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| Ways of observing children's language learning (Google Images) |
Previous post about How beliefs affect teaching has shown that our beliefs about learning can affect the way we plan our teaching and the way we respond to young learners. If you want to develop your teaching further, you need to become aware of the beliefs which influence your teaching. Development is only possible if you can become aware of these beliefs by trying to articulate them to yourself or to others.
Maybe like Teacher A above, you believe that pupils language should be carefully controlled Why do you believe that? What would happen if you gave your pupils some freer activities occasionally? How would it affect pupils? To answer those questions, you need to think about the reasons for what you do and to think about how and why pupils respond in the way they do by observing them closely. If you become better at watching and learning from pupils and relate what you learn to your beliefs, you will have a good basis for developing your own ideas about teaching and learning. Here are some ideas:
1 Keep a diary
Keep a diary or observation note book and start to write down interesting things you observe children say or do. You can then use this information in planning future lessons or providing specific help for individuals.2 Tape record children's pair or group interaction
Tape record a pair or group of children doing a particular language-learning activity. Focus on some particular aspect of the activity, eg the way they work together and interact to do the activity. Use the recording to consider how successfully the children were interacting to do the task.PI Draw big red circle.
P2 Big red circle, (pupil draws as instructed)
PI And a small blue circle.
P2 In here? (pupil indicates circle he has already drawn)
PI I don't know, (pupil is not sure how to explain)
P2 A big,
PI I don't know. A square in a circle.
P2 Big or small?
When we examine the dialogue we see that the children manage some level of communication mainly because P2 takes charge. P2, with a limited amount of English, is skilful at supporting PI's attempts to give instructions. He confirms what has been said in line 2, asks questions of clarification in line 4, tries to prompt in line 6, asks for clarification in line 8.These strategies provide more opportunities for P2 to use his English. They also support Pi's initial attempts to communicate by structuring the interaction and giving prompts of the kind of information needed.
The recording suggests that PI may need additional language input and practice to build up the language required for giving instructions. It also shows that strategies for managing the interaction, as P2 demonstrates, are an important help in communication So it may be useful to spend time on raising children's awareness about these strategies and demonstrating how to use them.