To teach or not to teach, THAT IS the question !

Have you ever asked yourself why do some students hate English classes?

When I first taught English and Literature to high schoolers, I realized that reading, writing, and Literature are the least preferred areas in language for students. I believe there are several reasons behind this, such as how hard it is to put your ideas into writing, different interests of students, and the way has transformed over time. As for reading, it turned out to be a nightmare for students as no one likes to pick out in a crowd. Also, sometimes they feel afraid of not reading as fast as their peers, which impacts their motivation and willingness to participate.

The next area of English learning students dread is writing because it has many rules to follow and consequently many ways to make mistakes, starting from different ways to spell words, congregation, verb punctuation, and ending with syllabication. Such rules make it hard for many students to write down their thoughts without remembering and following hundreds of solid rules.

Finally, Literature is an area that students dislike as the language they study for their literature classes was usually written hundreds of years ago. Because the language has changed since most of these literary texts were written, they are hard to comprehend and pointless to study nowadays. Therefore, English teachers must consider these obstacles and address them to achieve their students’ development and academic success. Good teachers are life-long learners committed to students’ academic development, and that includes the following set of qualities and characteristics to become an effective and competent teacher.

  1. Set achievable goals

Any teacher should know how to set clear objectives for individual students to set and measure challenges, both for the students and the teacher.

2. Check comprehension:

Instead of waiting for exams to test students’ understanding, a teacher should keep track of that during every lesson. This process enables teachers to answer their students’ concerns and questions before they pile up and become harder to address and solve.

3. Clear communication

Teachers always use communication skills to identify students’ needs. However, they need to know when to listen instead of talking using the following tips :

4. Ask for more clarification when needed

If you, as a teacher, do not fully understand what a student needs, ask him/her to rephrase the question or request. You also can repeat what you understood to make sure you got the message right.

5. Be a role model

Setting ground rules and encouraging certain behaviors is vital to achieving student development as it helps students build healthy habits and attitudes.

6. Flexibility and adaptability

As teachers, we need to consider that each student has a unique background with individual personalities, learning styles, educational needs, and developmental wishes.

7. Embrace students’ individuality

A teacher should create a welcoming and accepting environment inside the classroom that reinforces freedom of thoughts and questions and zero tolerance of judgment and bullying. When students feel respected and accepted, they become more willing to express concerns, make mistakes, and ask for guidance and help.

8.Preparation

As mentioned beforehand, it is crucial to adjust to students’ individual needs, which requires teachers to prepare for possible case scenarios while creating their lesson plans and forming the expected learning goals for their students.

9. Self-reflection

Teachers need to be mindful of their weaknesses and strengths to be able to make improvements when needed before they ask their students to do so

10. Life-long learning

Teachers should always pursue professional development opportunities and training to keep up with the most effective and latest teaching strategies and methods to serve their students best. That includes exploring child psychology to be aware of their students’ emotional change and how that can impact their academic performance.

11.Promote the love of learning

When students enjoy learning, they are more willing to participate and perform better academically and personally. Therefore, teachers should always consider games during lesson planning to turn any lesson into an entertaining and engaging learning experience.

12.Teachers should not be the only feedback givers!

Good teachers should welcome student feedback and remarks about what went well and wrong in class. In other words, Students should feel safe to express their thoughts and dislikes about a topic or a lesson and their recommendations of new areas that best engage them in the classroom.

My personal reflection on CALL class

 What specifically helped me learn?

The applications presented by my friends helped me a lot in getting students more engaged while learning, and I have been thriving to incorporate new online tools in my classes ever since

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  1. If I were to show someone my learning in this course, I would use blogs and presentations created by my colleagues and me as they form a very enriching and beneficiary resource for current and prospective teachers, which isn’t exclusive to teachers of English

2.What do you want Dr. Maha and Dr. Thomas to know that might help them improve this course?

I believe having assignments, and discussions on more than one platform (slack, WordPress, and Onehe) all at once was confusing and dreadful to me as a digital immigrant at first. So, I believe offering a video tutorial on how to use one by one and what is expected from us in terms of blogs can make this shift much smoother

3.What did I like the most about the course? Hmmm! I lost count, But I’ll do my best to name some :

  • Makeups, flexible deadlines, and achievable goals
    • I enjoyed to the fullest carrying out free nerve-wracking tasks that actually taught me something, they were not pointless assignments to receive a grade !
    • This class set clear objectives for individual students and set and measured challenges, both for the students and the professors
  • Syllabus annotation

I enjoyed that feeling of ownership and that I have a saying in how our class works (I can’t believe I just said our !). We weren’t passive learners as we used to be in the rest of our TESOL classes.

  • Timely feedback

My colleagues’ comments on my blogs, mini calls, and discussions helped to confirm if I am aligning with our class learning goals and expectations or not. Also, my professors’ written feedback offered a detailed, clear, and constructive evaluation of my academic performance.

  • The varied open channels and smooth communication

Many professors prefer to talk more instead of listening to their students, but that WASN’T the case in this class. Instead of preparing for the answer, Dr.Maha and Dr.Thomas used active listening skills to focus on what we say and gave themselves a few seconds to respond.

  • Professors’ Promotion of fun learning

Good teachers make learning enjoyable by educating students engagingly and appealingly. I, as an introvert, enjoyed this class and was more willing to participate and can tell, with confidence, that I performed my best academically and personally. We always had breakout rooms that required collaboration skills, and critical thinking turned every class into an entertaining and engaging learning experience.

  • Professors weren’t the only feedback givers !

This portfolio in itself welcomes feedback and remarks about what went well and wrong in class. I felt safe, as a student, to express my thoughts and concerns lesson and enjoyed taking the initiative and making recommendations on how to get best engaged in the class and assignments.

  • The harmony and cooperation between the professors

This was cream de la cream of the whole thing to be honest. Dr.Maha and Dr. Thomas had great chemistry in class and spread such good vibes the entire time. I love how they would finish each class while arranging a phone call meeting to decide on something related to our class.

4. Last but not least, I love and cherish every single one of my colleagues, thank you for making this class so fun and peaceful. I am not crying; you are crying 🙂

Jeopardy games as a fun tool of learning

Why Should You use “Jeopardy” in Your Classroom?

  • You can customize the questions to whatever level or stage you are teaching in class. 
  •  “Jeopardy” is great for reviewing material your students should already have learned. You can use it to review vocabulary, grammar, or culture and even cover all those topics in the same game.
  • You can also use Jeopardy to review students’ information before a test or as an end-of-the-year recap on your school year.
  • It’s a fun way to practice question formation as players have to come up with the questions
  • Teachers still can choose to modify the familiar format of giving answers and requiring questions
  • Students can enjoy the game without being mindful to the amount of information they’re retaining in the process.
  • The games can reinforce learning on specific topic areas
  • The game can be an open or a closed book activity, it is entirely up to the teacher
  •   Students can create a jeopardy game as part of a project or an assessment submission. 
  •  Unlimited number of Jeopardy games’ templates are available on Google.
  • Jeopardy activities can be shared on interactive whiteboards or projectors.
  •  Jeopardy review games help students understand and remember concepts and content.

Instructions for Playing classic Jeopardy

  1. Students can play them alone or in groups.
  2. The teacher picks a category and a point value for it.
  3. The teacher clicks on the box for the question.
  4. Students must give the answer in the form of a question before clicking again. …
  5. To see if a student or group is correct, click again for the answer.
  6. Click the “Back to Board” button on the slide to return to the mainboard.
  7. If the student or team is correct, they get rewarded the point value of the question.
  8. The dollar values disappear after each question.
  9. Continue until all questions have been answered. The team with the most points wins.
  • As a teacher, you can create your game in minutes
  • Search from thousands of premade game templates
  • Students can play Classic Memory games, Jeopardy-style, or Multiple Choice
  •  Teachers can use and share online Jeopardy flashcards
  • Students can play from their computer, tablet, or phone
  • Jeopardy is a great way for checking participant comprehension and can be used for any subject, as it is a question-and-answer activity.
  • Young, as well as adult learners, will enjoy its competitive nature. It can be a lot of fun, depending upon how the teacher decides the answering process.
  • The teacher can require students to ring a bell, wave their hands, stand up, or throw a cushion in the air to indicate that the group knows the answer.
  • Jeopardy is a competitive game that involves quick answers. As a result, learners who need to take time to answer may find the game too rushed and noisy for their comfort.
  •  Decreases Student Attention Span
  • Jeopardy games’ fast pace and immediate feedback create a problem with student attention.
  • If students begin to expect the same kind of responses from all parts of their education and won’t find it, that will lead them to frustration.
  • Some features are only available with a paid account, but the good news is that the access requires a one-time lifetime membership that costs $20, which sounds affordable for most teachers. Those features currently are :
  • Inserting images
  • Embedding video and audio files from YouTube, Vimeo, Soundcloud, etc.
  • Adding more questions to your game (additional rows and columns)
  • Making your games private
  • Keeping all of the teachers’ games on a single webpage, they have a link directly to.

3. Student Assessment

When choosing a game, it is not often clear how the results of the game will tie into your course assessment.

ACTFL Standards for learning languages

  • The World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages define the central role of world languages in the learning career of every student. The five-goal areas of the Standards establish an inextricable link between communication and culture, which is applied in making connections and comparisons and in using this competence to be part of local and global communities.
  • The five “C” goal areas (Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities) stress the application of learning a language beyond the instructional setting. The goal is to prepare learners to apply the skills and understandings measured by the Standards, to bring global competence to their future careers and experiences

ACTFL Standards application in Jeopardy lab

Communication

Interpretive Communication: Learners can use Jeopardy to understand, interpret, and analyze what is heard, read, or viewed on a variety of topics

Cultures (Relating Cultural Practices to Perspectives)

 Jeopardy helps students use the language to investigate and reflect on the relationship between the practices and perspectives of the culture studied

Connections (Acquiring Information and Diverse Perspectives)

Learners can use Jeopardy to review information and diverse perspectives that are available through the language and its culture.

– Comparisons:

Jeopardy helps learners compare the culture studied and their own.

Communities/ Lifelong Learning:

– Learners set goals and reflect on their progress in using Jeopardy for enjoyment, enrichment, and advancement. The virtual model helps students who have trouble with social interaction and gives them the motive to work together. Learners can also use Jeopardy both within and beyond the classroom to interact.

Krashen’s theory of second language acquisition

Krashen‘s theory of second language acquisition consists of five main hypotheses:

  • the Acquisition-Learning hypothesis (The acquired system)
  • Language is learned using a subconscious process which is very similar to the process children undergo when they acquire their first language. Jeopardy games similarly require from the learners a meaningful interaction in the target language (natural communication ) in which speakers focus on the communicative act rather than the form of their utterances.
  • The Monitor hypothesis

The Monitor hypothesis is the practical result of the learned grammar. The ‘monitor’ achieves planning, editing, and correcting functions when three specific criteria are met:

  • The second language learners know the rule.
  • They focus on form and think about correctness.
  • They have enough time to think of the answer.
  • The Input hypothesis
  • According to this hypothesis, the learners improve along with the ‘natural order’ when they receive second language ‘input’ that is one step beyond their current level of linguistic competence. As for Jeopardy games, they allow Instantaneous feedback allows students to see their weakness areas, and this can push them to try the quiz or activity again to get a higher placement back home.
  • By increasing student engagement, you’ll also see a rise in learning retention as students will be able to relate to the content easier through practice than just reading or watching a lecture.
  •  the Affective Filter hypothesis

Krashen debates that learners with high motivation are more successful in learning a second language. Jeopardy fosters feelings of enthusiasm towards the foreign language as students become more excited and competitive while learning with a reward system. Jeopardy’s badges and points also help translate the work the student is completing into a tangible benefit.

The power of positivity in classroom

Classroom environment is one of the most important factors affecting student learning. Unfortunately, being enrolled in public schools impacted my learning experience negatively for long. Such a strategy of turning the whole learning process into a student-centered one was not adopted back then and since students’ feel engaged in the learning process when the material is relevant to their needs and goals, I, as a student, could rarely relate to most of my classes.

Unfortunately, our teachers seldom gave us a say in how the classroom operates. Alas lowered our sense of ownership in the education process and diminished our teachers’ chances to discover our learning styles and interests, and consequently hindered their teaching methods and strategies. Furthermore, Laying down the ground rules to create a positive and productive classroom was not a common approach either for most of my teachers. My school teachers never created a Classroom Code of Conduct by asking students to identify how they would be treated. I believe that is why most of my colleagues could not identify whether their behaviors are appropriate for the classroom or not. Subsequently, they were not aware that not following the rules will likely negatively affect the entire class as and themselves as well.

Later on, after traveling to study in the U.S, my whole learning perspective transformed drastically. My professors exerted a tremendous effort to ensure that their students are comfortable and safe in their classroom environment. I was taught how to fit in before taking risks in my learning. It was the first time I got introduced to group-based projects (as my previous school teachers avoided using them and preferred playing safe with assigning individual tasks to each of us. That new system turned my entire world upside down as thinking out of the classroom box and pushing students out of their comfort zone was perceived as a booger for both my teachers and their students at Egyptian public schools.

 

In addition, my professors always gave rewards and verbal for their positive actions. It was the first time I got introduced to the idea of assignment’s soft deadlines and makeups, which was a life savior within the entire mess of the acclimatization process and cultural shock. For my professors back then, it was proactive to be funny, sympathetic, and supportive to persuade us, as students, to listen to them. They often used “sir,” “ma’am,” and “please” with students who showed how important it is to give respect to earn respect. They also used “thank you” to show that they hear and appreciate us, even if our answers were wrong. Students should receive positive comments for their performance and attitude, including their problem-solving skills, managing time skills, getting along with others skills, taking responsibility by self-correction, and setting and achieving goals.

Reflecting on this as a teacher, I must admit that a teacher’s attitude in class is very important. It significantly affects students in many ways, not to mention how far it can shape their learning experience. I have lost count of how many times I experienced stress that carried with me all the way home, but I eventually noticed that dwelling on this prevented me from finding positive ways to eliminate such stress. Therefore, I decided to take a closer look at what went wrong and turn it around. It hit me back then that it upset me when my students didn’t do the reading. So, I decided to give them 5 minutes by the start of each class to do it, even though it meant finding ways to keep task-based students busy. I had other days when I was really mad because they were extra rowdy that day, so I came up with a deal to give them a five-minute break after our first 45-minute class to loosen up, eat or go to the bathroom to break such deja vu disruptive pattern I noticed earlier. I wouldn’t lie and say that my life was not full of roses later on, as it was extremely hard to transform my mindset after being exposed to such a futile learning environment for most of my academic life. However, it was a major relief when you stop focusing on what went wrong and prepare yourself for the next day for the sake of both you and your students.

Is online instructional mode bad for kinesthetic students ?

Meet Dina. Dina is a kinesthetic and a visual learner. When she was a child, her favorite classes in school (besides PE) was her fifth-grade science class when the teacher allowed the students to play inside the school lab and learn new concepts about chemical interactions. As for her favorite English class, the teacher had students come to the front and act out what they were reading.Dina was an introvert individual but ironically she ended up working as a teacher. She started searching for ways to reach out students with different learning styles because she has always believed in the “no man behind policy”. Alas, 2019 was a whole turning point to her on the academic and the professional level, (social distancing, quarantine, and shifting to online learning teaching modes.

Is online environment helpful for students with different learning styles ?

   That is a question Dina has asked herself dozens of times for the past year, both as a student and a teacher. As a visual and a kinesthetic learner, she has been really struggling since the pandemic started and shifted her entire world to the virtual mode. Dina believes that what she misses the most is the interpersonal communication inside the classroom and that what is really giving her a hard time recently .

When she was asked about her online teaching experience eversince Corona’s strike, she replied ” when I started my online tutoring journey, it felt like a nightmare. I used to count on body language during teaching inside my classes, and Boom !  I cant do it anymore. My first online IELTS class was a horrific experience because my student was a kinesthetic learner too ( I mean what are the odds !) . I knew I had to get out of my comfort zone and start searching for different ways to reach that poor guy on the other side of the screen who believes that am his only way to hit the admission requirement score of his dream college.

Dina realized that in order to design an online course from scratch, she has to include instructional materials that can meet the needs of my students to ensure that my course is accessible and can meet the learning preferences of my students as well. She started making the course materials as immersive as possible. As Dina’s story shows, kinesthetic learners perform the best way when all their senses are fully engaged . Even though online learning is perceived primarily as engaging the eyes and maybe the ears of some learners, that leaves out kinesthetic learners’ strongest sense for retention, which is touching their surroundings.

When Dina started searching for content that can engage all the senses, She found many useful resources, including interactive presentations and simulations to create immersive experiences for her students .She added that even simple enhancements to her classes such as including pictures or sound effects could help remind her kinesthetic students of the real-life situations that the material is related to and consequently increased their retention. Dina also added that she’s currently searching for different online resources to help students with other learning styles. What about your online experience as a learner and a teacher ? any hacks you found helpful to bridge that gap ?  

Fake it to make it: A horror story

Fake it to make it

Once upon a time, I had a full-time job for the first time as a grade 7 writing and conversation teacher at an international school. It was the youngest age bracket I have EVER taught, and I realized during my first class that those students hate writing. So, as a sort of ice breaker, I thought I should ask them to write about anything they want in life using pseudonyms or fake names and submit it by the next class to receive a general feedback about their writing style without being graded.  How did it go?  It went .. em.. okay! As many of them were not accountable enough, there was some plagiarizing, and there were a bunch of less than four-line writings.  BUT, this is not a story about any of that!

Reading goosebumps

This is a story of a student who used ” the quest for magical dust” repeatedly throughout her writing, where she signed as Ezmeralda. She had very neat handwriting and exceptional use of sophisticated vocabulary, which led me to eventually figure out who she was. At first, I thought it was a two-page factious story she made up, which took place during medieval ages about millions of soldiers, led by a king, who was trying to reach the queen and set her free before being murdered in 28 days. As I referred earlier, her punctuation was flawless, her words were descriptive, and you could tell she was a rising writing star. However, she used many double-meaning (explicit) words, and I was like, “I bet she messed up in terms of collocation. After reading her “manuscript” many times, trying to figure out what magical dust is, it hit me. I was standing in front of a sensual text. I am not sure if I felt that anxious because these kids were 12 to 13 years old and I am a mother myself or because I was not well prepared for such a situation. I wrote my “neutral” feedback at the end of her page and turned all of the students’ drafts back.

My first grey hair!

 After a couple of weeks, the same class was required to write an argumentative essay, and I was hoping to know who that student was based on her writing style and handwriting. I kept digging in that pile, and VOILA! I found her ! and this was when my heart dropped. She was the shyest student in there and a well-known one because she is a priest’s daughter. I have always believed that a teacher is an academic facilitator and talks and spends a long time with those kids than their parents. I contacted the school counselor and she recommended we escalate this but I thought I should meet with her first. so, I asked her to drop by my office after school and expressed my admiration of her first essay, she was so excited and said “ did you really like it ?” . I replied that it was interesting and a LITTLE BIT confusing, and this is when she started elaborating more and said that she dreams of becoming a sesnsual writer when she grows up. I could not crash her dreams by expressing how shocked I felt and ended up wishing her good luck .

The unforeseen turning point !

     Surprisingly, that shy student started becoming more engaging in our conversation and writing classes, but I could not help asking her first about her presentation topic to avoid any kind of ..em .. inconvenience . I ended up quitting my job a year later, but this student will leave a mark in my memory forever. Do you think I should have handled it differently ? and have you been through any similar uncomfortable situation with a student before ? cant wait to read yours !

Implications of Social and Emotional Development in learning

Emotional development as a concept

The role of emotions in behavior and development is significant and leads directly to the nature of emotion itself. Despite the fact that our emotional development is a complex developmental task, emotions are mainly socially constructed: “they both emerge from and provide the basis for human attachments, social communication, and prosocial as well as antisocial encounters with adults and children” (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000, p. 107).

O’Connor and Ammen (2013) also state how much our emotional development can regulate our understanding:

”Emotional regulation follows a similar developmental progression. Infants rely on others to help them regulate their emotions. Preschoolers begin to develop the ability to self-regulate their behavior and emotions, though they often need support from others. As children enter adolescence, their ability to self-regulate should be quite well developed. Self-regulation is a critical skill closely linked to the growth of self-awareness and understanding. Problems with emotional development and regulation affect children’s relationships with others, and their competence in effectively getting their needs met. Facilitating the child’s emotional development and regulation is critical to effective treatment.”

Alas, during the past 10 years, studies on student emotion seem to be ‘loosely connected (Hascher (2010) as most of those studies offer different theoretical approaches while others are not based on any theory of emotion. However, she states that three main approaches can be detected:

  1. students’ state emotions: emotional episodes
  2. students’ trait emotions: affective tendencies
  3. the emotionality of the learning setting (teachers and instruction)

Hascher also clarifies that the only emotion that is very well investigated is anxiety. Some other advocates of the same opinion are Pekrun & Schutz, (2007) who state that we know so much more about anxiety compared to what we know about other emotions.

The causes of anxiety in school are many including gender differences, students’ self-concept, and family situation.

A big step towards the understanding of anxiety was made by Liebert & Morris in 1967. They found that test-anxiety derives into two components: The first component is ‘ emotionality’ which means that we tend to be more activated if we are afraid of something.. The second component is called the’worry’ component, which is considered the harmful part. Anxious students worry about their tasks, which lead to task-irrelevant cognition that interfere with the tasks themselves.

Such irrelevant thinking pattern absorb attention and negatively impact recall of information. Furthermore, highly anxious students show a high level of negative indulgence because of constantly being intimidated of failure (Sarason, 1975).

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