Strategies
for Your Own Lectures
By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.
School of English
Faculty of Social Sciences
Universidad Latina de Costa Rica
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Post 273
Oftentimes you find yourself
questioning whether your lectures in class are or are not engaging enough for
your learners. But, aren’t they? Part of our teaching lies on our strategies to
disseminate information that can be stored in our learners’ brains for later
use in the lesson, in the course, or even in the program. But are we really
aiming at it?
Let me share a bit of what I regularly
do. Perhaps, this simple exercise can help you find the best way to structure
your presentations.
·
Step 1: Come up with a
brief description of your class and lecture topic
English
Language Teaching
|
In this course students
are exposed to 7 basic literary analysis techniques, but the target one was Reader Response. The idea is to have
students understand that literature awakes emotions and feelings in the
readers and how all of these contribute to our comprehension of literary
pieces.
|
BIN-29
Literary Criticism
|
|
Hybrid
Learning-oriented course
|
|
Lecture
Topic: Reader Response in literary analysis
|
·
Step 2: Think of a
possible strategy for making that class lecture more active at each of the
following moments in the class period:
a) At the beginning of the class: Schema activation activity with a short story or poem that
can produce an impactful awakening of emotions and feelings among learners.
b) In the middle of the class period: Think-pair-share activity to have
students work on https://www.focusgroupit.com, which is a website where pupils
can have an exchange of ideas after a question has been posted.
c) At the end of class: An exit-ticket activity in which students will provide me
with feedback on how much they understood the topic and what else they need I must
continue building for their understanding of the topic.
·
Step 3: Predict any
positive outcomes you would expect and challenges you might encounter with
implementing these new strategies in your lecture.
At
this point, I don’t need to predict any positive outcome since the activity was
already carried out with very positive results. Due to the fact that my
students know I like to use technology in my teaching, they find my activities
entertaining and I see learners nicely engaged with my monitoring, of course.
The only challenge I have encountered is making sure that students get a good
Internet connection in our room.
Though for sure I am not re-inventing
the wheel, what really counts here is the reflective exercise that can
–meta-cognitively- help you see yourself teaching and how students are being
impacted by your way of instructing them. So the next time you want to
qualitatively “measure” the scope of your teaching consider the following:
a)
Be certain of what your topic for
presentation is and how it fits into the class continuum;
b)
Consider a number of strategies that
can be used at the beginning, in the middle, or even at the end of your class
session; and
c)
Predict that scope of your teaching in
terms of positive outcomes and potential challenges you will need to cope with.
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Teacher, thanks to share. I admire you a lot and thanks for inspiring me to continue with my career, people like you is what we need in this world.
More than welcome, Marilyn!
Hope you can continue to grow professionally in the next few years!