I am currently teaching 9th graders at a middle school in Korea. Since the second semester is almost over and the students are already done with their final exams, teachers have a hard time teaching classes these days. The students think they have no reason to study now because they were already evaluated for the finals. Since the students are unmotivated on studying, teachers wanted to create a fun activity for them instead of using the same textbooks. I, also, designed a course about 9.11 New York terror with a variety of video clips and a movie. However, the vice principal told the teachers not to use video clips as a teaching material. Without showing the students the video clips, it was not easy to make an important point on how terrible the terror was. I ended up making visual charts with pictures and telling the story orally.
Teachers always get to design a course and fix the plans frequently. In order to create a course, they need to know the backgrounds of the class before formulating goals and objectives such as students’ ages, their current English proficiency levels, a number of students in class, or time period. An English Camp program is going to be held in January at school where I work. I was asked to teach reading and listening parts from Monday through Friday for 90 minutes, 3weeks. I am supposed to design these two courses for this camp, but there is no information about the courses. I do not know how old my students would be, how many students would be in my class, and what their current English proficiency level is. The school does not know how many students will apply for this course or how old they are going to be yet, but the school wants me to submit lesson plans in two weeks. Since there is a lack of information about the course, it is hard to set goals or objectives. Through this chapter, I was guided how to formulate goals and objectives for a course. I started asking myself what I really want my students to learn from my class. And then, I also thought what kinds of learning outcomes the students should expect from when my class is over. Once I started thinking simply, I could narrow down some goals and objectives explicitly. Now I think I can work on what materials (contents) I should use and how the students will be evaluated.
I guess you felt stressed a lot. The author of our textbook said that a course design should be flexible to change according to the context. However, it is nearly impossible that a teacher design a lesson plan when the teacher doesn’t know the context: the level and the age of students. I would like to know how you did it.
ReplyDelete"Expecting and generalizing", that's how I'd quote it. They're quite effective when you don't really know what you're class is gonna be like. Then make changes when you've already met and assessed on what they really needed. Good job!
ReplyDeleteI can imagine how difficult it is to design a course without any information and expecting about students thougt I have nerver done a design corse yet in your writing. that's why a course design should be flexible to change according to context .
ReplyDeleteYes, I also know that designing a course should be flexible. The school wants me to submit the lesson plans for the whole 3 weeks in advance. I hope they do not give out the course plan to the students yet. However I really hope to know the proficiency level of the students who are going to take my course. I am supposed to teach something for the students on the first day of class,but it is hard to set a goal for the first day since I do not know the level. I have already decided what I am going to do on the first day, but it might be changed.
ReplyDeleteI fully understand your situation. When I was teaching in a public lifelong education institute, a person in charge asked me to turn in lesson plans for an English course, but I didn’t know anything about the class except their grade. Anyhow, I made plans and turned in. As a result, I had really hard time in changing everything including the level, the objectives, and the teaching methods because they were very low level students and some of them didn’t even read words. Jaeun! We are blessed because we learned the importance of context and objectives for a course by ourselves anyway. I bet all the experiences we have will make us better teachers than what we are.
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ReplyDeleteThanks to your blog I can easily understand How to formulate goals and objectives in reality. Not having any experience of teaching, but I got a lot helpful advice as an instructor from you. How hard it is to set goals or objectives due to a lack of information. As has been mentioned, I just realized not merely knowledge in textbook but through your experience why designing a course should be flexible to change according to the context.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree with you. I'm working at a middle school as an English teacher, too. And I'm also having a hard time in teaching these days. When we as teachers need to modify the course schedule or class activities, it's not easy to modify it suddenly especially without any information. It shows how the backgrounds are important in designing a course.
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ReplyDeleteWow what a great blog, i really enjoyed reading this, good luck in your work. Online teacher training
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