COMPONENT 3 TASK 4

Learners and Learning

19/05/2011 In-Service Course of English Language Teaching Juan Carlos Hurtado Govea

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION I. PROFILE OF THE CLASS II. BRIEF LESSON OUTLINE III. LEARNERS AND LEARNING IV. CONCLUSION APPENDIX

2 3 3 4 6 6

INTRODUCTION

Whenever I have attended a weekend session with fellow teachers, I am often sympathized by the fact that I teach teenagers. Trying to engage Junior High School students in the classroom can, indeed, be challenging. Understanding how they learn can help teachers to adapt to the needs of their students (Andrew, 2009). Many times as a Secondary school teacher, I have encountered unmotivated students. Unfortunately, this can lead to classroom management issues ranging from sleeping in class to more overt disruptions. Since not every student is intrinsically similar to the other ones in his class, despite the many things they have in common, teachers are challenged to find ways to motivate each student. Understanding how differently teens learn, and what extrinsic and/or intrinsic factors influence on their second language acquisition, can provide insights as to how to help students learn and minimize classroom management problems. In the following paper, I will revise an already-taught lesson, reflecting on the ways students reacted to the activities, and based on that, I will consider options I have to improve the quality of learning.

I. PROFILE OF THE CLASS

Students in this group are at an Intermediate level of English (B1) in Junior High School, taking a second-year course. They are 16 students from which twelve are male and the rest female, their ages ranging between thirteen and fourteen years old. They are mostly musical learners who enjoy communicative activities where they are allowed to sing or follow a tune. They are keen on discussing music because this implies expressing their ideas about their personal likes, either in groups or individually. Nonetheless, some of them tend to rely on the out speakers to say what they want to express themselves, enabling monopolization of speech by the strongest ones.

II. BRIEF LESSON OUTLINE

For this class happened at the very end of the school year, my main aim was to have students manage discourse to recollect the most important events of the course, in a personalized way. As a lead-in to the main activity, I had students play the game Seven Degrees of Separation, this is, in seven steps or degrees, students had to relate their school-year experience to a famous person -in this case a band of their choice- in the most creative way they could. As a whole class we voted for the most original one. Then, students listened to the song We Didnt Start the Fire by Billy Joel. The gist was to identify as many famous names as they could from the lyrics. Listening for detail, they used a worksheet were they were asked to fill in the blanks with the aid of a lexis box. In order to target for their learning style, I asked students to replace the lyrics of the song with a recollection of events and names from the about-to-end course. Students sang their parts over the song and we integrated them all together. Finally, as a closure, I assigned students a writing task were they expressed their favorite moments from the year and the ones they did not like that much.

III. LEARNERS AND LEARNING

As I was teaching the lesson, I decided to focus on those elements which could have made an impact on the way students learn in this particular class. In the following lines, I will describe and evaluate such differences and the responses my students manifested in consequence. 3.1 Age (Teaching teenagers) As any other teacher who has taught secondary school students, I have had days when the task of teaching seemed harder than nails, and on especially tough days, hopeless. However, Penny Ur suggests that teenage students are, in fact, overall the best language learners (Ur 1996). This made me think I was getting only part of the picture. Throughout my own experience, I have come to realized that, whenever teenagers characteristic disruptive behavior arises in the classroom, students were actually happier when I lived up to the challenge and avoided shouting, rather helping and controlling the situation in a constructive way. This group had been causing discipline problems (see A1) but as they were faced with an activity that sparked their creativity, they manifested excitement to fulfill the task. Students were encouraged to respond to materials that targeted for their thoughts and experience. By challenging them to use their acquired language to create a song, I was aiming to bolster their self-esteem and build up a sense of belonging to a group. As far as I have read, identity has to be forged among classmates at this age. The activity was successful in the general outcome as students were keenly working together to make up the lyrics and they were cooperatively exchanging ideas. As mentioned above, the main objective of this activity was to promote cooperative learning while attacking certain disciplinary issues that had been coming up in the classroom. When I started planning for this lesson, I was targeting for the learners age while providing a learning risk a song they might be familiar with, but not know in depth-. I am considering using other kinds of activities that aim teenagers interests and background and I will monitor for the possible outcomes, especially by noting whether students are engaged in the lesson and the response they have to these activities.

3.2 Learning Styles The musical learning style is one of eight types of intelligence defined in Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences (1985). Musical learning style refers to a person's ability to understand and process sound, rhythm, patterns in sound, relationships between sounds, and ability to process rhymes and other auditory information. In the course, we discussed and agreed that these students enjoy school activities such as music performance and appreciation, band, choir, orchestra, and writing poetry or songs. Students in this class responded better to the lesson by being surrounded by music. This led me to think about a music-based lesson to close the course. In the course, when I was faced with the different descriptions of learners, I was overwhelmed by the task in front of me and its complexity. Not only did I wanted to satisfy the different students I have in my class, but also teach to their individual strengths with activities thought to have them produce the best results they could. However, as I reflected upon my lesson plan, I realized that students are individuals as well as members of a group and, that through observation, I had already identified their learning preferences and the sensory system they often respond to; the musical stimulus. The previous helped me build an overall picture of the best kinds of activities for the mix of individuals in this classroom, and I was aiming to respond and stimulate my students with an appropriate blend of tasks and exercises they would find exciting. I am also aware that some parts of my lesson engaged some students better than others but the learning process was successful most of the time. In the future, I will continue to introduce new activities for the benefit of the group as a whole or the individuals within it. I am certain that students will develop as a result of a successful classroom experience and the task they perform.

IV. CONCLUSION

As we move from teaching to learning-centered provision, the learner is more central to the educational process, indeed to education as a whole. The emphasis is shifting from the activities of the teacher or trainer towards development of the student (Harmer, 2001). This paper has looked at two considerations of the learner for Secondary School. There may of course be more. Junior High School education must both respond to and lead learning trends and aspirations. The future is difficult to foresee, especially as development becomes ever more rapid. My observations of the learners in class, and my ability to adapt methods and techniques to meet their needs for support, will determine how successful my class can be in meeting those new challenges for learning.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY y Andrew, Tammy. 2009. Engage Teenage Students in Learning: How Teens Learn Affects Classroom Management and Student Involvement. http://www.suite101.com/content/engage-teenage-students-in-learning. y Ur, Penny. 1998. A Course in Language Teaching England. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 131-133 y Gardner, Howard. 1985. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences Basic Books. y Harmer, Jeremy. 2001. The Practice of English Language Teaching. England. Longman. Pp 37-55.

APPENDIX

A1. Lesson Plan