to learn how to love what they are doing and the most important point is to understand what they are doing.
I hope that my notes have added something good to your knowledge and I wish for the all girls nice Eid holiday.
Mariam Al-Nuaimi, AAWC
Good evening every one
ReplyDeleteMy response will be for Maryam Mohamd from Abu Dhabi Women’s College.
I think differentiate activities and instructions depends on students’ abilities is an important aspects to scaffold each student in the class. Actually, in my classroom, the students are divided in groups depends on their abilities. I think there is an advantage from this strategy; it will be easier for the teacher to differentiate the instructions and the activities for students. However, there is a disadvantage because if students with different abilities in the same group, that will develop the cooperative learning and assistance between them.
I suggest you to create a learning center in front of the classroom. The purpose of this center is to develop students learning by including different levels of games, activities, stories, and worksheets depends on students’ levels. To avoid the high ability students’ noise, you can send them to the learning center to practice and improve their learning individually, while you spend more time with low ability students in the classroom to scaffold their learning.
Thanks
Hessa Al Ghaithi
<< TO Ruwaya Ebrahim, from Abu Dhabi Women’s Collage >>
ReplyDeleteThis Noura Al Naqbi from AAWC, i really liked your topic, because we both share the same focus which is Assessment. I did not start the action research yet, because we just observe what we want to focus on for this semester, an the main assessment that the school focus on is E-cart. E-cart is a short cut for English Continuous Assessment Rich Task. E-cart is an assessment that the students should do for each semester. it is worth 50% of students' English mark. The students should choose on of four choices to do the E-cart on one them which is Adventure, the four choices are: a story, movie, comic strip or biography of a famous adventurer in the UAE. In my opinion, i don't think it is useful for the students and i don't think it should worth 50% from students' mark, because, it would be better if its worth 30% or 20%, because it does not help students in their learning.
that is my opinion, what do you think about it??
To Ayesha Al Romaithi from Abu Dhabi Women's College.
ReplyDeleteHello Ayesha, I think that this is an interesting topic as it’s a very common issue. I faced the same problems in the past, even now, when I taught the first lesson I didn’t finish on time but I applied some strategies later on which I have been reading about and some were really helpful. I agree that focusing on behavioral techniques is vital to manage students and the class time as well. I would be glad to share my ideas about class management techniques with you as we are focusing on the same area and I hope you do too.
Good luck, Hessa Al Dhaheri
To Huda, from Fujairah Women’s College.
ReplyDeleteI think your topic is really interesting because writing express who you are as a person. I totally agree with you about student copying from the board, unfortunately this issue is still in some schools and I faced this problem last year where student used to copy from the board. But there are many strategies that teacher can use to improve student writing skill like, brainstorming get the student to work in group and share their ideas to each other. I really like the idea of establish a writer's workshop because this will encourage student to write more and be proud of their selves.
How about doing learning centers by dividing students in 5 or 6 groups and make different types of writing activities related to the number of the groups and each group will have different activity like reorder the words to make a correct sentence. When they finish they have to swap and do another activity.
This is my opinion I hope you like it. I hope that you achieve your goal.
Good luck, Aysha Al Darmaki, Al Ain ^_^
To Huda, from Fujairah Women’s College.
ReplyDeleteI think your topic is really interesting because writing express who you are as a person. I totally agree with you about student copying from the board, unfortunately this issue is still in some schools and I faced this problem last year where student used to copy from the board. But there are many strategies that teacher can use to improve student writing skill like, brainstorming get the student to work in group and share their ideas to each other. I really like the idea of establish a writer's workshop because this will encourage student to write more and be proud of their selves.
How about doing learning centers by dividing students in 5 or 6 groups and make different types of writing activities related to the number of the groups and each group will have different activity like reorder the words to make a correct sentence. When they finish they have to swap and do another activity.
This is my opinion I hope you like it. I hope that you achieve your goal.
Good luck, Aysha Al Darmaki, Al Ain ^_^
To Hessa Salem AWC
ReplyDeleteHi Hessa
I’m glad to know that we share the same topic ^^. It’s true that classroom management is a common problem in every class. However, in my opinion to maintain classroom management we need to focus more on students’ behavior. Well, in my second week I introduced my rules to the students and, used a behavior chart to reward students that follow the rules. Thus, students started to listen to me and followed my rules *well not always^^*. Reading more about techniques and strategies would be more useful. Anyway, it would be really helpful to share our ideas and thoughts about classroom management and behavior’s technique.
Best of luck in your teaching~
Ayesha
To Amal Saeed from Fujairah Women’s College.
ReplyDeleteHello Amal, I have read your topic on ‘how to improve the learners reading comprehension’ and I admire your reasons to do so. But, don’t you think that applying different strategies will harden your work for the action research as well as your teaching in school. I think it would be better if you select two or three strategies and apply them on your students. This will ease the task that you are doing for your action research as well as for your teaching in school. Also, in schools, we are obligated to teach the learners their curriculum and the time limit provided will not give you the chance to use all the strategies you know to improve the learners reading comprehension. I hope that I am not bothering you with my comments, but I am looking for your relieve.
With regards, Thurayya, RKWC.
Hi Ayesha Al Romaithi:)
ReplyDeleteYour topic is interesting. It is about an issue that all teachers face in any classroom. As I noticed my startegies for classroom management are changed depend on the class. I beleive that every class behave differently, so I suggest you focus on stratgies that suit your current class. Here, I have a website for classroom management. I hope you get benefit from it^^
http://www.theteachersguide.com/ClassManagement.htm
Wish u luck Awashy:)
Halawa, RKWC
To Maha Mohammed, Al Ain Woman’s College
ReplyDeleteHi Maha .. I believe that your topic of research is related to mine. I think that reading is meant to be enjoyable .. and as teachers we should make sure that students are exposed to different kinds of reading not just for studying but for fun as well .. I believe that teachers can achieve that by engaging then with the story for example ( book selection, activities and reading methods) I think that your topic is really great and I wish you all the luck .. enjoy your Eid :D
To Shaikha Ali Al-Shehhi from RKWC,
ReplyDeleteHello Shaikha..
Hope you had great Eid (Eid Mubark) ^^
Your topic is nearly as mine… how to use group work in order to communicate and use the 2nd language … but the differences is I am teaching grade 2 while you are teaching grade 8… some times its difficult to get teenager to use 2nd language but it is teacher role to create and interactive activities to get the students to use language and sharing their ideas… such as role play, survey…etc. However, one issue of group work is students using native language rather than the second language which may affects on acquiring the 2nd language.
Asma Al Raeisi
Badreyyah Al Yammahi, Al Ain Women's College
ReplyDelete<>
I hope you are doing well in your teaching practice. Your action research topic is about differentiation. It is good to choose this topic because it is one of your weaknesses. I suggest you to read “Making differentiation a habit” to Diane Heacox. This book will give new ideas and all you need to consistently differentiate instruction.
To Maryam Mohamed, from Abu Dhabi Women’s Collage
ReplyDeleteI hope you are doing well in your teaching practice. Your action research topic is about differentiation. It is good to choose this topic because it is one of your weaknesses. I suggest you to read “Making differentiation a habit” to Diane Heacox. This book will give new ideas and all you need to consistently differentiate instruction.
Hello year four students,
ReplyDeleteI am Mouza Hamdan from Abu Dhabi Women's College and I am pleased to have this great opportunity to share our aims from accomplishing an action research project in our last year^^. This year my intention is to examine the application of collaborative learning activities in grade five students specifically focusing on group work. One of the main reasons that led to choose this interested area of investigation is that I used to focus on teacher-centered classes and I want to focus more on student-centered sessions by creating a collaborative learning environment that engage both the teacher and the students.
I wish you all the luck to achieve your goals as you hope.
Aysha Saif Sultan FWC,
ReplyDeleteDealing with Challenging behavior
Throughout this year, I am teaching five graders in Al Bahar Basic School for girls. At the beginning of my internship I did face some problems on how to deal with misbehaving students. However, I could deal with these challenging behavior and had solutions to avoid there occurrence during my lessons. To be more explicit, they just needed a critical thinking with some planning of classroom routines and establishing rules are suggested to be applied at the beginning, discuss them with the studnets, let them get used to them and then everything is fine.
From my own experience, when I firstly entered the classroom, there were group of students who were not paying attention to me, as well as, talking while I am teaching and even worse, using Arabic instead. What made me really upset is that, when I observed my MST there was nothing of these problems occurring in her lesson. Therefore, I promised myself to stop these things and take actions as they would distract my classroom and the students which would affect the whole lesson.
In addition, I firstly had a social conversation with the students discussing these issues that distract the classroom, I let them brainstorming to find solution that were created by them. We wrote the rules on the white board, and then displayed them in the classroom as a reminder for the students to be strict to them. Furthermore, I presented the behavioral chart that displayed the students’ names and whenever they behaved well or contribute, they get a happy face sticker, but if they behaved unwell, they get an angry or sad face. What is really surprising, is this simple technique worked very well and I am still using it until nowadays, since everyone is challenging to get the highest number of happy faces to get a reward by the end of the each semester. I could see how the students were motivated and encouraged to get more faces because they are waiting for the rewards. Even more, I was surprised how the low achievers are pushing themselves to answer and behave very well daily. As Cunningham claims (2009, P.69) “rewards are designed to recognize and honor learning attainment of academic and behavioral expectations.” This simple strategy showed me how effective it is, in which the students were actively participating in the classroom and more importantly, empowering the discipline within the classroom environment.
References:
Cunningham, G. (2009). The new teacher’s companion: Practical wisdom for succeeding in the classroom. Alexandria: ASD
Ebtesam Suliman FWC,
ReplyDeleteBuilding a good rapport with teenagers is not an easy task, because being a teenager is not easy. Teenagers go through many changes in their bodies and minds, in their habits and interests, in their opinions and tastes, and we as teachers and parents, should be aware of these changes, and be more understandable to their situation. I remember a case in one of my classroom that really worried me over a whole week. There was a girl who refused to pay attention to the teacher or to the activities provided by the teacher, no matter how enjoyable the activity was. What made it worse, when the teacher asked her to join her friends in completing any activity, she would just look at the teacher’s eyes and smile in a rude way. I thought that her behavior did not only affected her, however, it also affected her friends as they started to imitate her.
What I did to solve this problem was to ignore her presence in the classroom, because, with her behavior, she was seeking for attention in the classroom, and not giving her the attention she wanted have changed her behavior. She started to join in group work just to get the teacher’s attention and feedback. This particular behavior can be found in many classrooms, not just teenagers’, which is cause by psychological reasons that came from home. Therefore, we as teachers need to consider these reasons and deal with them accordingly.
Finally, I would like to suggest some tips can should be considered when teaching teenagers. Firstly, involving the students in their teaching process, giving them opportunities to feel as independent learners and having them show up their personalities, all can build trust and rapport between teachers and teenagers. Lastly, teaching teenagers is not that bad, all what is matter is seeing them as older people who can take the responsibility of their own learning.
Huda Abdulla, FWC
ReplyDeleteDealing with challenging behaviors
Classroom management is the most difficult problems that teachers face (Arends, 2007). The management of the classroom can happen through controlling students, stopping any misbehavior, such as noise, inappropriate movement and refusal.
Teaching 7th graders can be challenging because they have behavior problems being adolescents. Sometimes I have difficulties in managing their behaviors during the lessons. I have realized that I have to ignore some misbehaviors but I must act swiftly for certain kinds of behaviors
I think that creating a motivation chart is useful. I used one called ‘motivation pyramid’ in which the first group who are in the class will have a block to complete their pyramids. This is was very useful in solving this all kinds of problems as the students were motivated to come earlier to the workshop to get one block.
I have to keep looking for ways of managing the noise level and movement of the students especially in writing lessons because I give the students the independence to write to develop them to be autonomous writers. Other strategies I use are raising the tone of my voice and eye contact, nevertheless, these strategies work for a few minutes and students start over again.
Ayers and Gray intimated (1998) that a good and an effective teacher should be able to make students engaged in the learning process. For example, students should be attentive and feel that learning is appropriate, so this will create a managed classroom with motivated students. I really want my students to be engaged in the learning process and I need your help to achieve this goal.
Saliemah Obaid, FWC: Dealing with challenging behaviour
ReplyDeleteDealing with challenging behaviour is an important thing for teachers to think about. During the school day, sometimes the teacher encounter misbehaving situations with the students. Sometimes, it is very difficult to deal with them because they are very naughty and hyperactive specially boys. So, they have to deal with them sensitively and carefully. One of the situation I encountered during my Teaching Practice was with one student in grade four. He repeated two years before. That means he supposed to be in grade seven now. He is the tallest boy in the school. All the students afraid of him because he beats anyone he sees in front of him, even grade one students. He does not scared from anyone in the administration even the principle.
One day, in the assembly area, during the break time, all the students were standing around him shouting and pulling each others to see what this tall boy is doing. I was standing and looking from the first floor, but I was wondering what is going on there?? Suddenly, one teacher who came and take shout at them and took the grade one child from the floor. That guy was beating, pulling and pushing that little child on his stomach till the boy vomited. It was horrible situation. All the teachers on that day were talking about that tall boy. I asked them about his story and why he is still in this school where he suppose to be in preparatory school. They said that his parents is divorced and he lives with his grandfather and he has one older sister who help him in his homework.
In the next day, the father of that little child came and talked with the principle about their responsibility in controlling students behaviour. He asked where were they during the break?? Why do they leave the students alone and without any control during the break. He asked the principle to call that tall boy. When he came, he asked him why did he beat his son?? What did his son do for him??. Of course, there were not any reasons for that. The father became very angry. Suddenly, he went near to the boy and gave him a strong slap that he never forget it in all his life. In my opinion, even if he felt angry, he should not beat the boy because all students have the right to be treated with dignity and respect. But, from that day, the tall boy behaved himself and never beat any boy in that way. He just playing with them and threatening them if they did not respond to him but without beating, pulling and pushing.
This type of boys do not understand by beating. They understand by talking with them politely because they are so sensitive. We should teach them how to learn from their mistakes and what is right and what is wrong. Moreover, how to express their feeling. But how?? According to British Colombia (2010), we should provide the students with opportunities to “identify favorite activities and participate in scheduling the sequence of daily tasks, work toward a self-selected activity or other reinforcement and demonstrate proficiency in areas of strength, and assist other students who may be having difficulty in those areas”.
If you have any ideas on how to deal with challenging behavior, I will be happy to try it because I’m teaching boys and I need more strategies to help me in dealing with challenging behavior. Thank you
Reference
British Columbia, (2010). Students with Intellectual Disabilities
a resource guide for teachers. Retrieved on 16, March, 2011 from http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/specialed/sid/43.htm
Dealing with challenging behaviour
ReplyDeleteAccording to Kyriacou (1998) behavior is defined as specific attitudes and actions of the children at home and/or at school. Student misbehavior problems seriously obstruct teaching and learning. Most if not all behavior students wish to be noticed and if they get attention from misbehaving they are willing to walk the path with the consequences. Dealing with challenging behavior is the title of my discussion, which is the real challenge I face now.
I teach in primary school, specifically grade 2 students and it is the first time for me to teach such a level, which I think it is thrilling, as well as challenging. The negative side which I already experienced some last week, is dealing with students’ behavior in the classroom. According to Kyriacou (1998) being able to deal with such misbehavior is extremely important in completing their ability to set up and sustain effective learning experiences. I found that second graders are different in the level of misbehaving which can be compartmentalized as in the following. I saw stubborn students fighting with others, noisy students not paying attention to the teachers’ instructions, and other students being out of their seat without good cause!.
When I started teaching, I assured that I will face these misbehaviors during my teaching practice!, and my role is to think of different strategies in order to reduce the level of misbehaving in the classroom. One of the methods I used was targeting questions at those students which is a signal to them to get re-involved. Also, I used eye contact to lessen the noise level which indicate to the students my awareness to re- involve themselves in the lesson. Furthermore, I created different warning up activities to grasp their attention at the beginning of each lesson, and then gradually use calm down activities in which students work individual or in pairs, which worked very well. I think these methods will not be effective for all the time!, because I’m sure I will face other deportments which needs effective strategies to ensure successful classroom management.
My request to you future teachers is to give me advice or suggestions you think are doable and I will practice them in my classroom and share feedback so that everyone can benefit and might use them in their class.
Thanks in advance
Roqayyah Hussain
Reference
Kyriacou, C. (1998). Essential Teaching Skills. Cheltenham: Basil Blackwell Ltd.
Eman Abdelhadi Al-Hammadi;Dealing with challenging behavior
ReplyDeleteIn this online discussion, I’m going to mention some ideas and strategies that could be used to deal with the challenging behavior in the school and classroom.
First of all the school should follow some essential principles in dealing with the challenging behavior such as developing positive behavior management strategies to create a helpful, respectful environment for pupils. In addition, the school should train a professional staff to able to understand the causes of challenging behavior and to be aware of preventative strategies and be effective in the use of calming, defusing, diverting and problem solving skills. One idea for the school to reduce the misbehaving is to identify a location in the school to use when the student is exhibiting extremely disruptive behavior.
Moreover, according to Kyriacou (1998), there are some ideas and strategies that the teacher can use in the classroom to control students’ misbehavior such as setting clear expectations and routines. For example, having a prearranged signal to use with the student so that the student knows to change the behavior (e.g., verbal or physical cues). Explain the cue to others in the class, so they understand the process and can be a part of it. In this way, other students are involved in encouragement, rather than condemnation. Also, Providing predictable routines to help the student anticipate transitions. For example, create a daily calendar with pictures representing key activities so the student can see a sequence of activities and anticipate changes. To facilitate the transition between activities the student can take a picture when the activity has been completed. In addition, asking other students in the classroom to engage in problem-solving and make suggestions of strategies for dealing with challenging behavior, this strategy will work better with preparatory students.
Reference:
Kyriacou, C. (1998). Essential teaching skills (2nd ed.). Cheltenham: Stanely Thornes Ltd.
Dealing with challenging behavior
ReplyDeleteAs I mentioned in the introduction, I am teaching grade ten students in a full time work. During the two semesters that I spent with my students, I have recognized some behavioral problems that I need to manage. Different strategies and techniques were used during the last 5 weeks in order to improve the classroom management in terms of behavior.
The first step that I have done is specialized some time from the English periods about 5 minutes to discuss the good and bad behavior that is happening in the class usually. Students were engaged in writing the bad and good attitudes at the white board. Some students were seriously talking about the bad behavior at the class, which waste the time for students to learn effectively. Problems that appeared were like shouting for answering “teacher, teacher or miss, miss”, walking around the classroom for personal purposes that are not related to the learning session, entering the classroom in a late time, and talking with friends that might disturb others’ hearings. Writing those bad behaviors on the board made the behavior problems clear for some students who are not aware of the wrong things that they were doing. During that time, some students were trying to deny these kind of attitudes as their behavior, but others were saying it with shy.
After that a behavior chart was designed for the whole class in order to motivate students to be quiet and act with good behavior that suits the learning environment. Most students were working hard to have the good points at the chart in order to show off that she is better that others who make noise. The good thing about the behavior chart that students put their good or bad point on their own. Students really feel proud of themselves when they reward themselves. Of course, the teacher has a role in motivating as well, which is in reinforce the students by some words like “you are excellent, good, well done, I like your behavior, you’re the best”. On the other hand, students who put the bad point for themselves feel really sorry and regret the bad attitude that they have done previously, then they try to avoid repeating those behaviors. Once, a student asked the me about what she can do to remove the black point (bad behavior) and put a red point(excellent) instead. I have replied that keeping quiet and being good for everybody for more than a week will give you a red point.
In conclusion, using the behavior chart was really helpful and useful from the first week. I believe that using the behavior chart should be in a daily basis and sometimes students need to memorize the classroom rules and the good behavior that should be expected from them.
Iam sorry the upper one in mine, I am Khawla Rashed AlMehrezi FWC
ReplyDeleteDealing with challenging behavior
ReplyDeleteDuring this year, my group focus is 8th graders in a prep school. In accordance to my experience with them so far, I have faces some misbehavior situations during my teaching sessions. For instance, I noticed that some learners keep chatting together as they gather in one group and totally ignore the presence of the teacher in class. More surprisingly, some of those learners are high achievers. Furthermore, the first ten minutes of each session used to be spent on gathering the learners from the yard and getting them back to class. Their excuses usually were getting a book from a teacher, drinking some water, and loads of other excuses. Those situations kept on happening in my MST’s sessions as well. Thus, some actions were taken by both of us.
Firstly, some classroom rules were discussed with the students, taking their needs in consideration. Due to that, the students were divided into five groups relating to their levels. Secondly, I have designed a motivation chart with some rules called “Record and Reward”, in which the learners get green points for well behaving, participation in class, being on time, etc, while they get black points if any of the group members misbehaved. Each group has to complete a certain number of green points to move to the next level. After implementing this strategy of motivation, I notices that the students became motivated to complete the different levels to gain the reward by the end to the semester by engaging more in class activities, managing their own groups, being on time and stop chatting while the teacher talks.
Conversely, after getting familiar with this chart, I have started facing some difficulties from a student, who does not care about rewarding anymore. She kept on distracting her classmates by talking, chatting, interrupting them while answering and even disrespecting the teacher. This misbehavior affected her group members as well by getting black points; however, I was shocked that she asked me once to put more black points for her group. I tried to find the main reason that made her lose interest in the English sessions; as she does the same with my MST. I am thinking of making some conferences with her for better understanding and then take the suitable action, but my MST had another opinion, which is having conferences with her parents. Additionally, I am in process of finding solutions for this situation, but still not lucky in find any. I am really concerned about this student, as she was capable to behave herself and participate well in class. Accordingly, I am aiming to solve the problem before it gets worse. One of the tests in leading the classroom is having the ability in recognizing problems before they become emergency (Breaux, 2003).
Breaux, A. (2003). 101”Answers” for new teachers & their mentors: effective teaching tips for daily classroom use. NY: Eye in Education.
Amnah Humaid Al Kendi
FWC
Dealing with challenging behaviour
ReplyDeleteTeaching grade five boys are can be very challenging and one needs must be handled with wisdom For example, I explained for the students the rules of the classroom in the beginning of the teaching, and now they are aware of that. Often students struggle to follow the rules of the classroom, because they weren't told about it from the beginning of the year. Classroom rules were used as a method to keep order in the classroom and help students to observe and control their own behavior. The purpose of this method was to develop social skills among students which were very important to promote cooperative learning environment. According to Kyriacou (2001) the teacher should be able to establish a safe environment which supports learning and in which students feel secure and confident. According to my observation, classroom rules were a helpful tool. For example, instead of shouting and moving from the seat some students started to raise their hands and stay on their seats.
Additionally, to deal with inappropriate movement during the session, I assign for each student in the class cooperative learning roles. According to my observation, I planned some cooperative learning roles that can improve some of the students' social skills and their behavior. According to Arends (2000) it is significant for all students to participate fully in group activities through having their roles. After some weeks, I really found good result of using rules and roles in the classroom
In conclusion, it is important to remind the students each time about the class rules, so the can remember and follow. Additionally, the students were really behaving well with quite voices during working in groups, and they are trying to stay on their desk to work quietly.
Aisha Abdullah Ahmed
FWC
Dealing with challenging misbehavior
ReplyDeleteMy teaching practice (TP) took place at a primary school for girls. In fact, in this teaching practice I am dealing with young learners, and as you know children are very energetic and active when participating in the lesson. For instance, when I asked them a question, they started shouting and making noise, and for that reason I could not control the class. Kyriacou (1998) suggested that pupils must raise their hands to answer the teacher’s questions, not shouting out. I tried to overcome this problem by implementing different strategies in my class. The following lines will be discussing some of the effective strategies that I used to avoid misbehavior.
According to Kyriacou (1998), there are many successful strategies which can be used by the teacher to prevent the students’ misbehavior in the classroom. One important strategy is scanning the classroom. This is achieved by looking around the classroom and consider if any student needs any help. Therefore you will help the student who needs the assistance and avoid the noise.
In addition, the teacher can avoid this issue by making eye contact. In my opinion, it is significant for teacher to use this aspect of body during the class because that will help her to see the entire student’s behavior and manage the classroom environment. According to Harmer (1998, P.16), “In order to manage a class successfully, the teacher has to be aware of what students are doing and, where possible, how they are feeling”. Another strategy is that the teacher can move around the classroom in order to see if students are having difficulties in the activities or not.
Furthermore, the teacher can change the activities to avoid misbehavior. To illustrate more, the teacher has to change the activity if she feels that students became bored and try to give some interesting tasks or activities. The last strategy is moving pupils, the teacher also has to move the students’ place if she noticed any misbehavior during the lesson, for example, if there are two students who are sitting together and they are not behaving well enough, then the teacher has to move them.
Eventually, these are some of the helpful strategies that I utilize in my classroom for the sake of avoiding students’ misbehavior. The most significant one as I believe is scanning the classroom and monitoring the students. I hope you find these strategies useful and easy to apply in your classroom.
References:
Harmer, J. (1998). How to teach English. Edinburgh: Pearson Education Limited.
Kyriacou, C. (2001). Essential teaching skills (2nd ed.). U.K: Nelson Thorns Ltd.
Amal Saeed Al Hefaity, FWC
Hi my name is Shamsa Abdulla Al Ketbi. I am student from Abu Dhabi Women’s College. I am happy to be part of this blog. I am currently in Teaching Practice in a boys primary school. I Teach grade five boys, this semester I am focusing on how to improve students writing. My action research strategy is based on a strategy used in the United States government schools. The strategy is called step-up to writing, it aims to teach students how to plan their writing to make it an enjoyable task. I chose this topic because I’ve been in this school a couple of times and the problem the boys face the most is writing. For them it is very boring task. Therefore I looked at different ways to help them, I was in the annual teacher conference in Dubai were a teacher from RAK introduced this strategy. The way the strategy works is by using the traffic light colors to help breakdown the writing task.
ReplyDelete• Green on a traffic signal means go. Topic sentences are colored
green because the topic sentence shows what the writer is going
to prove or explain.
• Yellow on a traffic light means slow down. The sentences that support the topic
are colored yellow to remind writers to slow down and provide support for the
topic sentence.
• Red on a traffic signal means stop. Sentences used to elaborate and add
examples or explanations are colored red to remind the writer to stop, explain,
and add evidence.
• Green for the conclusion reminds students to go back and remind the reader of
the topic.
I have tried it once and it work I will try it again and see if the students remembered the strategy and are they able to use it by themselves.
Here is the link of a video explain the strategy in details.
http://www.soprislearning.com/cs/Satellite?c=CLG_Content_C&childpagename=Sopris%2FSopris_Layout&cid=1277940926442&pagename=Sopris_Wrapper&rendermode=previewnoinsite
Bibliography
Auman, M. Step Up to Writing . sopris west Educational Services.
Dealing with challenging behavior
ReplyDeleteI am Meead Al Kathairi from Abu Dhabi Women’s College, I am teaching grade 5 students (girls) in Haleema Sa’deya Model School. My action research is about “Utilizing Learning Center to Enhance Students’ Engagement”.
Now I am going to talk about dealing with challenging behaviors in the classrooms. This is something occurs as a daily based. For sure those kinds of behaviors will disrupt the learning and the teaching process in the classroom. For that, the teacher should know them, and know why they occur and how to deal with them.
There is always a reason for why they occur, like getting attention, boring, getting power, getting revenge, or feeling of failure. The teacher should try her best to identify any of these reasons and jump to action. Based on my teaching experience, the teacher should make an appropriate plan to fit the challenging behaviors reasons. By this I mean that she should find more than one way to teach her lesson especially to those who are misbehaving.
The first thing to do when dealing with challenging behaviors in the classroom is to show patience. Because in some situations, the main purpose of the misbehaving is to make the teacher loss her patience and have different reactions. So, patience may always require some deep thinking before doing anything the teacher may regret later. For that, the teacher should always be ready for anything like that and should always listen and response carefully.
Also the teacher should be careful about choosing the right level of difficulty for the class level. That is because if she chooses something easy the students may get bored quickly and if she chooses something more difficult than their level they may get nervous and disappointed. That for sure will have a negative influence on the students’ involvement and engagement which will lead to misbehavior in the classroom. As Kyriacou (1998, p.80) said “if the activity is too easy or is felt to lack relevance, then pupils are likely to become bored.” And this is one of the main causes of misbehavior. For this reason I chose learning center as through it I can design different activities that match different levels and that assist all students to actively engage in learning.
Another thing to do is to have a classroom management that allows everybody to express their ideas and emotions without feeling the need of misbehave. Based on my teaching practice, I noticed that if everybody in the classroom knows and applies the rules, the rights, and the responsibilities, there will be no misbehaving. It is because in that way, everybody knows what to do and how to behave.
Reference:
Kyriacou, C. (1998). Essential Teaching Skills. UK: Nelson Thornes.
Dealing with Challenging behaviour
ReplyDeleteHello everyone,
Myself Zainab Al Sayed from ADWC. It’s a pleasure to get such an opportunity to share the ideas and knowledge with all of you where we can learn from each other. This practicum I am teaching Grade five students in model school. My research focus is planning instructions for differentiated activities to accommodate diverse learners. Actually my investigation assisted me a lot to manage students’ behaviour. For instance, I believe that the major reason which leads students to misbehave is when they get bored and distracted. That will occur when students’ do not have enough work to do or when there is too much of teachers talk. Therefore, I believe that it is a great idea to reduce (TTT) and elicit the information from students by asking concept questions which will help them to think and be engaged. Also, designing quick and snappy activities will be helpful rather than having long tasks where students loose attention and start doing unnecessary things as the fact that the young learners have short attentions span. Another thing is when the given task is not appropriate to learners’ level so designing differentiation activities encourage students to be focused and involved in learning process as each of them can work based on their comfort level and not depends on other students. Consequently, my action research helped me to design proper differentiated activities in accordance to their level and interest student rather than differentiating randomly.
However, I believe that challenging behaviour is not only when students pass inappropriate comments, making noise or distracting others in the classroom. But also when students not react or remain passive in the classroom, according to my group of students I don’t really face behaviour problems as they are always very calm and quiet in fact sometimes I get negative energy where I am teaching and hardly I listen to any of students voice even when they discussing or participating they are very slow and inactive which gives me impact that they are not interested. Therefore, I assigned some speaking lessons where I tried to interact with them in different contexts which assist me to get closer and build good rapport with them where they feel comfortable to exchange their problems or discomforts with me. I also, implemented idea of having motivation chart which I observed in private school and this really works. After teaching my students the concept of this chart where the most consistent group will be rewarded at the end of the week, I get very effective results where students are encouraged and involved in the lesson which helped me in teaching as I get positive energy from them.
According to Harmer (2001, p.130) that “in many students' eyes teachers who have to shout to assert their authority appear to be losing control as shouting by the teacher raises the overall level of noise in the classroom.” Hence, personally, whenever I face any misbehaviour problems I just fold my arms and stand quietly where students suddenly realize that there is something wrong. Finally, I think teachers should have some strategies to control students’ behaviour without being too stiff and not too easy. In fact, the best technique to control the students misbehaviour is having a consistency so the they would know that misbehaving is wont be acceptable at all.
Enjoy your practicum and you are welcome to discuss or ask me anything regard my TP.
Reference: Harmer, J. (2001). The Practice of English Language Teaching. 3rd ed. London Longman.
Insights from the Internship
ReplyDeleteTeaching practice is one of the greatest things about this program. Studying ways of teaching and reading literatures can help us to develop the concepts of teaching requirements. However, the real insights of teaching come from practicing and experiencing real teaching situations.
This internship was different than the previous teaching practices. I personally think that lots of things have changed on me as a teacher when teaching full-time in the school. Throughout this internship (sixteen weeks), I developed many concepts related to teaching, learning and planning.
One of the most important aspects I learnt is that teaching is flexible. There are sometimes during the lesson where teacher should stop for a while and does something fun for students. Sometimes students may feel bored or demotivated if they receive lots of input, students should be motivated. Other concept of teaching flexibility is that what the students did not get today they will get tomorrow. I learnt that lessons should not be stressed in order to make students understand the target language fully from one lesson. Students can understand the target language better if they expose to it in other lessons as well. I learnt that throughout the allocated time for the planed unit, teacher can teach and reteach lessons in order to make learning accessible and enjoyable for learners.
Another thing, I came to realize during my internship is that teachers can learn from the worst lessons. Good teachers learn from their mistakes and look forward to improve their performance. I had many lessons that were not successful, however, those lessons always come to my mind when planning or teaching. I try to avoid what was not working and change or adapt good things. I believe that bad lessons are essential stations in our ongoing professional development.
In addition, this internship showed me the power of differentiation in the classrooms. I learnt that differentiation is not optional. Teachers should differentiate instructions in order to help students to reach their full potential. Also when the activities are differentiated, lessons can be taught smoothly and all the students can receive input at their level and preference.
To conclude, experiencing teaching in a school full time helped me to gain great understanding of the teachers’ roles and responsibilities. It also showed me how learning can be adjusted or adapted according to students’ needs. Nevertheless, I believe that this internship and the previous teaching practicums are just the beginning in the road of learning of how to be an excellent teacher.
Maryam Mohamed Al Hammadi,
Abu Dhabi Women's College
Dealing with challenging behavior
ReplyDeleteAs I mentioned previously in my introduction, I teach grade four students. Classroom management is my focus for this year. I have been using variety of strategies and techniques to manage students’ inappropriate behavior. During this period, I realized that there are many reasons behind students’ inappropriate behavior in the classroom.
I found that students tend not to listen to instructions, disturb others and don’t pay attention. Thus, they get bored with the chosen activities. This could be because these activities do not match their learning styles. Another thing is that sometimes the activities are higher than their level and they cannot do it, which will lower their self-esteem to answer. In addition, they might find it easy to do and finish it fast and start to make noise in the classroom.
Accordingly, I used some methods and techniques to help improve my classroom management and avoid any misbehaving during this year. The first method is establishing classroom rules for students to follow before starting teaching. Also, I used praising students who show appropriate behavior and sit quietly and raise their hands without shouting in front of the class, so the others do the same to hear me praise them. Furthermore, I made a behavior chart to reward the good behavior. This helped to make them competitive on how many stars they have to get. Additionally, based on my experience during this period I noticed that remembering student’s names helped me make sure that everyone was involved in the lesson. Also, I selected different students to answer to make sure that everyone is participating. Moreover, I worked on my voice and made sure that my voice was clear and audible. As Harmer (2004, p.16) stated, “How we speak and what our voice sounds like have a crucial impact on classes”. Also, fast finishers were my concern. I made sure that I have extra worksheets for students who finish their work early, so they won’t be able to disturb the others who are still working. As a result, this helped me to make sure that all of the students are paying attention to me.
I’m currently using assertive discipline method which is based on the intention that both teachers have a right to teach and students have a right to learn. It was designed to provide prompt and effective negative consequences for students who choose to interfere with the rights of either the teacher or the other students. It does not include only negative consequences for improper behavior, but also includes positive consequences to reward those who behave properly.
These are really useful strategies and methods that I used in my classroom. Hopefully it will help you in managing your classroom as it did to me.
Ayesha Ateeq AlRomaithi, ADWC
Reference:
Harmer, J. (2004). How to teach writing. England:Longman.
Insights from the Internship
ReplyDeleteHi again my name is Shamsa Al Ketbi. I am a student from the Abu Dhabi campus. I will be discussing the my experiences as an Intern and what are some of insights acquired when teaching in a school full-time .
The first thing is being involved with the schools staff from teachers to administrators even the cleaners. You should know everybody and what each person does. This will help you a lot when facing any problem during the period given. In previous years we would enter the school and leave without knowing the schools staff.
I also learnt more about what is required from the teacher as in paperwork that has to be done for the administration. For example at the last 2 weeks of teaching practice the principal asked that teachers should prepare 3 different portfolios that they will be marked on. So I helped and found out what they had to do what are the different elements of these portfolios
I also learned how to deal with parents and the boys personal lives. It made me realize that students are effected so much by the what happening at home and it is really hard to deal with. This kind of situations are best learned by experience.
Overall this internship was so different than the ones in the past it made me notice the different elements of the schools structure.
Shamsa Abdulla AlKetbi ADWC
What I’m looking forward to most in beginning my career
ReplyDeleteCompleting the final practicum clarified my ambitions towards teaching and learning. The experience that I had been through made me realizes what I really need and want to do at the very beginning of my teaching career.
First of all, I was in a very difficult teaching situation that I could hardly apply the modern teaching techniques in. The school where I was follow the New Parade book where the mentor school teacher (MST) who I was with follows exactly the book without adapting or planning even extra supportive activities for learners. Since I was teaching 60% of the MST’s schedule, she always restricted me to teach the units exactly the same as she does. Even though sometimes I found that students’ level and capability above the taught units or even the context is not applicable for the UAE context. I believe that students should receive real language that they can use in their life. I could not make the decision of what the students should or should not learn. Therefore, I built in my mind my future professional development plan that is based on learners learn what they need to learn in order to develop strong English skills. I am not going to focus on text books or ready materials. I am going to examine what my students can or cannot do in order to bring up their inside knowledge and build up upon the new knowledge away from guided materials. I am going to differentiate on my lessons as well to help my learners to achieve their potential.
In addition, I believe that print rich environment has great impact on students’ learning. The class where I was teaching during the internship was empty from any kind of displays, captions or reading materials. Even though when I was there for a while I tried to put up some displays in order to support students’ learning that was not even enough. A supportive classroom should be full of reading materials either displays or reading corners with books, so students can work on during centres’ classes or even teacher can refer to when teaching. Therefore, I am looking forward to have my own classroom in order to design my own displays and set up corners in the full of reading and writing materials.
In general, even though I had tough teaching situation during my internship, it really helped me to be patient, supportive, and the most of all responsible for change. Now I hold up the deep passion for changing the teaching situation in the UAE besides building the positive impact on students’ learning.
Maryam Mohamed Al Hammadi
ADWC
Hello! My name is Haleema Al Thahli from ADWC. Today I am writing about challenging behavior which I believe is any form of behavior that interferes with children's learning or normal development is harmful to the child, other children or puts a child in a high risk category for later social problems or school failure.
ReplyDeleteIn a school setting, Elton report stated that "challenging behavior is acknowledged to be any form of behaviour that causes concern to teachers. It can range from talking in class and not settling to work, to verbal and physical abuse, destruction of property and bullying" (1989). However, the most commonly cited forms of misbehavior are: Arriving late for lessons, not listening to the teacher, excessive talking Being noisy - verbally and non-verbally, not getting on with work, Being out of seats without reason or preventing others from being able to work.
Managing challenging behaviour in a classroom setting is a problem faced by all teachers. One of the key factors in behaviour management is to understand why challenging behaviour occurs. Understanding why challenging behaviour occurs is the key to successful management. The most common causes of misbehaviour in the classroom are: Boredom, inability to do the work set, being asked to work for too long, not understanding what is expected, attention seeking or not feeling valued.
The fact that sessions aimed at managing challenging behaviour are always very well attended shows that it is something that concerns teachers greatly and that there is no ‘quick fix’ solution. There are however, simple steps that can be taken to minimise the occurrence of the causes of challenging behaviour identified above. For example, boredom as a teacher you are full of enthusiasm for your subject and could probably talk about it all day. The majority of your students will not share this enthusiasm to the same degree and will quickly get bored if you talk for too long. So reduce the ‘teacher talk’ part of your lesson, by reducing this part of a lesson, students will be working ‘on task’ more quickly and less likely to misbehave. In addition, students learn in different ways such as visually, orally, kinaesthetically etc. If one style is continually used then those students who cannot learn in that way will become bored. So, vary your teaching style, try to ensure that over a range of lessons all learning styles are catered for. By this students will be less able to predict the format of the lesson and will remain attentive for longer.
Actually, I focused on these issues because it is related to my action research which is How to increase student talking time by using different student-centred activities. And these are examples of solutions that I tried to implement throughout my teaching practice. If you need any help feel free to ask and I will be happy to share.
Reference:
Department of Education and Science (1989) Inquiry into Discipline in Schools (The Elton Report), London: HMSO.
To Amnah Humaid Al Kendi
ReplyDeleteHi,
My name is Zainab Alsayed and I’m from ADWC.
Last year I was placed in preparatory school where I taught Grade 9 girls and I have faced the same misbehaviours from teenagers. First of all, I liked the idea of implementing motivational chart, I think this is very positive way to deal with misbehaviour which I also conducted this semester with grade five students.
However, according to the student that you have mentioned, I think she is doing all that to seek your attention since in this stage teenagers often like to be center of attention. Hence, I believe that it might be helpful to try to establish comfortable rapport with her. You can also make her leader of her group and ask her to take responsibility of the whole group members, I have tried this with boys where I chose the most lively boy to be leader of the group and believe me it worked since he was the only one who can handle them consequently he started behaving responsively.
Another thing you can try to plan lessons and design the activities based on the students interest e.g. teenagers have some specific interests which you can try to elicit from them and incorporate it in themes of your lessons. In my point of view the most crucial point is planning differentiated activities based on mixed abilities where every student can access the activities based on their own level rather than start distracting other students. Thus, I am a strong believer of involving students in tasks by understanding individual learners’ differences and scaffold their learning. If you are interested to know more about it please let me know and I will be very happy to share my philosophy statement with you.
Thank you for allowing me to respond to your post, I hope this might be useful and good luck for the rest of the semester.
Zainab Alsayed, ADWC
To Amal Saeed Al Hefaity
ReplyDeleteHi, My name is Meead Al Kathairi and I’m from ADWC.
I totally agree with all of your thoughts and ideas, there are such an amazing and strong methods to use in class especially with young students.
However, I also would like to add some methods from my personal experiences that will help dealing with young students. First of all, I believe that the teacher should be very patient and careful when dealing with young students. She should make them love her and respect her at the same time. It is without a doubt a difficult thing to accomplish, but still very necessary to do. It will help her make them feel free, comfortable, and happy in the classroom. They should feel those kinds of good emotions when they ask her, play with her, and interact with her. By achieving this important step, the teacher will have a good opportunity to teach her students in a more effective, valuable, and quiet environment.
Moreover, classroom management is the most important thing in the classroom. It is good for both the teacher and the students. It is good for the whole teaching and learning process. Rules in the classroom will help the teacher not only teach better, but also teach more than just here lesson. By the rules, the teacher is teaching her students the value of being organized, being respectable, and being loved by everyone. The teacher can ask the students about the rules and make them write their own rules. In this way, the teacher will be sure that her students will respect and apply the rules better.
They are many ways which the teacher can use in her classroom to teach her students, the most important thing is how they can be use, and when. Finally, in the classroom everybody is learning something new every day, even the teacher.
Insights from Year 4 Practicum
ReplyDeleteI am Mouza Hamdan from Abu Dhabi Women's College. I taught grade five students in Al Afaq Model School. In this placement, I have acquired different insights about teaching and learning in the real world of education.
Being in a real school and experiencing teaching the students for sixteen weeks assisted me to obtain knowledge about the fundamentality of different aspects in teaching not just going to the school and teach.
One important thing that I gained in this placement is to be more open and to build a good relationship with the school community. I used to be more independent and I was relying on myself when I plan and prepare for my lessons. In this placement, I attempted to collaborate with my Mentor School Teacher and to learn from her different teaching strategies and techniques to deal with the students. This was so helpful in term of preparing the best lessons for the students and pushing them to reach their potentials.
Moreover, I learned how to except others feedback and even if it was different than what I believe. I became more convinced about the idea that teaching is a demanding job where the teachers face different challenging situations which require to be patient and to think before taking any action and this for the benefit of both teacher and school. Besides, when any teacher gets involve in any new school community needs to take the suggestions and opinions of the expert teachers in school to aids in dealing with different situation and to obtain more understanding about the school and the administration system.
Furthermore, an imperative thing that I learned is that the teacher needs to develop her professionalism and understanding through conducting different things such as, action researches, taking different courses connected to teaching and learning, and attending meetings.
In conclusion, this internship was useful in preparing for the real teaching world and it assisted in developing varied concepts and insights associated with teaching and learning.
The connection between Teaching and My Life
ReplyDeleteTeaching is an important part of my life that I appreciate a lot. I believe that if any person is not educated he will miss valuable things in his life and will not be able to think as any educated person. As a novice teacher, I could understand myself more than before, assist myself and others around me, and serve my society by gearing myself to enhance my society.
Of course, if all the people in our UAE are not educated it will be harder to know what is happening in the world and in this case our society will be underdeveloped. In addition, teaching in our country is providing the Emirati people with a precious opportunity that various countries cannot offer which is free learning. Thus, I believe as Emirati individuals we have to give back this kind act by learning and encouraging people around us to learn.
To specialize in teaching taught me how to be more patient and how to think and discover things around me. In addition, teaching put in the love of lifelong learning inside me as I was exposed to different challenging situations in teaching such as, teaching young learning its self. Besides, teaching taught me implanting target languages or lessons aims or different attitudes in the young children which were not easy things to do. Moreover, to be a teacher and to experience teaching assisted me to be more professional in life and to appreciate the teachers and all people who are working in this sector because of their efforts and the patient they have toward the challenges to provide the best educational scheme.
In conclusion, teaching is honorable job and it has a respectful reputation from other people throughout the world because of the hard work the teachers making to build an educated successful world and to convey their teaching messages to the learners.
Mouza Hamdan
Noora Naser Al Omaira, Abu Dhabi Women’s Collage, Phonics.
ReplyDeleteHi, I am in Alafaq model school teaching grade three students English, Science and Math. My action research is focusing on teaching phonics to high achievers. The resone from choosing this focus was related to my previous teaching practice in semester one. I noticed that the high achievers were bored and I realized that they need to be challenged and motivated in their learning. One of my strategies was giving the high achievers challenge words for the weekly spelling test and that was motivating and challenging for the students.
Thank you
Hi again, teaching was connected to my life since my family registered me in school for the first time. I loved teaching so much and had never looked at it as a Job. It was my passion. It was my place. It was a rewarding challenge. It brought me great happiness. I never dreaded going to teach. I was excited about everything, constantly seeking out new knowledge, looking to the veteran teachers as mentors and advisers, and absolutely enjoying my time with my students.
ReplyDeleteI've always understood its importance and attempted to use it and keep it to guide my teaching. Yet, I think I've been on and off with it, between all the other things pressing and trying to keep my sanity while getting a grip on the beginning of my career as a teacher. Throughout my last teaching practice I figured out systems for my classroom as far as organizing data and keeping it accessible for planning and reflecting. These first weeks of school have been mad chaos as I've been trying to really get these systems up and going. It is crazy how much time and effort it takes to really put these systems into place. One of my favorite ways to organize my data is checklists. These are what I use most to keep track of my students' progress. Some are provided by the curriculum I use in my school and some I create myself.
It's interesting how different this school year is from last year in training. It is seriously like night and day. My fourth year of teaching practice is so much more comfortable than last year and the years before. My first year of teaching was probably my favorite, despite how much I feel I have grown as a teacher since then. The environment I worked in was just all around better. Although I do spend many moments during my days feeling like I'm stuck in a nightmare of chaos. I am already feeling the difference from preparing during my first year in this school as a student teacher to preparing for this year as my fourth year waiting for my graduation to be an active English teacher.
Some of my mentors were right in the fact that I did spend the whole year last year in survival mode. I was just trying to keep enough oxygen in my lungs to keep me from collapsing. I was not able to do all the fun, creative, time consuming preparation required activities with my class last year that I'd done this year while teaching different age group.
I spent the four year learning. Now that I know, maybe I can take this knowledge and use it to help me. I know what to expect and what not to expect. I understand when things are going to be said and not followed through with and all the thanks to my mentors for inspiring me. I am excited about where I might be able to work what I had been collecting throughout my studying as English language teacher.
Haleema Al Thahli, ADWC
Insight from the internship
ReplyDeleteHello everyone, my name is Shamsa Al Mehairi from Abu Dhabi Women's College. In this post I will discuss my experience as a student teacher in a school for ten weeks as well as sharing some of the responsibilities that comes with teaching in the school.
One of the main aspects of this internship was that you get involved in the schools system, what I mean is that you will work on daily bases with other teachers, administrators and even bus monitors. It helps you experience the reality and the responsibilities that comes with being a teacher. Having spent this long period in the school enabled me to full fully involved in the school community.
Moreover, I felt that this placement helped me develop myself as more competent teacher, I attended meeting with my Mentor School Teacher to develop myself, because teaching is an ongoing profession which is never the same. There is always something new to learn or a new technique you want to experiment with. So attending these meetings professional development sessions really offered me that chance to develop myself proficiently.
Furthermore, one of the things that I really feel that opened my eyes to the reality of being a teacher is the fact that sometimes the thing you will plan for will not happen as you wish for, you will have the students after the break and they will be jumping up and down from the sugar rush you will have to adjust what you planned to suit the situation. I feel that teachers develop quick thinking skills because sometimes you will have to quickly think of an alternative thing to do to suit the students needs.
To me this placement was a different placement than the ones we did before, it helped me understand many aspects of teaching as a full time teacher.
What I’m looking forward to most in beginning my career
ReplyDeleteBased on my teaching practice experience I realized what I want and made up my mind on some philosophies that I believe in and will be affective on me and the students.
At the beginning of my career I would like to investigate my students to put them in the right level that will suit their learning abilities. I think differentiation is the most important thing that I will be looking for in my career. According to my teaching practice as I noticed that some teacher didn’t use the differentiation method and I saw the results comparing with the other teachers that used the differentiation method.
The first teacher who influenced me the most was a HCT graduate student. She used differentiation in all her classes which was an effective way to meet student’s needs. I used differentiation in all the classes I taught and I find it motivating, challenging and fairness for all the students. On the other hand, differentiation is hard for the teacher to do since its more work and preparation for the teacher. But at the end if the teacher is looking for the best for her students she will do what they need to be successful.
In general, differentiation method is a very clever way to support students learning with their abilities. I hope all teachers recognize this approach and starts dealing with it.
Thank you.
Noora Naser Al Omaira
What I’m looking forward to most in beginning my career
ReplyDeleteBeing in Education program I have been experienced teaching and observing in variety of school such as, private, government, model schools. I have also experienced teaching different genders, ages and levels of students e.g. young and teenagers, English native students, preparatory students, primary girls and boys. This gave me an overview of different school environment and students and how teaching is like in real life situation.
When I was first year student I thought that colorful activities are the best for students learning and my most concern was on how to design the resources more than focusing on its content. I remember very well that I used to spend days in writing lesson plan and designing the most beautiful worksheets. I also thought that best teaching can only occur when students are very polite and do not interrupt the lesson by chatting or discussing about anything that is not related to the lesson.
However, my educational experience influenced my teaching. As a current Education student totally changed my perception about teaching and learning English which inspires my teaching. Freeman & Freeman (2001, p.23) cited that “teachers have studied teaching methods, and what they learned in their education classes affects how they teach”. For example, my college teachers try to use variety of techniques and methods which suit different learners. Moreover, both written and oral feedback is given on a regular basis. My teachers also encourage us to reflect on our performance and on how can we improve rather than telling us everything which I will definitely try to apply with my students. The best part is that they have very strong relationship with us.
Hence, at the begging of my career I will expect from myself to be effective teacher and make my students needs central. I am strong believer in conducting differentiation which establishes better teaching and learning environment in mixed ability classroom. So, my main concern will be dealing with each and every student as an individual where I can fulfill their needs and scaffold them to reach their potential.
I will also try hard to establish strong rapport with my students as I believe that the students can learn best when they feel safe and comfortable so building this kind of relationship with young learners is crucial to manage teaching and learning.
As a whole, as a future teacher, my priority will be student’s needs and how best they learn and I will continue reflecting on my practice in order to enhance my teaching.
Reference:
Freeman, D., & Freeman, Y. (2001). Between worlds: Access to second language acquisition. Portsmouth: Heinemenn
Zainab Alsayed, ADWC
How teaching has changed my life
ReplyDeleteTeaching is the ability that the teacher should have to attract her students to the given subject. It is the interaction between the teacher and the students in the classroom. Even it is the most difficult job anyone can do in the world, still teaching is the most important job in the world because it is almost the only job that really makes and creates the new generation. The role of the teacher begins in the lives of children at a very early age, which makes a very strong influence either negative or positive. I believe that is exactly what affects the teachers through their whole career. Here we can clearly see that the effect is not only happening to the students no matter how old they are, but also to the teachers no matter how professional they are.
As a teacher, I leaned that teaching is the most beautiful thing I have ever done. I learned how to be a totally different person, a better person not only professionally, but also personally. I learned how to be patient, wiser, loving, and caring. I realized that mistakes are not bad things. There the most amazing thing in the whole process because we learn from them how to do things right.
At the same time, I learned to expect anything from anyone. I found out that the lesson which I work really hard to prepare turned to be less than what I expected them to be. While the lessons which I spent less time prepared, turned to be some of the greatest lessons I ever taught.
Finally, teaching really has changed my life.
How teaching changed my life
ReplyDeleteTeaching is a powerful job, before I entered this major I thought that teaching is one of the most easiest jobs in the world. I thought that the teachers come in teach from the books and leaves. I then found out that these teachers determine the future of the country. They hold in their hands the key of their countries success. Without them how would people learn. At that moment my perspective of life changed. I became a person who cared for others more than themselves, a person who worked hard to help people succeed, who pushed people to reach for their highest potential. I became a teacher. Teaching made me a better person and a better member of my society.
Shamsa Abdulla Al Ketbi
Dealing with challenging behaviour
ReplyDeleteAs I mentioned before that I’m teaching grade three students English, science and Math. Dealing with students in all three subjects is hard to manage their behaviour, since its three classes in a row. For example: Math class, English class, English class.
I used different strategies to deal with misbehaving. Some of the strategies were using classroom rules, behaviour chart and musical instruments. Before the class starts I went over the classroom rules with the students and reminded them with the behaviour chart. Students who were behaving well and following the classroom rules were rewarded in the behaviour chart. Moreover, I used musical instruments when students were working in groups and when they were noisy and not following the instructions I used to play the musical instrument to grab their attention.
In this work placement I faced one issue that didn’t work with her the behaviour strategies. I decided to talk to her individually and tried to know what are the reasons from her misbehaviour. I tried to put the students the leader of the group to be active and in charge of her groups, but unfortunately that didn’t work. I talked to my Mentor School Teacher about it and she agrees with me that she’s all the time not paying attention and misbehaving. So we decided to send her to the social worker and to talk to her parents. The social worker put the students in a test were they tested her ability and attention. The student was facing problems in paying attention and misbehaving so they send her to a centre where they can solve this problem and get her in a certain program.
Finally, it’s the teacher’s job to know what works best to her students to get them in control.
Looking forward for your comments!
Noora Naser Al Omaira
How teaching has changed my life
ReplyDeleteTo me teaching is the most significant job in the world. Doctors, engineers, etc.... they wouldn’t be the way they are without being taught from a teacher. At first I thought teaching was easy were you can only teach your students without having problems. However, to get them to the point and understand each subject you have to work step by step. I believe that each child is a unique individual who needs develop so they can express their own opinions and nurture their own ideas. Teaching provided me an opportunity for continual learning and growth. My aim as a teacher is to encourage a love of learning in my students. I learned that it is important for students to work with someone who is aware of their individual needs. As a teacher, I have to allow my students to express their feelings and enjoy their learning process. As a result, this will help them increase their self esteem and develop themselves. Teaching taught me how to be patient and how to deal with different students. Teaching will help my country to develop and bring an educated and creative generation. Teaching is all about helping students become who they are, by giving them opportunities to explore a variety of areas of knowledge and experience and start to make their own choice. Teaching is a lifelong learning process of new strategies, learning from colleagues, and especially learning from the students. I am a person who will always do my best to be the best teacher that I can be.
Ayesha, ADWC
How teaching changed my life
ReplyDeleteI remember being a grade three students who dreaded going to school because I absolutely hated my teachers, what I thought of in that time was how mean they were.
As a young girl I didn’t really understand what is teaching or why is it important. To me teaching meant nothing but punishing students and giving them homework. I think that I really did not have fun as a young students, I did not enjoy my primary years and wanted to stop studying. I know it sounds extreme but to me going to schools was a burden I had to go through every day.
When I started my preparatory years I meet the most inspirational teacher in my life, she was so nice and kind that I changed my perspective on teaching and going to school. I actually worked hard on my subjects, I wanted to be recognized and praised by her. She motivated me and give me the push I needed to know that one day I want to be a teacher,
I wished that I would meet different students who went through different things is their lives and be a person who guides them and be a confidant to their troubles.
I believe that the teachers role is not just limited to teaching a lesson, teachers go through many thing on daily basis. The teachers job is to build the next generation who will contribute to the success of our country. They hold a lot of responsibilities, they should not just teach their students the curriculum. Teachers offer their students the chance to have a friend, a mother, an aunt, a family.
For me this is what a teacher is.
Shamsa Al Mehairi, ADWC
Experiences in an Internship: Insight gained when teaching in a school full time
ReplyDeleteRuwaya Ebrahim (ADWC)
Being a full time teacher has given me the opportunity to develop and being responsible towards improving the teaching and learning in the UAE schools. It has added to my understanding of the EFL context and the needs of the learners in the UAE schools as I observed and practiced teaching in a school that cooperates with CFBT which aims to improve education practice. It increased my knowledge of the school administrative model. While teaching I could see the changes that happened during the whole year and that assisted me to cope with the difficulties and look more closely in the changes. Thus, in the future I could pose a change and empower my teaching.
Furthermore, it was worth to mention that being a full time teacher assisted me to improve the relationship between me and the other staff in the school and the students and that is a great importance to help the teachers and learners to be success (Mills, 2007). That demonstrated that I have become capable in managing learning and communicating with others which was one of the aims that I wanted to improve this year.
Reference:
Mills, G. E. (2007). Action research: A guide for the teacher researcher. New Jersey: Persons Education, Inc.
What I’m looking forward to most in beginning my career
ReplyDeleteRuwaya Ebrahim (ADWC)
Teaching becomes one of the precious phrases in my life and I enjoy participating in the learning process. Joining the bachelor of Education and teaching various grades levels made me have a strong desire to become an English teacher and help to generate an educational population. I am also willing to change the traditional way to become more effective and interesting to enhance learning.
One of the areas that I am looking forward to develop in my future career is professionalism and understanding which is based on my teaching philosophy. Before I start teaching I should understand the approaches that are related to the skills of literacy. I am also going to conduct observations on peers and reflective journals as these strategies are effective in order to reflect on teaching. I am also going to demonstrate initiatives and to being active participant in the school, and show a high standard of professional behavior such as being punctual.
Based on my experience in the UAE government schools, I strongly wish that I will have my own class and a small area in which I can implement various strategies and manage learning. That will assist me to produce print-rich environment which is a powerful strategy in EFL classrooms to improve learning.
Furthermore, I am looking forward to generating a learner-centered classroom to assist students to be responsible and independent of their own learning. As there is a growing awareness in authenticity in teaching and learning (Backman & Palmer, 1996). For example, I am going to design a wide range of authentic activities inside and outside the classroom in order to enhance learning such as using computer corner, reading corner, writing corner, games corner… etc.
I am looking forward to become an English teacher to develop the future of the UAE.
Reference
Bachman, L.F. & Palmer, A.S. (2000). Language testing in practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
@ Noora Naser Al Omaira
ReplyDeleteWow, that must have been a big challenge for you, i wonder why no one else noticed the problem before!
I think it was a good decision to try different strategies to get her attention before judging that she has a problem and sent her off to the social worker < which is what everyone seems to think is the best way ever and dont even bother trying to deal with it>
I faced problem with my second grade class whom i taught both science and English, a great bunch was super active and sometimes i really couldn't deal with them. I tried some of the strategies you mentioned and it worked like a charm!Of course though, every class is different ;)
Glad you could work it out and im sure you enjoyed your time with them. Good luck on your final research :)
Asma Abdulla, RKWC
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