ELT Weekly

Cascading

Our Knowledge

Have you ever heard the word 'cascade' before?

You have certainly seen a ‘cascade’ so far, which is “a waterfall descending over a steep, rocky surface” (dictionary.com). You may have also encountered this word in other contexts, “a cascade of sounds” or “a cascade of events”, where this word is used metaphorically to refer to something falling or rushing forward in large quantities. In education, “cascading” is often used to describe a way of sharing knowledge and experience among professionals. For example, after attending a professional development event and learning new approaches, some teachers may teach other teachers what they have learned. So, we are here to cascade our knowledge and experiences with you.

We believe that our knowledge can be doubled by collaborating with other colleagues. The cascading ideas and experiences may increase our confidence as well as skills in teaching. We can often learn a lot from others. Information grows as you share it. A Roman proverb says, “When we teach, we learn”.

Given the pandemic situation, one of the good ways to cascade knowledge with our colleagues is creating a blog. On a weekly basis, we are going to share some useful information and articles on this platform. You can find both theoretical and practical knowledge on ELT here.

Enjoy your reading...

Community Building

Issue 1 (22 March, 2021)

What is Community Building?

Community:

(1) A group of people in the same place.

(2) A feeling of fellowship with others because of shared ideas or goals.

Classroom Community: A feeling of belonging within the classroom, so that every student is an important member of the group, and students can rely on one another for help and support as they achieve shared goals.

It is quite important to create a positive atmosphere in the classroom and build a sense of community and ownership among students. When a whole class of students work together as a community, collaborating and supporting each other, there will also be fewer problems in maintaining discipline. (Burden, 2020). When students share a common goal, they naturally rely on one another to accomplish it. The process of collaboration can build community, and the sense of achievement after accomplishing a shared goal is also a powerful way to build the collective feeling of confidence.

Teachers should apply some specific techniques and organize activities that have the potential to be highly motivating for students. While doing classroom activities, teachers should better focus on students’ needs such as “ 1) the need for play and social interaction, 2) the need for physical activity, 3) the need for rest, and 4) need to learn in a stress-reduced environment ” to build community and rapport. You can find many useful examples of activities on internet sources, which are designed for supporting kinesthetic movements of students, providing them choices, reducing their stress, encouraging social interaction in the classroom.

Some Community Building Activities (CBA) are shared below which you can implement in your language classes.

Your suggestions on CBA are all welcomed...

Activity 1

Name of the Activity: Classroom Buddies (We made it up)

Materials: A pencil and a notebook.

Duration: 15 minutes

The students work in pairs. Each student makes a list of ten sentences about their likes, dislikes, hobbies, phobias, characteristics. Later, they compare their list and put a tick near common features.

Purpose: The aim of the activity is to find out what students have in common with their friends. In this way, peers can learn about each other better. At different times, the teacher can make this activity again to match different peers. The ones who have at least five common features are called ‘classroom buddies. In group works, buddies can study together.

Activity 2

Name of the Activity: Stand Up if Yes (We made it up)

Materials: no needed

Duration: 20 minutes

Source: We were inspired by the activity called “Take a Stand and Stand” by Edutopia and I changed the questions.

Purpose: The students are asked to stand up if they their answer is “Yes” to the following questions. At the end, the teacher can ask students who share same traits in common to meet in a group in the classroom to give more detailed information such as what kind of instrument they can play, where they have been abroad, etc. In this way, they can learn more about their friends.

Were you born inside/outside Turkey?
Can you play a musical instrument?
Do you like folk dances?
Do you like reading poem?
Do you like doing yoga?
Do you like chocolate?
Can you swim?
Have you ever been abroad?
Do you drink coffee every day?
Do you like watching horror films?
Do you like eating vegetables?
Do you like learning English?
Do you like wearing traditional clothes?
Have you got a pen friend?
Do you go to football matches?

Activity 3

Name of the Activity: Flipgrid Introductions

Materials: Flipgrid (internet connection)

Duration: 15-20 minutes

Source: The New York Times website

Purpose: The purpose of this community building activity is to break the ice and to give students an opportunity to know something new about one another through 2-3 fun questions, which they can suggest by themselves. Initially, the teacher creates a class Flipgrid account, which is free. The teacher can adjust the video length from 15 seconds to 5 minutes. Then, the teacher models this activity by posting his/her own video, answering the questions that the class has agreed on, and replying to his/her students’ own answers.

For further information, you can read following articles on Community Building.

Article 1

Article 2

Needs Analysis

Issue 2 (29 March, 2021)

Why Needs Analysis?

It is of high importance to know our students well. When we adapt our teaching style according to students’ needs, they can enjoy their learning journey much. Needs analysis can help us build a better connection with the students.

Students’ needs can be divided into three categories: content needs, learning preferences, and personal needs. Content needs are about the students’ language needs and language knowledge such as their goals for English, language skills that they give much importance, and subskills that they are weaker or stronger. Learning preferences are about how the student likes to learn. Personal needs refer to individual interests, concerns, fears, or motivation triggers. It will be useful to know these things about our students. The most common way to learn students’ needs is to make a survey or questionnaire.

We would like to share a sample needs analysis format. In the questionnaire that is designed for analyzing students’ needs, there are totally ten items four of which are open-ended questions as follow:

Why are you learning English?
Do you like or dislike learning English?
Do you want to carry on learning English after 1^st class? Please explain why.
Our teacher had better ……..(Your suggestions are welcomed)

The rest of the questions which require one or more than one appropriate answer are presented below:

Which skills/areas do you find difficult to learn? (You can circle more than one)
Which do you prefer most in language classroom? (Please put an X next to appropriate one)
Which of the following do you prefer most during classroom activities? (Please put an X next to appropriate one)
Which of the following is your strongest individual learning style? (Please put an X next to appropriate one)
What kind of materials do you enjoy? (You can circle more than one)
What kind of topics/subjects are you interested in? (You can circle more than one)

These questions are all included deliberatively to gather information on students’ content needs, learning preferences and personal needs. Concerning content needs, the questionnaire finds out students’ general opinions, beliefs, challenges, and future plans for learning English. Secondly, it is aimed to gain information about their learning preferences such as working individually, peer or group work, teacher-based learning, collaboration, competition, creation, or communication. Based on Multiple Intelligence Theory, the questionnaire also tries to gather information on the types of intelligence that students are more inclined to while learning English. In this way, we can use various kinds of materials or prepare classroom activities appealing to different learning styles. Teachers should know their students’ areas of interest to catch their attention and keep their motivation high during the course.

The questionnaire is enclosed below as word document. You can use it by editing as you wish.

Sample Needs Analysis

Differentiated Instruction

Issue 3 (2 April, 2021)

Differentiated Instruction is "a way of teaching in which instructors observe differences between students and plan instruction to meet all of their different needs" (Shephard, 2020).

How to Differentiate Instruction?

According to Weselby (2021) Teachers who implement differentiating approaches in the classroom may:

Design lessons based on students’ learning styles.
Group students by shared interest, topic, or ability for assignments.
Assess students’ learning using formative assessment.
Manage the classroom to create a safe and supportive environment.
Continually assess and adjust lesson content to meet students’ needs.

In a differentiated instruction “the teacher proactively plans and carries out varied approaches to content, process, and product in anticipation of and response to student differences in readiness, interest, and learning needs” (Tomlinson 2017). Weselby (2020) summarizes these three differentiating approaches as follows:

1.Differentiating Content

As you already know, fundamental lesson content should cover the standards of learning set by the school district or state educational standards. But some students in your class may be completely unfamiliar with the concepts in a lesson, some students may have partial mastery, and some students may already be familiar with the content before the lesson begins.

What you could do is differentiate the content by designing activities for groups of students that cover various levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy (a classification of levels of intellectual behavior going from lower-order thinking skills to higher-order thinking skills). The six levels are: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating.

Students who are unfamiliar with a lesson could be required to complete tasks on the lower levels: remembering and understanding. Students with some mastery could be asked to apply and analyze the content, and students who have high levels of mastery could be asked to complete tasks in the areas of evaluating and creating.

Examples of differentiating activities:

Match vocabulary words to definitions.
Read a passage of text and answer related questions.
Think of a situation that happened to a character in the story and a different outcome.
Differentiate fact from opinion in the story.
Identify an author’s position and provide evidence to support this viewpoint.
Create a PowerPoint presentation summarizing the lesson.

2. Differentiating Process

Each student has a preferred learning style, and successful differentiation includes delivering the material to each style: visual, auditory and kinesthetic, and through words. This process-related method also addresses the fact that not all students require the same amount of support from the teacher, and students could choose to work in pairs, small groups, or individually. And while some students may benefit from one-on-one interaction with you or the classroom aide, others may be able to progress by themselves. Teachers can enhance student learning by offering support based on individual needs.

Examples of differentiating the process:

Provide textbooks for visual and word learners.
Allow auditory learners to listen to audio books.
Give kinesthetic learners the opportunity to complete an interactive assignment online.

3. Differentiating Product

The product is what the student creates at the end of the lesson to demonstrate the mastery of the content. This can be in the form of tests, projects, reports, or other activities. You could assign students to complete activities that show mastery of an educational concept in a way the student prefers, based on learning style.

Examples of differentiating the end product:

Read and write learners write a book report.
Visual learners create a graphic organizer of the story.
Auditory learners give an oral report.
Kinesthetic learners build a diorama illustrating the story.

References

Sheppard, B (2020). Module 3 Required Reading: Differentiated Instruction for the Online Professional English Network (OPEN). University of Oregon.

Tomlinson, C. (2017). How to Differentiate Instruction in Academically Diverse Classrooms. ASCD.

Weselby, C. (2020). What is Differentiated Instruction? Examples of How to Differentiate Instruction in the Classroom

(https://resilienteducator.com/classroom-resources/examples-of-differentiated-instruction/)

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