Unit I: Teaching Methods
1.1 Managing Content and Selecting Instructional Techniques and TLM
1.2 Managing the Classroom Environment
1.3 Establishing and maintaining a positive communication climate in the classroom
1.4 Micro Teaching
1.5 Macro Teaching
1.1 Managing Content and Selecting Instructional Techniques and TLM
Definition
"Content management occurs when teachers manage space, materials, equipment, the movement of people, and lessons that are part of a curriculum or program of studies" (Froyen & Iverson, 1999, p. 128).
For most teachers and instructors, content remains a key focus. Content includes facts, ideas, principles, evidence, and descriptions of processes or procedures. A great deal of time is spent on discussing what content should be included in the curriculum, what needs to be covered in a course or a program, what content sources such as text-books students should access, and so on. Teachers and instructors often feel pressured to cover the whole curriculum in the time available. In particular, lecturing or face-to-face classes remain a prime means for organising and delivering content.
Probably more important than the teacher or instructor being clear on why content is being taught is for the students to understand this. One way of stating this is to ask: what value is added to the overall goals of this course or program by teaching this specific content? Do students need to memorise this content, or know where to find it, and when it is important to use it? This means of course having very clear goals for the course or program as a whole.
In particular, covering content quickly or overloading students with content are not effective teaching strategies, because even working harder all waking hours will not enable students in these subject domains to master all the information they need in their professions. Specialization has been a traditional way of handling the growth of knowledge, but that does not help in dealing with complex problems or issues in the real world, which often require inter-disciplinary and broader based approaches. Thus instructors need to develop strategies that enable students to cope with the massive and growing amounts of knowledge in their field.
Selecting Instructional Techniques
When teachers prepare lessons, they often incorporate new strategies—graphic organizers, mnemonics, charts, word banks, written outlines, and other materials—in the hope that variety will attract and hold student interest. Novelty can, however, have a negative impact on learning as students may spend more time trying to figure out how to use the strategy than on the concepts and big ideas they should be learning. And with so many different options to learn, students may not practice the strategy enough to use it independently of the teacher.
To help select which strategies to use as the mainstays of instruction, teachers should consider the following questions:
· How can students use the strategy across disciplines?
· How does the strategy engage students as active participants in their learning?
· How can students use the strategy independently of the teacher?
· Is the strategy flexible enough to be used in all learning environments?
Regardless of which instructional strategies we employ, a few general best practices should guide us. These practices facilitate student learning and increase engagement and motivation, and they apply equally well to both online and face-to-face modalities.
Active Learning
The premise of active learning is that students learn better and are more engaged when they interact directly with material than when they sit passively and only watch or listen.
Scaffolding
Scaffolding acknowledges the role that prior experience and prerequisite knowledge play in learning and can be understood through the lens of Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). According to Vygotsky’s theory, there are three zones of development. The first zone represents tasks and activities that learners can accomplish on their own without help. The third zone represents tasks and activities which the learner cannot yet accomplish, even with guidance. The second area, the ZPD, represents the area of optimal learning. This area represents the tasks and activities that learners can accomplish with some guidance from instructors or more experienced peers. Students should find the work in this zone appropriately challenging; it is not so easy as to be boring nor so hard as to be overwhelming. In the ZPD, students are drawing on prior learning and adding new information in order to move to a different level of knowledge.
Drawing Connections to Existing Knowledge
According to several of the learning theories, including cognitivism and constructivism, learning occurs when students make connections between new information and existing knowledge. Cognitive scientists also argue that these connections between pieces of information improve memory, making it easier to recall facts and concepts.
Using a Variety of Instructional Strategies
Another important practice is to vary our instructional approaches by presenting material in different formats and offering a variety of activities for learning and hands-on practice. We often hear advice for varying strategies tied to the idea of learning styles, or the belief that individuals have a preferred mode of learning or acquiring new information
We should also recognize that multiple approaches align with the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) by ensuring that learners can access and engage regardless of their background and ability.
Selection of teaching learning material (TLM)
TLM is commonly used acronym
that stands for Teaching Learning
Material, Broadly the term refers to a spectrum of educational materials that a
teacher uses in the classroom to support specific learning objectives as said
out
in lesson plans. Teaching Learning Materials are tools for significant teaching
and learning.
They are useful to enhance
the quality of teaching learning process.
A teacher must explore a variety of materials as suitable aids for instruction
to
supplement the textbook to provide additional information, to broaden the
concepts
and to arouse students’ interest.
Teaching Learning Materials
in teaching of English prove to be
supportive in providing experiences to the students in their development of
language
competencies. Some of the important teaching learning materials are:
1. Text book
2. Supplementary Reading Materials
3. Work books
4. Reading Materials- newspaper, magazines, story books etc.
5. Reference Materials- encyclopedias, dictionaries etc.
6. Graphic Materials – charts, pictures, cartons, posters etc.
7. Activity Materials- flash cards, puzzles, crosswords, word building blocks and other language games.
8. Language lab
9. Sophisticated Materials or Electronic Materials- radio, tape – recorder, T.V. multi media kits etc.
1.2 Managing the Classroom Environment
Classroom management is the process of organizing and conducting the business of the classroom. Many perceive it as the preservation of order through teacher control. Classroom management is much more than that, however! It also involves the establishment and maintenance of the classroom environment so that educational goals can be accomplished (Savage & Savage, 2010). Effective classroom managers create orderly, safe environments where students feel valued and comfortable, thus setting the stage for teaching and learning. To achieve that, they strategically arrange classroom space to support a variety of independent, small and large group activities (Crane, 2001).
There are a number of classroom management strategies available to teachers. Let’s begin by taking a look at three management approaches. These three approaches to classroom management form a continuum, from the self-discipline approach at one extreme, to the instructional approach, to the desist approach at the opposite extreme.
The Self-Discipline Approach
The self-discipline approach is built on the premise that students can be trusted to reflect upon and regulate their behaviors to benefit themselves and others. Advocates for this democratic view of classroom management argue that teachers need to exhibit the dispositions of respect, realness, trust, acceptance, and empathy toward students so they can build and establish working teacher-student relationships.
The Instructional Approach
Teachers who use the instructional approach to classroom management prevent most management problems by actively engaging students in high-interest lessons geared to meet their interests, needs, and abilities. Thus, students are motivated to attend class, positively participate in activities, and manage their own behavior. Jacob Kounin (1970) and Frederick Jones (1979) advocate the instructional approach to classroom management.
The Desist Approach
The desist approach to classroom management gives the teacher full responsibility for regulating the classroom. The teacher establishes and enforces a set of specific rules to control student behavior in the classroom. Because the desist approach models of classroom management give teachers power to deal forcefully and quickly with misbehavior, they can be viewed as power systems. This approach probably is the most widely used classroom management strategy in today’s schools. The desist approach is advocated by Lee and Marlene Canter (1976) in their assertive discipline model and by B. F. Skinner (1968, 1971) in his research on behavior modification.
There are five components of effective classroom management that establish structures strong enough to entice and motivate student learning:
1. Developing effective working relationships with students
2. Training students on how learning takes place in your classroom
3. Protecting and leveraging time
4. Anticipating student behaviors in well-written lesson plans
5. Establishing standards of behavior that promote student learning
1.3 Establishing and maintaining a positive communication climate in the classroom
Communication within the classroom is important in order for students to learn effectively and should be put in place from an early stage of learning. Classroom communication exists in three categories: verbal, nonverbal, and written.
Verbal communication refers to sending or receiving a message through sounds and languages. Teachers can address one student or the whole classroom through verbal communication. For example, a teacher may ask a student to stand up which is verbal communication.
Non-verbal communication refers to communicating without words through body language, gestures, facial expressions, the tone and pitch of the voice, and posture. For example, if a teacher is nodding their head while a student is speaking, this can be encouraging or show that they agree with the student.
Written communication is sending or receiving information through writing. For example, a teacher may arrange a written assignment for students to test their knowledge or present lecture slides or notes for complicated information.
Climate of communication refers to the process of transferring information to a group of people which requires the use of some approaches in the classroom as: (a group of people may be pupils, students, teachers, partners and children). Classroom communicative success starts with the approaches: when you are interested in the topics of learners; when you are open with people and ideas; when you cooperate in the give-and-take; when you want conversations to work; when you are confident of your ability to exchange ideas; when you are sensitive and adaptable.
A lesson is a communicative event, which is created by the interaction of a number of forces as the lesson plan, the classroom noise, the questions of individual students and an administrative interruption. The climate is created with these interactions and affected by the nature of a planned lesson. The planned lesson can be followed by all sorts of conditions during the lesson – such as making the lesson memorable by putting interesting questions, excitable after an incident during the break, breakable from expected interruptions to deal with administrative problems. So the planned lesson is not simply like the planned route but it is the way of transmitting information from teachers to language learners. The classroom is an interactive and dynamic root of any communication. That’s why the topic must be chosen in the right way. The idea is to find that can stimulate an exchange of information. The first step is to be interested in your partners (students); the second step is to be interesting yourself, be ready to share information from your real life — classes, talents and hobbies to draw their attention to the topic in time to keep a good developing atmosphere in class. “Use free information: Pick up ideas from people’s verbal or nonverbal cues” (1981). So teachers are respected when students know that they have a choice in how they learn, not just what teachers what them to learn. That’s why sometimes it’s important to discuss with them about new teaching approaches and methods of learning material concerning the subject matter.
“Students experience the classroom as not just an intellectual space, but also as a social, emotional, and physical environment. Classrooms that subtly or indirectly exclude certain groups of students tend to be common from the students’ perspectives; students have a particularly negative reaction to instructors who fail to acknowledge consequential local or national events” (Huston and DiPietro, 2007). Teachers’ attentiveness to the intellectual, social, emotional, and physical aspects creates an inclusive classroom climate.
According to Cole and Chan, a typical process of classroom communication (and communication in general as well) includes the following five distinct stages:
1. Formulation of message
2. Message encoding
3. Message transmission
4. Message decoding and interpretation
5. Feedback and evaluation
Here, we will suggest eight strategies that are applicable to each of the contexts that you may encounter.
1. Create a safe learning environment with supportive relationships
2. More teamwork
3. Body language
4. Active listening
5. Feedback
6. Sense of humour
7. Technical skills
8. Be clear
Classroom Discourse
The term classroom discourse refers to the language that teachers and students use to communicate with each other in the classroom. Talking, or conversation, is the medium through which most teaching takes place, so the study of classroom discourse is the study of the process of face-to-face classroom teaching.
Classroom discourse is an interaction between teachers and learners and between learners and learners. It is generally claimed to form an isolated discourse domain. Teachers and students construct an understanding of their roles and relationships, and the expectations for their involvement classroom. To be successful, students must develop the communicative competence.
1.4 Micro Teaching
Teachers use a variety of different approaches when instructing their students. Sometimes teachers lecture their students; at other times they encourage their students to work together to accomplish a goal. Macro and micro teaching come into play, as well, because they help dictate what a teacher teaches, how the teacher provides that instruction and who is included in each classroom activity. No matter the grade level or subject matter, teachers use a variety of techniques when instructing their students. Depending on the content you need to deliver, you may engage macro teaching, which means lecturing the class as a whole, or micro-teaching, in which you divide your students into smaller groups or even work one-on-one with individual students for a short period of time.
In the field of teaching, microteaching has two separate meanings. First, it can indicate a classroom teaching style in which teachers work with small groups of students for short periods of time. This technique is common in earlier grade levels, such as elementary school, in which students work in “centers” while the teacher rotates among tables.
Micro-teaching can also imply a type of professional development activity in which you deliver a short lesson in front of a small group of peers or students. The lesson is sometimes video recorded. Following the lesson, the mentor teachers or students will work with you to evaluate the lesson and provide feedback. Microteaching, which was founded in the 1960s by Stanford professor Dwight W. Allen is widely considered to be one of the most effective forms of teacher training because it allows teachers to “test out” new lessons and instructional techniques in a low-pressure environment before expanding it to an entire class.
The core skills to practice are as follows:
· Lesson planning: a teacher needs to micro plan a lesson for effective delivery and high learning outcomes. Micro lessons should be relevant, concise, and logically organized.
· Lesson introduction: a teacher needs to be well prepared on a topic. They should set a context to the lesson being delivered and explain the activities briefly to keep learners interested for the rest of the session.
· Posing questions: it’s important for a teacher to develop the skill to ask questions at an appropriate time to check students’ level of absorption of concepts and invite questions from them to clarify their doubts.
· Reinforcement: a teacher is expected to inspire spontaneous and enthusiastic participation of learners, and also to revise lessons for improving knowledge retention.
· Stimulus variation: a teacher always faces a challenge to maintain a high level of attention of learners, which may be achieved through a variety of gestures, tonal quality, and speech variations, humor, and positive body language.
· Explaining: it involves the ability to understand concepts thoroughly and articulate them to the learners with clarity.
· Illustrating with examples: a teacher should be able to explain a concept through relevant examples, illustrations, working models, or any known natural phenomenon.
The list of skills mentioned above is indicative. Meticulous practice and adoption of the skills will help graduate a pre-service teacher to a higher level.
1.5 Macro Teaching
The term “macro” means “large-scale” or “overall.” If you look at a macro teaching PDF online, you can find the definition. When applied to teach, the macro method simply indicates an instruction that is being delivered to the entire class at one time. This is a useful method for when teachers need to give instructions for an assignment or introduce a new concept or background information to the class. Teachers can also implement macro teaching on a professional development level when they are looking at long-term curriculum planning for the year. Macro planning, for instance, allows you to review course goals with your students for an entire semester (or year) at the beginning of the course. This helps your students know what to expect from the course as they progress through the subject matter.
Following are some of the features of macro-teaching:
· The various features of macro-teaching involve instructors, coaches, mentors, and the domain knowledge delivered over time and focus on the overall development of students.
· Macro-teaching skills effectively help in mapping out teaching strategies and methods. They help evaluate the effectiveness of a teaching strategy in terms of learning outcomes.
· Macro-teaching skills help anticipate problems faced by students in advance and come up with effective solutions.
· Macro-teaching skills help in improving both learning outcomes and teaching methods. They help in designing an efficient curriculum plan for a subject to be taught for an academic year and identify resources and materials required in the classroom (teaching aids).
The above-mentioned features of macro-teaching aid teachers and students to gain a better learning outcome and a deeper understanding of new knowledge, all while developing and expanding perspectives.
A teacher may apply the following steps of macro-teaching for lesson planning and content delivery:
· Learning objectives should be first identified.
· A realistic timeline should be created to complete a syllabus.
· specific learning activities should be planned in congruence with learning objectives.
· A lesson should be sequenced to deliver it in an engaging manner and reinforce learning.
· An effective battery of evaluation tests should be planned to assess the learning outcomes of students.
These points may resolve your basic question, what is macro teaching? It’s a long-term approach toward completing a syllabus by implementing thorough lesson planning, delivery, and evaluation tests.
Difference between Micro Lesson Plan and Macro Lesson Plan
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Macro Lesson Plan |
Micro Lesson Plan |
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Definition: A Macro Lesson Plan is a teaching strategy and curriculum formulated by teacher for a specific subject to teach for a long period such as a semester, year, month, etc. It incorporates all the various topics that to be taught in a subject. |
Definition: A Micro Lesson Plan is a daily teaching strategy formulated by teachers for a specific day for a specific lesson/ subject. It incorporates a specific topic that needs to be taught for a particular period. |
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Origin of the Word: The Word "Macro" originates from Greek word "makros" meaning long and large. |
Origin of the Word: The Word "Micro" originates from Greek word "mikros" meaning small and short. |
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