Educational Links for ELT

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Educational Links for ELT

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Principle nine: " Setting up Routines "

By Licda. Sylvia Johnson

According to the reading on this principle, when teachers have a large class or group of students; she/he encounters along with her/his self a variety of different personalities and human energy which takes on a particular role play on a daily basis; from this point, stability of some well set routines must be established.

Activities and events will be easier to handle if these are managed at the very beginning of the school year term.Here are some tips in regards to classroom procedures that can easily become routines:

*The way attendance is checked and tardiness is dealt with.
*The way students sign up for special projects.
*The way students are notified of tests dates, deadlines and special events.
*The way students check their own reading progress.
*The way students move from a group or pair work strategy to a teacher-fronted framework or vice versa.

During the time in which these routines are being established and the act of following them is very helpful, not forgetting that the same are not a life- time pattern without going out of line.

These are made with the purpose of making one's job a bit smoother not for us to become the slave of it, on the other hand their is the possibility of a constant evaluation to maintain and to prune what is alredy there or to undo and create new ones to fit the profile. There is also a chance to start a new set in the midlle of the school year term, because life is a changing system in which we should try to fit situations in the moment for the proper goals required.

A classroom's atmosphere of confidence, trust and enjoyment where teachers make sure that it remains that way, not only will students appreciate him/her but will also be willing to move on to new ideas and changes around the settings thereof  for the well being of the classroom climate all year long.

Sylvia's Vodcast 2010

Midnight by Brent Jones and The TP Mobb featuring Coko

Questions and Answers for ELT Classrooms licda. sylvia j.

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Questions and Answers for ELT Classrooms licda. sylvia j.

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Evolution of Instructional Materials Design

Responsiveness by publishers

Reaction Paper by Licda. Sylvia Johnson S.

Publishers attempt to develop instructional materials that meet the standards set for formal statewide adoption. They generally begin with a literature review by the author and the editorial staff; at the same time a review begins to identify the state and national standards, which are "divergent, and increasingly specific" ( Baughman,2008,p.89). Market research teams then gather information from teachers and administrators about their perspectives and information on the best instructional practices.

Next, they creat prototypes and gather continual feedback from teachers about "quality of content,organizational structure, pacing, usability," and other features (Baughman,2008,p.90).

Effective materials include certain components. Major tool generally is accompanied by a teacher's manual, test items or resources, a study guide, and activity guide (Ornstein,1992).

In addition, effective materials usually include the following features:

* Instructional goals with adaptability to course requirements

* accurate, relevant, relatively up-to-date information

* well-organized, coherent, and unified flow of information

* appropriate reading level and vocabulary

* efective layout, visual presentation, and physical features

* absence of stereotypes and biases

* multidisciplinary content with multiple rather than single perspectives

* small conceps taught as variations on larger themes

* development of insight and thinking skills rather than just memorization of isolated or unrelated favts

* real-world applications of informational skills

* inclusion of suplemental and reference materials for teaching (Ball,1990, Siegel & Sousa, 1994; Tyson, n.d.).

Formats of Instructional Materials

The National Association of State Textbook Administrators (NASTA) provides a network of support for publishers, which links to the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS); it also furnishes information and guidelines about specialized formats needed to comply with accessibility legislation that must be delivered before print instructional materials arrive at the schools.Specialized formats include Braise, audio, digital text, ans large print. For such materials, publishers must meet technical specifications in preparing and delivering instructional materials review and adoption. The Florida Department of Education provides specifications for alternative formats, or links to such information, in the packets for publishers.

Textbook Dominance

Even though this may change in the not-too-distant future, textbooks remain the main curriculum guides. They are the most frequently used instructional material for students and teachers at all grade levels beyond primary grades. The amount of classroom time that students spend using textbooks is estimated at 75 to 90 percent.(Ajayi,2005; Eisner, Nicholson,& Webb, 2000; Watts-Taffe, 2005, Wiley & Barr, 2007; Sadder & Gentleman, cited in Lumbering,2007, p.144; Stein, Student, Carnine, & Long,2001).

The Teacher's Manual

Is a key presentation feature that can be a strong selling point, especially if well designed.The same can work very well for both students and teachers when they have the following features:

* Practicality: clear layout, easy to use, durable over time, cheap enough to buy

* Alignment: teacher content and activities align to student materials

* Coverage: enough content to give teachers more time to prepare lessons; guidance on teaching procedures, cultural aspects, a plan for each lesson, enough information about topics and answers; information about what parts may find difficult and ways to explain difficult parts.

* Readability; easy to understand with clear objectives and instructions.

* Methods: information on how students learn the subject, and / or reasons for using certain activities and methods for large and small groups; different learner contexts; different styles of learning.

* Assessment: ways of evaluating learning.

* Management: classroom management support such as outlines for planning and organizing courses, units, and lessons; ways for teachers to become more confident with their teaching skills ( Ajayi, 2005: Bernstein,1992; Joyce, Weil, & Calhoun, 2004; Gleason & Isaacson,2001).

Priority Area: Learning

By Teacher Sylvia Johnson

Learning review includes examination of strategies in instructional materials that supports motivation, including " big ideas," explicit instruction, guidance and support, active participation, and the instructional and assessment strategies that make sense for the targeted learning objectives.

Teachers role in the learning process of the students makes a difference, and when making use of materials with effective learning strategies can  either support or impede the impact in them.

Learning also has come short by the absence of meaningful explanations, connecting ideas,big ideas, underlying structures, and content for critical thinking. This is sustained by some well known authors, among them are: (Schoroeder,Scott, Tolson, Huang & Lee )...

Showing how research-based information works across disciplines along with few particular strategies.

Two special cases:

.The first is the expertise reversal effect.

.The second is the powerful resistance to learning.

Students require intense practice with the new concepts, showing themselves multiple times that the "new concepts" work to override the " old wrong concepts".

Some guided activities:

Motivational Strategies

. positive expectations

. feedback, and

. appearance.

Setting Positve Expectations

. friednly, attentive, and encouraging communication;

. student collaboration assignments and group projects;

. student communication and presentations; and

. infofrmative feedback on student progress.

The degree of challenge and relevancy of activities also influences positive expectations;

. Challenge works-not too easy, not too hard.

. " Relevant" helps; " Irrelevant" hurts.

. Personal connections improve learning.

. Adults need practical applications.

Feedback

Motivates students to be informed about correctness, incorrectness and how to improve learning.

Appearence

When materials shown only provides tidbits of information, students may find this to be non-appealing.

Teaching a few " Big Ideas"

. focus for students and

. completeness.

Students Responses

Here are some hints for some kinds of activities of how students learn effectively;

. generate their own charts or worksheets for study.

. identify similarities and differences.

. discuss controversial issues.

. relate, organize, and represent knowledge in a new way;

. construct their own knowledge.

. summarize and take notes.

They learn more when they do the following assesment activities:

. provide written answers to questions.

. give explanations.

. do case-based self-assesments to improve learning.

. take frequent quizzes.

. review feedback from test results.

4 Principles of Effective Materials Development

By Teacher Sylvia Johnson

This paper takes the position that language-leaning materials should ideally be driven by learning and teaching principles rather than be developed ad hoc or in imitation of the best-selling coursebooks.It reviews the literature which contributes positively toward the principled development of ELT materials and comments on its implications for materials writing.

In recent years there have been a  number of insightful publications which have concerned themselves with how authors typically write ELT materials.

There are present here, six principles of language acquisition and four principles of language teaching that the author thinks should be given a lot more attention in materials development.

This literature reveals that many experienced authors rely on their intuitions about what "works " and make frequent use of activities in their repertoire that seem to fit with their objectives.

.Expose the learners to language in authentic use.

.Help learners to pay attention to features of authentic input.

.Provide the learners with opportunities to use the target language to achieve communicative purposes.

.Provide opportunities for outcome feedback

.Achieve impact in the sense that they arouse and sustain the learners' curiosity and attention

.Stimulate intelectual,aesthetic, and emotional involvement

.Flexibility- so as to help teachers to make their own decisions.

.Moving from text to language ( focusing on the meaning of a text first before returning to it payattention to a language feature )

.Providing engaging content.

.Learner development ( in the sense of helping learners to further develop their skills as language learners through, for example, analyzing grammar for themselves and starting their own personalized vocabulary and grammar books )