03.

Class Management

What do you mean by social mediation strategies? During language teaching we teach the students how to cooperate, how to behave in certain situations, how to communicate.

What is the teacher expected to organise? Organise the environment: decorate the walls, arrange desks and chairs. Organise the children: according to language proficiency and ability Organise activities: keep an ideal balance of the skills and activities (warm-up, presentation, practice, production). After a stirring activity there should be a settling one and use different work forms, too (pair, group work, individual). Organise time: use warm up activity (5 minutes) when possible, keep to the 3 P (presentation, practice, production :10-15 minutes each). Finally there should be revision and feedback Organise resources: keep student book, workbook, cassettes in a well organised way Organise records: it is a crucial element because if you dont do it properly it might have legal consequences. Organise yourself: before entering the classroom leave your problems outside.

What kind of balance should be taken into consideration? Balance of skills speaking, reading, writing and listening. We can also divide them into oral and written skills and the balance should be 70 % oral and 30 % written. Balance of activities: warm-up(5 minutes), presentation, practice, production (10-15 minutes each). Another balance of activities is between work forms (pair work, group work, individual).

How does seating influence the classroom process? The teacher has to organise the seating according to the work forms he is going to use during the lesson. Changing seating during the lesson may take away too much time from learning and it is often noisy.

What are advantages and disadvantages of the various work forms? Whole class (frontal/lockstep): it is used in presentation stage Advantages:- good in activities where the teacher is the controller ideal way of showing pictures texts and tapes it is a preferred class style where students and teachers feel secure when the whole class is working in lockstep under the authority of the teacher. Disadvantages: - individual students dont have a chance to say anything on their own a lot of students are afraid to speak in front of the whole class students do not learn to take responsibility for their own learning not suitable for communicative language learning Individualized learning: it is vital in the development of learner autonomy. Teacher has more time to deal with individual students. They can write compositions, read privately and answer questions individually. Advantages: - teacher can respond to individual student differences in terms of pace of learning, learning styles and preferences. less stressful develop learner autonomy, self-reliance. Disadvantages: - dos not encourage cooperation - demands more time from the teacher than interacting with the whole class Pair work: students can practice language together in information gap activities, they can work simultaneously with other pairs Advantages: - increase student talking time

makes it possible for teachers to work with one or two pairs while the other are working too Disadvantages: - noisy students often switch to mother tongue not all mistakes are corrected Group work: 4-5 people are ideal in a group, write a story, role play a situation Advantages: - increase student talking time personal relationship is less problematic there is a chance to cooperate and negotiate develops learner autonomy Disadvantages: - noisy teacher can loose control over the class some students become passive while other dominating it may take longer to organise

What do you mean by group dynamics? A cohesive group works efficiently and productively. A positive atmosphere can have a beneficial effect on the morale, motivation, on the self-image of the members. It can also develop a positive attitude to language learning. A successful group: - the members have a definite sense of themselves as a group - there is a positive and supportive atmosphere - members are interested in each other and they have something in common - the group is self reliant and has a sense of responsibility - members trust each other - they are open minded, flexible, respective to new ideas An unsuccessful group: - individuals do not cohere into a group negative, tense atmosphere some members do not participate on group activities ( some dominate) members are not interested in each other

members lack responsibility

Why is the group context (project work, peer correction etc.) important in the language learning process? Project work, role-play and situation activities are important since they can help build group cohesion, and self-responsibility. Students learn to trust each other as well. Peer correction is also important because by using them students become more aware of the target language and being corrected by a fellow student is less threatening.

What are the predictable stages in the life of the group? Characterise each of them. The 2 models: Tuckman (1965) Forming Storming Norming Performing Mourning/adjourning Hadfield (1992) forming maintaining disbanding

In both models 3 stages of group life can be distinguished: forming, maintaining and disbanding. Common goals and activities sat by the teacher can help the students form a group. In each group there are different persons with different ways of thinking, they will have different ideas about how to perform a particular task. This is the storming stage when conflicts may arise. The stage when conflicts are settled is called norming. The performing stage is when students can perform what they have been preparing. After this peak time students group members get exhausted and the group will disband. The memories and the conclusion of the activity will remain in the students for a long time.

What can a teacher do to build a good group?

Teachers must give a lot of role-play activities, project work, competitions and tasks requiring common efforts from the students. Learners must feel the responsibility for achieving the common goals and they have to select the right person for the various jobs. By doing these kind of activities their emphatic attitude will develop.

What is your understanding of discipline? More learning takes place in a disciplined classroom than in a undisciplined one. More time is devoted to the tasks than to organisation and dealing with disruptive behaviour, and teacher can monitor better and can help when needed to prevent learning problems. The teacher is in control: not dominating the class, she can hand over the initiative and take it back when necessary. Teacher and students cooperate smoothly: students cooperate with the teacher and with each other. Lesson proceeds according to plan: if the teacher has a clear plan of what is going to happen during the class students wont get bored and start to misbehave. Sometimes of course the teacher has to improvise and change something in the plan but this does not necessarily lead to discipline problems. Students and teacher aim at the same objectives: shared knowledge and agreement on lesson objectives may motivate students.

Give examples of pairing and grouping activities Pairing: half sentences (student have to find their partners), cards (find the similar card), words and their explanations, Grouping: coloured cards (yellow, pink etc), word groups (nouns, adjectives etc) famous people (actors, singers etc)

Describe three activities aimed at improving group dynamics

Maintaining fluidity: reseating Airport lounge: prepare job cards for each student, tell them they are at an airport and they have to find the other people they are travelling with, they dont know what they look like but they know what they do. Trust and confidence building activities: Blind trust: clear the furniture in the centre of the room, but leave a few chairs scattered around the clear area. Ask students to form pairs, one of them should close his eyes the other should guide them around the room. They can reverse roles. Empathy activity: Ghost-writers: seat students in pairs, in a circle facing each other in pairs. They have 5 minutes to find out as much about each other as possible. They can ask about their family, hobby etc. When the time is up they go back to their places and write their partners autobiography. Write in first person singular, they can use the information gathered from their partner but they can use other info which their partner may not have told them but they observed. When they are ready put their writings on the wall and people can walk around and see if they can identify themselves.