I am always searching for ways to encourage my students to be active and involved in the lesson; I aim for all to be engaged in the discussion. A whole-class discussion usually means a few students contributing, directing most of the comments to the teacher ping pong style. Even if the teacher decides to hear every group member, it can only ever be a short statement because of time limitations.I follow and deeply admire Jennifer Gonzales, a teacher blogger at Cult of Pedagogy. A few years ago, Gonzales wrote a post on ‘chat stations’, a teaching strategy that resonated with me, and I adopted it immediately. The simple idea involves…
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It’s not homework!
This morning I want to share one of the issues I grappled with this year in my online flipped learning courses for pre-service teachers. For those unfamiliar with the concept of flipped learning, here is a short explanation: Before I describe my experience, I will remind myself and my readers that this wasn’t a routine online learning situation; this was learning forced online in response to the pandemic. My students were learning 100% online for most of the year and were participating in a wide range of courses presented in different ways. Many students were struggling academically and financially, some were juggling study with small children present, and others were working…
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Grand Finale – Goosechase in the gardens
Unfortunately, the pressures of this impossible academic year have caused me to neglect my writing and abandon my blog. Teaching and supporting pre-service teachers through the turmoil of the pandemic was challenging and burdensome, but I learnt a great deal. I sincerely hope to grapple with some of those understandings here on the blog very soon. In the last week of the academic year, I chose to close two of my online courses face-to-face with creative and active events outside in the fresh air. Both courses were didactics courses for language teaching; one was for EFL pre-service teachers, and the other was for pre-service teachers of Hebrew language and literacy.…
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Pondering plagiarism: 30 questions
I spent last week grading assignments. In one course my task included a choice of content and questions. I was almost at the end of the forty-plus papers when I encountered one different in structure. I was annoyed to see that the student hadn’t followed my instructions. ‘Why didn’t he read the instructions; they were crystal clear? What didn’t he understand?’ I asked myself while reading. I decided to ignore the structure of the paper initially and to concentrate on the content. As I read, I could sense that the student hadn’t written the piece. Even though the course was a-synchronous with little inter-personal communication, I could feel something suspicious…
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Building community through student choice
I have just finished teaching ‘Rhetoric Skills: Theory and Practice’. It’s the first time I have taught the semester-long course for first-year BA and preservice teachers and retraining students studying towards their teaching certificate in EFL. Due to the college closure and three periods of lockdown during the semester, I taught the course online. I have already written about my informal meetings with some of the students here. The cohort made up of 42 students was heterogeneous and included students from many Israeli cultural groups. Meeting with Jewish students, both religious and secular, Christians and Muslims from a broad geographical radius in the north of Israel, made the experience richer…
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Is reaching out to each student viable?
This week, a fortnight before the end of the semester, I wondered about one of my students. I wasn’t sure that he is up to date with the tasks, although he certainly was earlier in the semester. I began scanning the units of individual work to check on him. I was right! I saw that he stopped doing the tasks a few weeks ago. Is there a problem? Maybe he is sick or in quarantine? Questions were racing through my head, and then it dawned on me that there might be other students in the same position. Going through the lists of tasks and student names, I decided to write…
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Classroom observation 2020: As bizarre as it gets!
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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I’m giving an inch, are they taking a mile?
2020-2021 is an unprecedented academic year. Students are dealing with serious issues which significantly influence their study. Many of my students have taken on work as teaching assistants in jobs offered by the Ministry of Education in their effort to divide classes into “capsules” and rapidly increase staff numbers in schools. Many are working in other sectors to support their families or to catch up on long periods of unemployment. Some students have been unwell or quarantined, and many are caring for family members. Other students are still finding it challenging to adapt to online learning and are discovering that every task takes them a lot longer than it should.…
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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…
