#student-driven

[alittlebitofsole-blog]

Student-Driven Differentiated Instruction with "I Choose"

When teachers began asking for time to differentiate instruction by working with students in small groups, Humboldt Elementary found the time for them.

In addition to adjusting the schedule, they empowered students by mixing scaffolded supports with a variety of student-friendly elective enrichments.

[mamielt]

Student centering

In my current teaching context (as in many of the cram schools of China) there is a kind of free-talking "lecture" class requirement for the foreign teachers. The class is easy for a lot of teachers because they kind sort of just babble on and on about anything they want. This is a class offered to all students of all levels to come at their leisure and experience and occasionally interact with English-speakers. My issue with this is that most times students are not only of all different levels, but they are all fully expecting that model of learning they have grown up with, which is that of listening quietly and avoiding the task of asking questions. This enables the English teacher to philosophize for an entire hour at the students, with some students hopefully participating and others bored or lost. I usually have to teach 3 or 4 of these per week and I really enjoy them because I use it as a space to try out and level different classes I've had in my imagination. My students are patient with being my guinea pigs and usually find the classes interesting as the other teachers who do this don't normally prepare so much. My fiancé is a great talker and can usually appeal to students by asking them in the beginning of the class what they want to talk about. I am not as knowledgable about everything as he is and as I've said, I'm trying to develop my teaching repertoire so I like to prepare. Preparing for classes (even just 10 minutes) always gives me the confidence I need, since I still get a little nervous before teaching classes (especially big groups). I usually try to accommodate for levels by providing PowerPoint visuals and I reward students (with candy and such) for trying to ask questions. So the problem with this approach is that it is still not very student centered. I usually put together a PPT about some cultural thing (like weddings, fashion, food) and get into some "American" things and then try to elicit stereotypes from students and pull out grammar from there. Occasionally I focus on just pronunciation or just some kind of grammar point. Today I wanted to try, in the context I've outlined for you here, to have a completely student-driven class. As usual, I didn't know who would be attending the class. It is usually somewhere between 10-30 students. Also, the students come and go as they please, and of course they are all different levels. I am posting about this because I think I found a solution to this situation that was actually pretty effective. I began the class by teaching explicitly what it means to have a teacher-centered or student-centered class and produced some different ratios. I asked students what they were accustomed to (using a lot of rhetorical questions). Then I talked for about 2 minutes about the importance of student talking time and student reflection in their language learning. I said that it was useful for them to think about how they are doing things in their studies and evaluate what is and isn't working so they use their time as best as possible. So, I gave the normal teacher talk they expect but on precisely the opposite topic. Then I busted out some blank notecards and gave really clear instructions, after I gave the directions I had a student say them back to me and had that student give the directions back in Chinese and then I had a student in the lower level negotiate meaning to tell the directions back to me 1 more time. In addition I put the directions on the board. The directions were: I want to learn Chinese in 2 weeks. What is a phrase that will be useful to me? Write it in English on one side and Chinese on the other. When you are finished, take another card, write one word or phrase in English that gives you trouble when you read it or try to use it in class, write the Chinese on the other side. Yeah, the directions certainly could have been simplified or cut in half, but the case is that half of my students would finish twice as fast as the others. Anyhow, the 20 students took about 12 minutes to do this and I circled around to provide support and encouraged students to help each other. I collected all of the notecards in a bag and then shuffled them up. By then we had about 35 minutes left so I could have definitely managed time better, but it's the trade off of having a class where students are doing all 4 skills. Then I sorted through the cards and found some really great insights from students. When it was possible, I asked other students to help give answers to the "muddiest point" cards. I had the students teach me some of the Chinese phrases and tell me why they were most important. Then I made sure everyone knew the English equivalent if the phrase. I now have a big bag of suggestions for future classes and students left the class feeling like they were a little more in control of their learning.