Strategies
for Engaging Students
By Prof. Jonathan Acuña Solano
Tuesday,
September 30, 2014
Twitter:
@jonacuso
Post
149
I
am an ELT instructor mostly working with students who are majoring in English
Language Teaching (ELT) at Universidad Latina in Costa Rica. I currently teach
various types of courses, mostly on literature and technology for education, on
a hybrid modality in which there is a F2F session per week and an
Internet-based assignment for students to complete. For the nature of these college
courses, I work with different teaching focuses to deal with diverse
instructional objectives and outcomes in which I take into account student
learning preferences and their development of technological skills to be used
in education.
As
a very simple teaching strategy I get to use in any of the courses I teach, at
the beginning of each course I tell my students –based on the course outline-
what I expect of them in our hybrid modality of learning always linked to
Bloom’s taxonomy, which allows me to see a measurable behavior when projects
are submitted. At the beginning of the course, as if it were some sort of
previewing exercise for me, I try to find out how much students know
technology-wise and content-wise to foresee which areas need to be strengthened
or developed more to achieve learning outcomes. And to guarantee success, I
like to spend some 20 minutes of each class making sure what the class needs to
have accomplished by the time online assignments are submitted.
My
pupils will always find a sketch of every single piece of a project they must
develop in my class, which somehow synthetizes what needs to be learned,
mastered, and graded. I have created my own instructional tools to comply with
course outline requisites. However, it is interesting when I have my learners
work hand-on on something right there in the classroom, whether that is in situ
or perhaps prepared in advanced. In any case, when they are made responsible
for their own learning, it is when I get to realize what my students are made
of and ready to perform to demonstrate that my explanations have not been
delivered only to the classroom’s walls.
In
terms of formative and summative assessment, my exercises –I guess I should
call them learning tasks- are broken into different segments to see the
evolution of the process and how students handle it. I am not into partial or
final examinations any more, and for that reason I break down those percentages
to have more fulfilling learning tasks to verify that students are
understanding and that there is a change in their behavior as future teaching
professionals. I would rather see my students perform badly once than to see
them failing because of an exam. Learning projects are much more rewarding for
my students, who get a sense of accomplishment, and for me the instructor, who
can see their development throughout the process.
At
certain key moments of the course, especially after certain big tasks, I like
to have a feedback session with the whole class. I like to give my feedback to
my students as well as to listen to what they have to say. If there is
something that can be improved, I will try to take care of it to maximize
student learning. If it cannot be done during the term, I keep that information
to make a different kind of planning the next time I teach the course.
Reflective teaching with student feedback is a great way to achieve one’s
professional development.
Pronunciation
Development
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Reading Skills
Development
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Curated Topics
Online
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Pittman, A. (2013, Nov. 25). Student Engagement. [PPT]. Retrieved on
Sept. 30, 2014 from the SlideShare.Net Website at http://www.slideshare.net/Eastteacher80/student-engagement-28599319?related=1
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