Video Report

MAKING LARGE CLASSES SMALLER

(Jeremy Harmer)

Nowadays, in our country the schools have many students in a classroom. The
national schools have more than 30 students and the private schools have less.
The large classes are a challenge for a teacher, its not easy because each
student has a different skill and behavior. The ideal class is 10 12 students in
a class because the teacher can manage very well the time and the space.
According to Jeremy Harmer, in Chile a big class is 45 students, India has 120
students and others have 80 students. For this class, the teacher should have
an appropriate methodology to achieve the goals, but the author says that its
fun to have large classes.
After this introduction, Jeremy Harmer made an interesting game that Id like to
apply in my future classes, it caught the attention of the people and then
discussed the possible answers with all the words that theyve seen, they
should guess what the context is.
First, the author assigned a letter for each teacher, A to F, then, everybody
closed their eyes and in groups started to open their eyes and saw the word
that appeared in the screen while the rest kept their eyes closed. When all the
teachers have the word in their minds, they discussed between them and tried
to guess what the context is. The teachers couldnt give the answer so Jeremy
read a part of the text and it was surprising to know that it was wrote by a
volunteer teacher who taught in the prison and how he was when he was stood
in front of the class trying not to be nervous. It was his first class, he feel
nervous and told how the prisoners feel that he was uncomfortable.
Jeremy H. says that the teacher should be comfortable to have a big class
because the challenge to get the attention of the whole class is fantastic. To
have a big group doesnt mean I cant do that all the contrary, it means
youre allowed to do many things that involve the whole group and everyone
on the group seems more or less quite interested and that is a good big thing.
Second interesting activity was the incomplete poem, this poem had 40 spaces
in blank and the teachers should guess and complete the spaces. The teachers
couldnt do it so Jeremy gave them the first letter of each space. Jeremy started
to elicit the teachers to say some words that could be possible answers. When
he gave the second letter, the teachers could complete some spaces and to
know what the poem was about. With those activities Jeremy says that a
teacher assigns this activities, the students do it in their sits but it doesnt
mean that the teachers were dynamic, participative, they were engaged with
the activity and that is the point, apparently the teacher who is standing in
front of the class seems to do all the work but when the teacher elicit the
students and give those kinds of activities where the students give opinions,
discuss between them, etc. the students do all the work. In a big class, these
activities are effective because the students are thinking about English
vocabulary, use their box of vocabulary to find the answer and most of the time
Jeremy had the control and he didnt have any management problem because
all the class was engaged and focused on the task.
I think that another point to manage the class is the projection of the voice, I
listen to Jeremy and how he speaks, the volume and the intonation of his voice
makes the activity interesting, also the movements, he moves all the time so
the people following with the eyes and theyre attentive.
Third activity, he presented a list of word, the people chose one and checked
with the person who was next to and behind them, and they didnt have the
same word. Next, everybody stand up, Jeremy divided the class in two teams (A
and B), he read a novel when the teachers listened to their words, they must sit
down which team will be less standing people was the winner. Jeremy showed
with this activity that for some of them it could be fun, enjoy a lot, a little but
the point was that everybody was engaged and the participation was active.
All these activities engaged students brains, students attention, they had
complete concentration and focus from the class. The teacher was in total
control but the students were not passive.
With the fourth activity, Jeremy showed that a class with a big one can be fun
with a work group by stressing intonation, the students interact between them.
The repetition was used in this activity and its a good idea to do it because the
students practice intonation and pronunciation. After that, Jeremy analyzed
with the people a record about a guy and a psychiatrist having a conversation
where the guy suffers a mental problem and the psychiatrist make questions
and the guy says words and repeat many times some phrases. With that
activity, the teachers practiced the pronunciation, knew the meaning of a
phrase in that context and practiced correct stress, etc. and they can do the
same with the students and engage them in the activity making role plays,
saying the dialogue with the correct feeling, it will be fun.
Jeremy says that is a great idea to make the students to work in groups as he
showed in a class in China, there were 45 students and they worked effectively
and followed the instructions of their teachers and she let them to work by
themselves in their project. Its great to the teachers stand up in front if the
class and get the control in that way but particularly I think that maybe the
students feel that the teacher has the absolute power and they should do what
the teacher says and thats all and thats negative for them. Jeremy told about
the writing circle, put the students in groups of five, each student has a piece
of paper and the teacher makes a dictation about a strong for example and let
the students to continue with the story writing another sentence, then every
student passes his or her paper to the person on the left, then the teacher says
the students to write the next sentence and repeat the action until finally the
piece of paper is gone all the way around until he gets back to the owner, and
the owner write the conclusion, the final sentence. With this activity, Jeremy
made his 45 students participated on it, gave ideas, they were creative, here
the participation was mandatory. The main idea is when we do a group work in
big classes, the teacher should do activities where the students have to take
part.
Jeremy mentioned a book that he was read years ago about the communicative
approach and the author says that a problem in a group work is that when they
are not agree between them, two students do the work, the rest just listen or
do anything. The teachers must establish the rules at the beginning of a class
so he or she will manage the class well.
George Pitt says that when teachers have management problems in lessons
the problem starts before the teacher gets into the classroom because if we
have a big class, we should be more organize, the teacher must be prepared,
to have to know what you have to do exactly. Its also important to know very
well what to do before each activity for example to do a good feedback,
summarize to close the idea, etc.
This video was very useful for me because I have the idea that to have a large
class is a difficult challenge to achieve in the aspects on how to manage a big
class, how to make the students engaged and understand what I want to
understand, to see the whole class involved in the activity, but after this video I
know that there are many activities, tasks to do it and the most important is to
establish some rules that will be followed and respected for each student in the
class so they will know that they are free to say and do some things but always
with respect and order. This problems may be present in the schools because
the students are teenagers and there will be many kinds of behavior problems.
Jeremy always talk about the teacher who is standing in front and take control
of the class but in many times they dont care about what the students learn or
not, when I was in the school most of the time it happens, the teachers only
talk for a long time and make dictation, I agree to improve tasks where the
students are the main participants, where they enjoy the class and achieve the
goals of the learning.
To conclude, its a good idea to stand in front of the class and the students stay
sit down but it is better when despite the teacher has the control standing in
front of the class, the students participate a lot, give creative ideas, solutions,
to be involved in the lesson. It will be satisfactory to have a large class with
that level of participation.