Focus: applying

Grade: 9

Subject: Science

Topic: endangered animals

Norwegian curriculum after 10th grade:

Science:“observere og gi eksempler på hvordan menneskelig aktivitet har påvirket et naturområde, undersøke ulike interessegruppers syn på påvirkningen og foreslå tiltak som kan verne naturen for framtidige generasjoner “ (Utdanningsdirektoratet, 2013).

English:” uttrykke seg med flyt og sammenheng tilpasset formål og situasjon.” (Utdanningsdirektoratet, 2013)

Specific objectives Science: Be able to understand the reasons why some animals are endangered.

Be able to apply knowledge about endangered animals to find solutions to the problem

Specific objective English: Be able to orally present information about an endangered animal in English.

Into- In the into activity the students will use a KWL (know, want, learn) grid where the topic is “endangered animals”. They will fill in what they already know about the topic and what they want to learn about the topic. The teacher will also ask the students out loud in class  what they wrote in the “know” section, so the he/she can get an overview over what the students already know about the topic

Through- The students will work in pairs and go to https://www.worldwildlife.org to choose one endangered animal they want to learn more about. After this, they make a poster online about the one of the animals with a picture of it, a map of where it lives and general information about it.  The poster will also contain information about why the animal is threatened by extinction. They will use https://www.postermywall.com to make the poster. This is because this tool is easy to use and for a small presentation it can be nice to just make a poster online as opposed to a powerpoint presentation or a physical poster which requires more material. After the posters are done, each group will hold a 5 minute presentation about their chosen animal.

Beyond- In the beyond activity, the students will discuss in their pairs what society can do do avoid their chosen animal going extinct, and make a mind map on mindmup.com to find organize their ideas. The reason for using mindmup is because it`s easy to use and is a great tool for organizing many ideas. This is where the students will apply their knowledge about their endangered animal to find a solution. The teacher will, at the end of the lesson make each group briefly explain what they have discussed for the rest of the class.

Assessment: The students will fill in the last column in the KWL grid writing down what they have learned and the teacher will collect them to assess if the objectives have been met.

Reflection: Some students might be unfamiliar with the posterwall or mindmup tool, so it's important that the teacher has good knowledge on how to use it. Also, a 5 minute presentation might be a bit too short to present the animal, so it could have been a longer presentation.

Literature:

Utdanningsdirektoratet. (2013). Læreplan i engelsk (ENG1-03). Accessed from:

https://www.udir.no/kl06/ENG1-03/Hele/Kompetansemaal/kompetansemal-etter-10.-arstrinn

Utdanningsdirektoratet. (2013). Læreplan i naturfag (NAT1-03). Accessed from:

https://www.udir.no/kl06/NAT1-03/Hele/Kompetansemaal/kompetansemal-etter-10.-arstrinn

Grade 10

Focus: Understanding

Subject: Social science, Geography

Topic: Global poverty   

From Norwegian curriculum after year 10:

Social science:

“kartleggje variasjonar i levekår i ulike delar av verda, forklare dei store skilnadene mellom fattige og rike og drøfte tiltak for jamnare fordeling” (Utdanningsdirektoratet, 2013).

English: "lese, forstå og vurdere ulike typer tekster av varierende omfang om forskjellige emner" (Utdanningsdirektoratet, 2013)

Specific objectives:

1.Be able to explain the main causes of global poverty in the world.

2.Be able to understand texts about global poverty and summarize the main ideas in English.

Into: To activate the students prior knowledge about the topic the teacher will make a mind map on the board and ask the students what they know about global poverty and its causes and write it down.

Through: In this activity the students will be learning about global poverty and its causes, and write blog posts. The students will at first read articles about poverty from reliable sources on bibsonomy.org added by the teacher. After the reading the student will create their own blogs on blogger.com and write a blog post about at least three causes of global poverty. So, they have to be able to use their own words to write summaries about what causes global poverty. The reason why the student`s will use blogger.com to make a blog is because it`s very easy to create your own blog there and write posts. Also, it can feel more personal to write blog posts, so the students might feel more of an ownership to the topic they are writing about,                 

Beyond: In the beyond activity the students will write a  hypothetical letter to editor of a opinion section of a newspaper and  use their newly acquired knowledge to write about the importance of reducing poverty and the different ways global poverty can be reduced.                

                         

Assessment: To assess the work of the students, the teacher will access all the blogs of the students and read their summaries and comment on them.

Reflection: When the students write blog posts, a problem might be that some might be tempted to copy paste their summaries from somewhere on the web, so the the teacher has to be weary of that. The teacher also need to be very familiar with this specific blogging site and how to use it, since students might encounter difficulties with how to write blog posts and formatting. Also, as a teacher one could have made the students find information purely by themselves without adding articles for them to read on bibsonomy. But at the same time, some students might struggle to find reliable information on the internet, therefore it can be beneficial to help the students out so they don't spend too much time on finding relevant information.

Literature:

Utdanningsdirektoratet. (2013). Læreplan i engelsk (ENG1-03). Accessed from:

https://www.udir.no/kl06/ENG1-03/Hele/Kompetansemaal/kompetansemal-etter-10.-arstrinn

Utdanningsdirektoratet. (2013). Læreplan i samfunnsfag (SAF1-03)

Grade: 7

Focus: Remembering

Subject: Social science, Geography

Topic: Countries and capitals

From the Norwegian curriculum after year 7:

Social science:

“Bruke atlas, hente ut informasjon frå papirbaserte temakart og digitale karttenester og plassere nabokommunane, fylka i Noreg, dei tradisjonelle samiske områda og dei største landa i verda på kart”.(Utdanningsdirektoratet, 2013)

English: “forstå og bruke et ordforråd knyttet til kjente emner”. (Utdanningsdirektoratet, 2013)

Specific Objectives:

1: "Be able to know many of the countries and capitals in the world."

2: "Know the English names for many countries and cities."

Into: In my into stage the teacher will have the student guess what the lesson is about. The teacher write down keywords related to the countries and capitals on the board, like: Sweden, India, Beijing, Stockholm, and the class will try and guess based on previous knowledge. The teacher will start with the more difficult key words first and and then write down easier ones if they are not able to guess.

Through: In the through stage, the students will first get time to study atlases and learn new world capitals and countries. After this, the students will go to Flinga.fi and write in as many boxes with country and capital they know, everyone`s answers will be visible to the whole class. The students will be told that if a country+capital is already written, there's no need to write more times. Everything must be written in English.The reason to use flinga.fi is that everything the students write is visible to the whole class. It can be fun and motivating for the students to see the collective knowledge of the whole class and then it can be viewed as a form of team work.

Beyond: In the beyond the stage students will go in pairs and use their new knowledge to quiz another student on capitals and countries they know, e.g “Where is Vienna the capital?”.

Assessment: To assess if the learning objectives are met, the teacher will look at what the students write in flinga and listen to the students quiz each other in the beyond stage.

Reflection: A challenge might be that some students might write down non-subject related things when using flinga. Flinga is anonymous, so some students might be tempted to joke around. But a positive thing is that the teacher is able to be moderator and delete inappropriate answers.                   

Literature:

Utdanningsdirektoratet. (2013). Læreplan i engelsk (ENG1-03). Accessed from:

https://www.udir.no/kl06/ENG1-03/Hele/Kompetansemaal/kompetansemal-etter-10.-arstrinn

Utdanningsdirektoratet. (2013). Læreplan i samfunnsfag (SAF1-03). Accessed from: https://www.udir.no/kl06/SAF1-03/Hele/Kompetansemaal/kompetansemal-etter-7.-arssteget

My Teaching Philosophy

My Teaching Philosophy

In this assignment I will reflect on myself as an English teacher and which aspect of English teaching I consider to be of great importance. I will mainly focus on the importance of creating output in the classroom, Communicative language teaching and the benefits of inductive learning.

A very important value for me is having respect for the fact that all language learners are different. Because of this I will try to vary my teaching methods and the content of the classes the best I can, so it can benefit a variety of different learners. It is also vital for me that I encourage my future students to use their metacognition. By encouraging metacognition I can help my students reflect and be more aware regarding which learning methods that work best for them (Ellis & Shintani, p. 26).

I will of course give my future students language input, but I think It is especially important for me that student's create output in my classes. This is because Language acquisition is a creative process where we create our own hypotheses about the language we are trying to learn. When students get the chance to create output through speaking and writing they get a chance to test if their hypotheses about the target language is correct or incorrect (Ellis & Shintani, p.10). Through this process learners can revise their hypotheses which leads to new language learning.

Personally, I like Communicative language teaching because it is a great method to use when you want output from students. CLT is an approach to language teaching where the focus is to develop communicative competence. Ellis & Shintani (2014) describe the strong form of CLT in this way: “ The methodology is fluency oriented-directed at getting students to use language for communication rather than to practice correct usage”(p. 43) Through CLT the students can work with communicative tasks fitted or real life situations and use English authentically. I have tried using this type of teaching in practice, and I have noticed that students often get highly motivated when they get an opportunity to do tasks where they can collaborate and communicate with their peers.

It is also important for me that students are not afraid of speaking English. Many students might fear making mistakes during the English acquisition process. I want to help create a good learning environment where students feel comfortable enough to express themselves in English. Therefore, doing motivating CLT-tasks can make students less self-critical so they “forget” they are speaking English because they get so engaged. After all, learners making mistakes when speaking English is natural and errors are a natural feature of the language learning process (Ellis & Shintani, 2014, p.6).

With heavy subjects like grammar, I think it would be beneficial to use an approach where the students work inductively. Therefore, I will give the students a task and not explicitly tell them which grammar aspects we are going to work with. For example, we might do a task where the students give advice through working with authentic cases of teenagers who have asked for advice on the internet. After the task, I will discuss with the students which type of verbs they used when giving advice, and then explain more in-depth regarding the function of modal verbs when advising. Ellis & Shintani (2014) describe that a benefit of inductive presentation is that: “it involves greater depth of processing which assists memory” (p. 85). From my own experience, working inductively with grammar can be more motivating as opposed to the traditional deductive approach, where the students are told beforehand which grammar aspect to focus on.

All in all, in this paper I have examined some key factors related to English teaching which are important for me. I have discussed the importance of student output and creating a learning environment where the students do not fear making linguistic errors. I have also discussed how I consider CLT a very useful method for language teaching, in addition to the benefits of using an inductive approach when working with heavy subjects like grammar.

Literature:

Ellis, R., & Shintani, N. (2014). Exploring language pedagogy through second language acquisition research. New York, NY: Routledge.

Reflection 4

Reflection 4

I will discuss  the English textbook Stages 10 published by Aschehoug which I used in my teaching practice last year in 10th grade. The texbook is centered around a variety of different topics and texts that help widen the horizon of the students. E.g Indigenous people, The USA today and relations. Each topic has different texts and exercises related to the topic in question. Next to each text there is a glossary with difficult words from the text.

I think this is a really good book, because it contains such a variety of topics, so every students might find a topic they find interesting. There are also a variety of activities, related to grammar, role play, vocabulary and class discussions, so there are not just writing activities for the students to try out. In my teaching practice they read an excerpt from Romeo and Juliet and the book contained many activities related to the excerpt, like writing, discussion and dramatization. We did mos of these activities in class and I think the students appreciated that they got to try out a variety of activities.

A negative aspect might be that some of the texts are long and contain a lot of information about complicated political issues e.g immigration. So I think this book might be a bit challenging for students who struggle with reading long English texts. But all in all, I really like the variety of topics activities included in the book, especially the creative activities.

Reflection 3

Reflection 3

Personally, I favor communicative language teaching when you work with grammar. First of all, in my experience students think it`s fun to use language in an authentic way to interact with their fellow students to complete task. They get to use the language in an authentic way, which means that they get to practice the with the knowledge they already like they would in the real world. Communicative language teaching is great for learning heavier content like grammar, and I think this is a better way to learn about this topic than traditional grammar drills. Communicative language practice also allows you to  let the students work inductively, which I think more interesting for students. This can be achieved by starting the lesson and not saying which specific grammar of aspect that the students will work on, they might get have a task based on giving advice an afterwards realise that they have also practiced using modal verbs.

I also like the fact that CLT is mainly based on communicative activities where the students interact with one another. I think this can be very motivating because I students get more easily tired when they have to, in many classes, only listen to the teacher. I`d also like for the students to work with bigger projects, where they can have some choice with regards to which topics they want to explore. This can be achieved through e.g creating a class magazine. Not every student loves writing but by creating a magazine every student can contribute in some way

Reflection 2

Reflection 2

I remember that we did a lot of text reading, but we also did a lot of teacher-centered mechanical grammar drilling (audiolingual method). I personally thought this was a very uninspiring way if working with grammar. I liked when we were allowed to work on bigger projects, like choosing a topic getting to present it to the rest of the class. I  

I wish I had communicative language teaching when I went to school. Communicative language teaching, is a type of teaching where one encourages students to communicate with one another in an authentic way by doing different tasks. I don't think I was ever exposed to it, because I mostly remember my English lessons to be mostly teacher-centered. At school, we also had the typical glossary tests, where the teacher would choose some words we were supposed to learn each week. Personally, I found this a bit meaningless and mechanical, because we didn't learn to use the words in the right context anyway, we simply memorized them The glossary tests were common from primary school and through high school. I also don`t remember being given clear learning objectives, and I rarely received formative evaluations from my English teachers. I thought this was annoying because texts can become so much better when you can submit draft papers before the final grade. So, formative evaluation is definitely something I will try to give my future students so they get a chance to improve their English texts.