Teachers Day Celebration

Today we celebrated Teachers' Day at Little Angels' School. Though I taught them only for a month, i enjoyed celebrating Teachers' Day with them. I am happy to see their Acrostic poem on my name and their reflection of my classroom.

'Interrupt my Story' ; My Reflection

On July 17, 2015, I conducted a creative activity in my class among grade eight students. The name of the activity was ‘Interrupt my story’. Though the idea of the came from one of the training sessions I had attended a year before, I thought to use that technique in a creative way. In the training session, we were advised to tell a story by ourselves (teachers) and let students interrupt us and listen to their questions and answer the question so that students would develop their speaking skills and build up confidence in learning English. I tried to apply this technique as I was suggested in the session however,  at first attempt, my technique failed, as there were forty six students in my class, I had to leave the class because the class went out of control, students started making noise and I couldn’t decide on whom to give chance to ask questions . Similarly, I found some of the students asking unnecessary questions that embarrassed me in front of other teachers.

I was upset and hopeless because of the situation but I thought for a while and found out the alternative of using the same technique in a creative way. Being a teacher of large classroom, I divided the whole class into eight groups having six members in each group. Then I assigned them the task that one of the group members will share the simple story and rest five of the students will ask question to their friends by interrupting him/her in the middle. Similarly, one of them would present the reflection on working in groups. They got some time for preparation and presented their group work in front of the class.

The outcome was amazing that I hadn’t expected from them. All the groups performed in an excellent way. They shared one simple story and managed timing for asking questions and I found those who hadn’t spoken a single word in the class was telling the whole story and answering the queries of their friends. I applied this technique in seven different sections of grade eight and found it effective to develop speaking as well as writing skills of the students. Students reflected that they liked the activity very much and wanted to be involved in such activities again.

This is how the technique ‘Interrupt my story’ became a creative activity for my large classroom to be creative and be engaged in productive activity for the development of speaking and writing skills in English.

A bitter reality of life

Early in the morning, i felt sad to know that one of the teachers who served for 30 years in teaching at the school suffered from mouth cancer thinking of my future.
Again i was awaken by getting the information that students tries to bully those teachers who shows their strictness in teaching by the students themselves. for instance; one of the sections greeted teacher by saying "Happy Birthday" instead of "Good morning". 

Be careful!

On 9^th of July, I was teaching English to grade eight students. I came out of the classroom and realized that my dress was colorful not because of the colors but because of the ink that one of my students flunked in my dress. I was quiet upset however I realized that teaching profession is being more complicated with the time and teacher need to be aware of these types of bullying by the students. Later, I came to know that the student did it unintentionally but I found that such behavior was repeated one and they had already done with another teacher before.

Practical techniques for English Language Teachers

My Reflection

Training on ‘Practical Techniques of Teaching English’

 I was excited to attend the workshop on ‘Practical Techniques of Teaching English’ with the expectation that I will definitely learn something new for the classes. I was curious too, in order to find out innovative practical techniques of teaching English.

Our training on 19^th June, 2015 started with the KWL Chart on graphic organizers. Frankly speaking, before we start the session I had no idea on what graphic organizers are however I wanted to know the implication of graphic organizers in the real classroom.

When I got the concept of graphic organizers that are the visual ways to portray and organize information, I remembered that in a way or other either for teaching or learning I have used graphic organizers.  Some of the examples of graphic organizers are presented graphically below:

T- Charts	Timeline	M-chart
Grid	Pie-chart	Graphs
Tree diagram	Flow or sequence chart	Clusters
Venn diagram	Bubbles	Tables

The discussion on the importance on graphic organizations helped me to gain ideas that graphic organizers isolate the important information, activates students’ schema and is also helpful for need assessment.  One of the examples of graphic organizer is presented below:

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Usefulness of graphic organizers in teaching English

Graphic organizers are useful in various ways. They are useful to teach literature. For instance; if we want our students to write about the book they have read, we can use the following types of graphic organizers; 

http://cdn.tristro.net/catalog/911/full/9780545162746.jpg 

Similarly, if we want our learners to write about the main characters of the plot we can use the following graphic organizers:

http://mdillon.weebly.com/uploads/8/5/6/7/8567115/scan0016.jpg

Graphic organizers in teaching reading

Graphic organizers are very helpful in teaching reading. They help readers to organize and find patterns in large amounts that further help readers to comprehend the text. Similarly, graphic organizers help learners to motivate towards reading as it helps to comprehend the text better.  Thus, graphic organizers are useful for pre- during and post stage of reading comprehension.

Pre reading graphic

An example of while reading graphic organizers is presented below:

movement_postcolonial.gif

Similarly, we can use the following graphic organizers for post reading activities:

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As the discussion was going on ‘graphic organizers, the game entitled, ‘Find Someone Who’ made us refreshed. A template of the game is presented below:

Graphic organizers in teaching listening

Graphic organizers are useful even in teaching listening. One example of teaching listening is presented below:

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Graphic organizers for teaching grammar

Teaching grammar is considered as the most difficult part of teaching English language however, graphic organizers can create fun and interest even in grammar classes. One of the examples of graphic organizers in teaching grammar is presented below:

http://rganizer-for-the-rules/original-412722-1.jpg

Graphic organizers for teaching vocabulary

Vocabulary teaching will be effective if we use graphic organizers. For instance:

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Thus, graphic organizers help students to generate, identify, and organize details as well as to determine main idea and draw conclusion as it is helpful to teach listening, speaking, reading, writing , grammar and vocabulary.