Strategies for Engaging Students
By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano
School of English
Faculty
of Social Sciences
Universidad
Latina de Costa Rica
Thursday, March 10, 2016
Post 233
I am an ELT instructor mostly working with students who
are majoring in English Language Teaching (ELT). I currently teach various
types of courses, mostly on literature and technology for education, on a
hybrid modality. For the nature of these courses, I work with different
teaching focuses to deal with diverse instructional objectives and outcomes in
which I take into account student learning preferences.
As a very simple teaching strategy, 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. 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 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 synthetize 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.
Thursday, March 10, 2016
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