1. A brief introduction to the Examination Research And Training Center
The Examination Research And Training Center is a branch of the foreign language department, WIT, established in 2002. The center mainly undertakes the training courses of in-school students, including CET4 CET6 TEM4 and juvenile English. The CETs and TEM courses are designed with the goal to improve students’ performances in examination and the juvenile English courses are aimed at fostering their interest in learning English.
The training team consists of the most experienced English teachers and professors of the Foreign Language department. Most of them have been researched the CET and TEM for years and harvested abundant fruits.
As a guarantee of the training outcome, we have the acceto the multimedia classrooms and a dozen of digital language labs.
2. Preface
In the by-gone month, I had a bitter and sweet time with those unconstrained young kids of 8 or 9. The first time standing in front of the class, facing a dozen pairs of eyes, I threw away my na-iv-e thoughts of being a primary school English teacher. The cases I saw and dealt with are totally new and tough for me. I met great difficulties in handling them. However, hardship always turns out to be treasures in later times. Through the whole month, I tried my best to be both a fried and a teacher to the students. As a friend to them, I played games with them and told them stories; as a teacher I gave them classes and orders. For the whole month as a whole, I valued the experiences in the training center very much. Particularly, I am most grateful to my tutors. Thanks for their instructions and help.
3. Detailed Report
In the very beginning, I’d like to share a brief introduction of the students in the training class.
There are 17 of them in all, most of whom are from one-child family. At home, they are prince and princess. But on the other hand, they are well educated and most active everywhere, either in front of you as friends or as students. Frankly, however, their over activenehas been the first headache for us teachers. Another feature of this group of kids is they are various in English levels. There are fourth grade students, some other are of lower grade and also someone has just graduated from kindergarten. To teach a clalike this, as my tutor once said it takes extra energies, requires of professional skills and qualities.
To follow a clear logic, I am going to present my report to the procedures of lesson organization, which includes the following six parts as I see it:
3.1. Preparation before class
3.2. Principles in clamanagement
3.3. Principles in teaching
3.4. Special skills in class
3.5. Strategies in lesson organization
3.6. Precautions in teaching
3.1 Preparation before Class
Full preparation is the first step toward any achievement. And it was proved to be true by my own experience on the platform. An all-round preparation before classes, including the establishment of relations with claand writing teaching-plan, not only enables you to be fluent on the one inch high platform, also it’s the source of self-confidence in handling the group of unconstrained children.
To speak specifically, I would like to illustrate this with several tips I obtained from teaching observation.
3.1.1 Remembering names of the kids
Remembering the names of the others is an important skill in good communication, and this applies to children too. If you can call his or her name, you are giving the message that I have noticed you, or something alike. Everyone would appreciate the importance you attached to him or her and become cooperative. Though the kids do not know the theory, the feel exactly the same psychological way. Thus remembering the name of your students does help you to make a highly organized and efficient class. Apart from this, knowing their names sets you in a favorable position. Because calling the one you want to ask by “you, the one in red coat ” or some other name, always set yourself in embarrassment in the first place. So, I regard this tip as the first important principle in the preparation before class.
3.1.2 Switch smoothly between knowledge points
Writing the teaching plan takes much time of the preparation. It’s not the amount of knowledge we need to teach troubles us, but the way to do it. Young kids of 8 or 9 years old have their limits in learning ability, such as, they can’t understand a abstract notion or rule quickly, nor can they do good reasoning. This requires us to go in the steps that they can follow. For the training clawe teach, in which students are various in grade and English levels, demand us to design our clawith the considerations of both teaching effectively and taking care of those who lags behind in study. In solving the problem, the theory we learn in educational psychology helped us a lot. But still, beyond the theory I want to say, the first principle in designing a teaching plan is to make it smooth and interesting transitions
3.1.3 Speak loudly and clearly
This is really a great physical challenge for many female classmates, but anyway, we all agree that the efforts are quite rewarding. To tell the truth that never before have I ever talked so loudly and for so long. I shouted my throat hoarse the first time I delivered my class. However what pleaded me is that those young boys and girls followed me quite well, and I in their jet black eyes, I saw the delight of learning.
3.2 Principles in clamanagement
We all know that, in the primary school, the hard job is not the knowledge, but that you have make them follow you and study. However, those princes and princefrom wellbeing one-child family are totally uncontrollable in a way of using sticks, as one described ironically that wherever there is suppression, there is resistance. As the result, most teachers adopted a way of carrot. This turned out to be useful to some extents. From the observation of professional’s class, I summarized following principles in clamanagement.
3.2.1 Be fair
Young kids of 8 or 9 years old are extremely sensitive to the teachers’ treatment and handling of the claproblems. Once they sensed something unfair, he or she will protest by refusing any cooperation, and nothing could stop him/her except tender explanation of the reasonability. Surely, no teachers want to spend time on such deeds in class. To avoid such situations we need to keep on thing in mind --justice. Just take on case for example, two students raised hands to answer a challenging question and you gave the chance to A. Here you’d better remember to mention or praise the one who didn’t answer the question. Besides these, the chances to display themselves in public should also be given evenly to each one.
In any normal minds, this seems to be an impossible task to solve all the justice problems, because we teachers are no judges, and even we have the expertise of a judge, we don’t have the time to do this in class. Then how is it possible? If you think so, I have to say you have made a mistake in understanding the justice in those young minds. According to physiologist’s conclusion, primary school students see the words of authoritative people, such as teacher, parents, as the rules of justice. So, the point I am ma-ki-ng is that we must explain why I gave the chance to the other, and tell him or her a reason. Yet, as to the rationality, the children will never think much about it.
3.2.2 Always set your attention on the majority
For young students, they cannot concentrate their attention on one thing for long. It’s not because they are too naughty to do that, but for physical reason---their brain has developed fully. Accordingly, we need to take this into our consideration in our clamanagement.
In my observation, I found that we often devote our attention certain the one, who is answering our question, or being an objective of certain activity, keeping the majority waiting. Then some student talks, laugh, even fight with each other. Can we account this to the kids? Surely not.
To avoid the meof class, we need to set an eye on the majority all the time, even when they can’t be involved in. For example, when we want to help certain kid in pronunciation, we can teach the whole clatogether or ask some other students to be the teacher. In similar way, the clawill be well under control.
In a word, in the preparation of claactivity, we need to consider those who are not directly involved, only in this way we can make an efficient and easy job in clamanaging.
3.2.3 Praise as much as you can
To communicate well and make good impression, professionals advise us to praise as much as we can. Here in teaching, which is also a kind of communication, the strategy should also be applied. Teachers should praise often and in various ways. In our clawe say “good, very good”, the si-mp-le word not only make them active in class, but also foster their sense of achievement which are crucial factor in the future success. In this sense, I labeled praise as the third principle in clamanagement.
3.3 Principles in teaching
Teaching is the main activity in a school, though it’s an extremely complex process, but the effects from the teaching faculty are of an appreciable amount. Because it is the teacher who deals directly with knowledge and students. Apart from the fundamental rules introduced in our teaching theories, such as agreement between teaching objectives and development stage of children, the interaction between teachers and students, I summarized several rules in giving clato primary school students.
3.3.1 Make the lesi-mp-le repetition
English teaching is different from Mathematics. What we teach in a fundamental mathematic clais logic, while we teach the vocabulary and grammar rules in English class. That means, repetition is the only way to strengthen the impression of the knowledge in the students’ mind. For example, we teach them pronunciation by repetition, we repeat the English words and it’s meaning together again and again to help them remember them. While on the other hand, overusing it will not be so helpful as have expected.
From my observation I found that the children lose their interest in the lesson easily if repeat too much. And if that happen, trouble comes. Therefore an unspoken limit for si-mp-le repetition is 3, as a way to keep the kids in control.
3.3.2 Do not write too much on the blackboard
Usually we write down on the blackboard what the students can’t understand, to make the thing under discussion clear and visible. However the situation I often see is that, teacher writes too much on the blackboard that the kids can’t find the topic. The blackboard becomes some kind draft pa-pe-r.
The problem here is that those irrelative or not related to the book are great distraction to the class. the students can’t differentiate the key point from supplementary knowledge. Or to speak at the very least, it prevents the kids from image memorizing.
So, here I want to remind the new primary school teacher to use their chalk well.
3.3.3 Response quickly
Response quickly means the teachers must react according to the students’ action or behavior. For instance, if any students have questions, the teacher must attend to it as soon as he can. Another kind of response is that the teacher should make comments after the students voluntarily performance. Using one word to summarize is “feedbacks”.
A conversation without feedback just like a talk with continuous questions but no answers was made. How can this conversation last long? The same is true for a class. Imagine a clain which all kids sit there quietly, no talk, no laugh, and even no movement, how much the possibility is for you to finish the claif you were the one on the platform? However, on the contrary side, if students are very active, keeping on raising hands, answering questions, but the teacher say nothing but “sit down”, can their interests in you last? Thus, we must remember that the kids are always waiting our feedback.
3.4 Useful skills in class
3.4.1 Praise loudly
