This week I observed one of my pre-service teachers in an English lesson. It was the student’s first observation, and I was eager to see how she is progressing. I thought I knew what to expect; after all, this is my third year working with students in their school practicum. What did I know in advance? I knew the student would teach via Zoom, as she teaches in another school and because of COVID 19, can’t be exposed to other groups of pupils. She has never met the pupils face-to-face. After reading the lesson plan and giving feedback twice, I knew what material the class would learn and how. I…
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Four Day Teaching Marathon
Last week I taught a marathon. Sitting at my desk, I ran like the wind through four intensive days in which I taught a whole semester course. In my last post, I wrote about my dilemmas about dividing the students into groups to allow more intimate and significant learning. I was concerned that although I had offered three different time slots each day to cater to the needs of students with work and parenting responsibilities, the groups were very uneven. I had 23 students signed up for the morning sessions, eight for the afternoon and eight for the evening. After days of deliberation, I decided to encourage movement between the…
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Additional space for conversation: Informal Zoom meetings
In this period of social distancing and online teaching and learning, we are all in need of communication with others. We all need to see unmasked smiles, hear laughter, and look people in the eye, even if it is through a screen. Students are studying from home, and many have no contact with other students outside the formal lessons. As a relational teacher educator, I firmly believe learning is based on relationships with students and between the students. Building relationships in this academic year is more challenging than usual and requires educators to be creative. I need to be present for my students, and they need to feel that they…
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An Opportunity for Collaborative Thinking in Online Learning
I’m reflecting on the last synchronous lesson in the ‘Teaching English to Young Learners’ course. I have quite a lot of thinking to do about the structure of the lessons. I have divided my 36 students into two groups and have allotted 45-minutes for each, in my attempt to free students from sitting continuously on Zoom. I’m happy about that decision, but 45 minutes is looking very short to me now if I want to present a practical activity, and then have a meaningful dialogic interaction activity in small groups. Yesterday we had fifteen minutes together playing two games which can be directly applied in any elementary or high school…
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A Flipgrid Week – Teaching and Learning with Video
It has been a Flipgrid week. My first-year students in the Oranim English Department made introductory videos. The students, taking their first steps in academia, presented themselves in English in ninety-second videos. Looking at their faces, hearing about their backgrounds, their hobbies, and their dreams of becoming teachers was a pleasure for me, but it was much more than that. In an a-synchronous higher education course, where I only met the students once in a large group on Zoom, this opportunity to see and hear them one by one at the beginning of the course was crucial. Through their Flipgrid videos, I ‘met’ the students as individuals, but just as…
