BM 01-Bia SKKN
DONG NAI EDUCATION AND TRAINING DEPARTMENT
NAM HA HIGH SCHOOL
__________________________
Code:
THE INITIATIVE EXPERIENCE
CREATING EFFECTIVE TEACHING
AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
Teacher:
TRAN THI VAN ANH
Research field:
English
Education management:
Teaching method:
Other fields:
Attachments:
Object
Software
Film
School year: 2019 – 2020
Other things
DONG NAI EDUCATION AND TRAINING DEPARTMENT
NAM HA HIGH SCHOOL
__________________________
THE INITIATIVE EXPERIENCE
CREATING EFFECTIVE
TEACHING AND LEARNING
ENVIRONMENTS
Teacher:
TRAN THI VAN ANH
Research field:
English
Education management:
Teaching method:
Other fields:
Attachments:
Object
Software
Film
Other things
School year: 2019 – 2020
CREATING EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Pages
Introduction
1. Study background
5
2. Reason for choosing the study
5
3. Objects and scope of the study
5
4. Purpose of the study
5
Contents
I. Reality of the study
6
II. Contents of the study
1. Process of the study
6-18
1.1. Integrated activities
6-11
1.1.1. Predicting
7-9
1.1.2. Consolidating
9-10
1.1.3. Interviewing
10-11
1.2. Mind mapping
12-13
1.3. Playing games
13-16
1.4. Using technology in learning and teaching
16-18
2. Advantages and disadvantages of the study
3. Evaluation of the study
19
19-20
Conclusions
21
References
22
Appendix
Sample lesson
22-33
CREATING EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
GENERAL INFORMATION
1. Name of the initiative experience:
CREATING EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
2. Research field: English teaching method
3. Author:
- Full name: TRAN THI VAN ANH
Male (Female): Female
- Diploma: Bachelor of teaching English
- Position, place of work: English teacher/ Nam Ha high school
- Telephone number: 0909.961.960
Email:
[email protected]
Contribution rate for the initiative experience (%): 100%
CREATING EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
INTRODUCTION
1. Study background
My study, Creating effective teaching and learning environments,
offers applicable techniques helping improve the effectiveness in teaching in
general and in teaching reading in particular as well as stimulating learning
environments among students.
2. Reason for choosing the study
Nowadays, teaching and learning are not giving and receiving
knowledge any longer. Instead, teachers give instructions and students are main
characters of the class, which we call learner-centred learning. In this situation,
students choose what they will learn, how they will pace their learning, and
how they will assess their own learning.
Realizing the characteristics of new teaching and learning style, I always
study and research the best methods to help teachers improve the quality of
teaching and learning English. I also learn from my colleagues at Nam Ha high
school as well as other high schools through professional training courses.
Furthermore, I have done some experiments in which I applied various
teaching techniques to improve teaching and learning environments in my
classes. Last but not least, in order to finish this study, I have made statistic and
considered the result which has been changed significantly since I started using
these techniques.
Following are my study, Creating effective teaching and learning
environments, which is drawn from all my eight-year teaching experience.
3. Objects and scope of the study
The study focuses on students belonging to my three classes such as
10C4, 10C5, and 12C9 at Nam Ha high school; they are at the age from sixteen
to eighteen.
About the time of this study, it is conducted during the first semester of
the 2019-2020 school year (from the mid of September to the mid of
December), and the activities are built according to the available tasks in the
textbook.
4. Purpose of the study
In an attempt to improve teaching and learning quality in reading
lessons, I have had an idea and conducted some practical applications. I feel
quite optimistic about these techniques; hence, I write this paper aiming to
share the skills to create effective teaching and learning environments,
especially in reading lessons.
School year: 2019-2020
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Teacher: Tran Thi Van Anh
CREATING EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
CONTENTS
I. Reality of the study
Nobody can disapprove of the fact that teaching and learning styles have
changed significantly over the years. In the twenty-first century classroom, it is
students, not teachers, who play primarily “active” role. Moreover, students are
required to be more active and become responsible participants in their own
learning and with their own pace of learning.
In addition, teachers are facilitators of student learning and creators of
productive classroom environments, in which students can develop the skills
they might need at present or in future. However, this will certainly force
teachers both to be more creative, active and to make more efforts to improve
their skills in teaching as well as class management.
In fact, to find out the best solutions to the problems teachers often meet
while applying new techniques in teaching English, all groups and departments
related to education usually carry out the movements, the contests or the
discussions which help teachers have opportunities to learn experiences from
each other.
II. Contents of the study
1. Process of the study
In order to create effective teaching and learning environments in
reading lessons, teachers are supposed to be more patient and flexible in
teaching as well as making great efforts to design attractive learning activities.
Moreover, the most important thing to better class environments is
making students excited about learning activities, so that they will actively
contribute to the lessons.
Following are some techniques which I have applied to improve teaching
and learning environments in reading lessons.
1.1. Integrated activities
Integrated activities aim to focus on more than one skill or subject matter
through one exercise or activity. For example, in a reading exercise, you can
develop not only reading skills but speaking skills, writing skills and listening
skills as well. As we know, the main reason for language learning is effective
communication. However, our current educational system is only focused on
grammar and comprehensive reading, which is not good for students’
communicative skills in the future. Many Vietnamese students graduating from
a university cannot communicate with foreigners. Therefore, using integrated
activities in teaching English is obligatory. It is necessary for teachers to design
activities in which students are supposed to use a combination of receptive
School year: 2019-2020
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Teacher: Tran Thi Van Anh
CREATING EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
skills – reading and listening - and productive skills – speaking and writing.
There are also many interesting activities which teachers can use to engage
their students. Following are some activities to combine reading and writing or
speaking which I have used in my reading lessons.
1. 1.1. Predicting
- Rationale: The aim of this activity is for students to preview a reading
passage in order to predict its content.
- Procedure:
1. Have students preview the text they will be reading to get a general
idea of what it is about. The clue may be the title of the passage, the first
paragraph, the first sentence of each paragraph, the last paragraph, and so on.
2. Ask students to work in groups to write down what they think the
passage will be about or what they think will happen in the reading based on
the information they got in step one. Depending on the nature of the reading
and the level of the class, students could write lists of words or phrases, or they
could write a paragraph.
3. Invite students to read what they have written. Compare predictions.
4. After reading the entire passage, students can compare their
predictions with the text.
In this activity, students begin to pose questions about a text and make
predictions about it before they read. In this way, students become authors of
the text and may understand the kinds of expectations that a writer has, which
can be helpful for them in their own writing. Students may also begin to see the
role that previewing and predicting play in understanding what they read. In
addition, this kind of activity gives students a purpose for reading and
motivates them to orient themselves to the topics they want to discover.
Sample lessons:
Grade 12 – Unit 8: LIFE IN THE FUTURE
The clue: the title of reading text and the first paragraph
“What will life be like in the future? Different people have different answers to
this question; some are pessimistic while others optimistic.”
→ Students’ first prediction: “The passage will talk about life in the future.
Some people think life will be better; while others think it will be worse.”
Teacher divides class into two groups and asks them to discuss some
changes in specific fields, such as medical care, environment, transport, etc.
according to two different opinions “Life will be better” and “Life will be
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Teacher: Tran Thi Van Anh
CREATING EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
worse”. Then, each group will write their work in the wallchart and show it to
the class.
→ Students’second prediction:
LIFE WILL BE BETTER.
LIFE WILL BE WORSE.
School year: 2019-2020
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Teacher: Tran Thi Van Anh
CREATING EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
Grade 10 – Unit 4: SPECIAL EDUCATION
The clue: the title of the passage and the vocabulary
“A TEACHER IN A SPECIAL CLASS”
→ Students’ prediction: “The passage will talk about the work of a teacher
in a special class. The work may be very difficult, because the students may
be disabled. For example:
- Students may be blind; teacher has to use books with Braille alphabet
to teach them.
- Students may be deaf and dumb; teacher has to use sign language to
teach them.
- It will take teacher a very long time and so much effort to teach
disabled students.”
1.1.2. Consolidating
- Rationale: After reading a passage, students are asked to recall as much
as they can of what they read. Reconstructing a reading helps students clarify
their understanding of the text and gives them practice in using the language
they are learning.
- Procedure:
1. After reading, give students a few minutes to review the text. Tell
them to remember everything they can.
2. Ask students to close textbooks and take turns with classmates to tell
each other in their own words what they remember from the reading. Invite
students to speak aloud to classmates. Compare their works.
3. As a class, give some phrases or numbers which appear in the passage
and ask students to use these cues to talk about the events mentioned in the
passage.
Consolidating is a valuable step in the reading process because it
becomes quite apparent whether students have understood the reading, thus
allowing the teacher to discover and work with any misconceptions that might
arise.
School year: 2019-2020
9
Teacher: Tran Thi Van Anh
CREATING EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
Sample lessons:
Grade 12 – Unit 2: CULTURAL DIVERSITY
Instruction: Talk about the different ideas about love and marriage between
Americans and Asians metioned in the passage, using the following phrases as
cues:
“romantic” marriage
“contractual" marriage
physical attractiveness
confiding
partnership of equals
trust built on love
→ Students’ work: “Americans believe in “romantic” marriage, while
Asians believe in “contractual” marriage…”
Grade 10 – Unit 14: THE WORLD CUP
Instruction: Talk about the events mentioned in the passage, using the
following figures as cues:
1904
13
1930
17
32
2002
→ Students’ work: 1904 is the year when FIFA was held up…
1.1.3. Interviewing
- Rationale: The purpose of this activity is that students write about
experience relating to central ideas, themes or events in a passage that they
have read.
- Procedure:
1. After reading, give students a few minutes to review the text. Elicit the
main information of the passage from the whole class. Make questions to ask
about the information.
2. Ask students to take turns with a classmate to ask and answer the
questions, according to their own situation or experience.
3. Have students act out their interview in front of the class. Give
feedback.
Through this activity, students discover what they already understand
about the reading text. When students form connections with a text by relating
it to their own concrete experience, they gain a deeper understanding of
characters and issues in the text.
School year: 2019-2020
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Teacher: Tran Thi Van Anh
CREATING EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
Sample lessons:
Grade 12 – Unit 1: HOME LIFE
Interview a partner about his/her family life.
- Teacher elicits a list of questions about family life from students.
Questions:
Who works in the family
Who does the household chores
Your responsibility in the family
The interest the family members share closely
The person you often share your secret with
The person you talk to before amking an important decision
- Students work in pairs to ask and answer questions about family life.
- Teacher observes students working and gives assisstance if necessary.
Grade 10 – Unit 5: TECHNOLOGY AND I
Task: Interview a classmate about advantages and disadvantages of the
computer in his/her own daily life.
- Teacher elicits some ideas from whole class.
Advantages of the computer
Learn foreign languages
Relax: listen to music, play games, watch movies
Search information
Do reports
Disadvantages of the computer
Take time
Be short-sighted
- Students work in pairs to ask and answer questions about advantages and
disadvantages of the computer.
- Teacher observes students working and gives assisstance if necessary.
School year: 2019-2020
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Teacher: Tran Thi Van Anh
CREATING EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
1.2. Mind mapping
Students of the 21st century are extremely different from students in the
past. They are more active; therefore, instead of having students sit at their
desks doing worksheets all day, teachers ask them to keep their brains busy by
engaging them in activities that promote cognitive stimulation, and keep their
hands moving with activities that allow students to explore different senses and
textures or projects that students can create, rather than just observe.
The most activity I often use in my classes is mind mapping. This is a
highly effective way of getting information in and out of your brain. Mind
mapping is a creative and logical means of note-taking and note-making that
literally "maps out" students’ ideas.
Procedure:
- After students are explained about new vocabulary in the reading text,
they are divided into groups.
- They have to read the passage in textbook and work in groups to create
a mind map to sum up the reading passage.
- Each group shows the work on the board and presents about it in front
of the class.
Sample students’ works:
Grade 12 – Unit 4: School educational system (12C9)
School year: 2019-2020
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Teacher: Tran Thi Van Anh
CREATING EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
Grade 10 – Unit 5: Technology and I (10C5)
Mind Maps provide a visual learning mechanism that will help students
recognize relationships they may miss in a more linear type of activity. The act
of mapping something out encourages the individual to create an internal
retelling of the story. Through this activity, students can have a thorough
understanding about the reading text.
1.3. Playing games
All of us know why reading is important. Not only does reading teach
our students grammar, word usage and idea expression, but it also enables them
to acquire new information about their second language’s culture.
Additionally, reading helps students to see how English is communicated
through writing, which is why a good writer is also a good reader.
But reading anything in a second language is never easy. Students who are still
juggling new vocabulary, grammar rules and even phonics may feel reading is
not only tedious, but also too difficult for them to understand. Therefore,
playing games as reading tasks is a great way to make reading a fun classroom
task for students.
School year: 2019-2020
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Teacher: Tran Thi Van Anh
CREATING EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
Sample lessons:
Grade 12 – Unit 2: Cultural diversity – Reading
Love and Marriage Gameshow
- Teacher introduces the game to students. There are 6 questions about
attitudes towards love and marriage that students have to answer.
- Students work in 2 groups to choose the number and answer the
question behind that number.
School year: 2019-2020
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Teacher: Tran Thi Van Anh
CREATING EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
Grade 10 – Unit 3: People’s background – Reading
Guessing game: Who Is She?
- Teacher shows some pictures about a woman. Students use these cues
to guess who the woman is.
Picture 1:
Picture 2:
Picture 3:
Picture 4:
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Teacher: Tran Thi Van Anh
CREATING EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
Picture 5:
Answer key: She is Marie Curie.
1.4. Using technology in learning and teaching
Everyone acknowledges the power of technology over teaching. I often
use educational programmes such as Powerpoint, ActivInspire, MS Office, and
so on to design lessons and exercises. One of my favorite apps is Kahoot, an
educational tool. With this app, we can create fun learning games for our class
in minutes, or choose from millions of existing games to introduce a topic,
review and reinforce knowledge, and run formative assessment. Following are
some tasks I designed for my classes.
School year: 2019-2020
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Teacher: Tran Thi Van Anh
CREATING EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
Sample lesson:
Grade 10 – Unit 5: Technology and I
Grade 12 – Unit 1 – Language focus – Tenses revision
Students in this fourth industrial revolution are also excelent at using
technology in learning, such as searching and sharing information on the
Internet, making report with Microsoft Word or PowerPoint, and so on. I often
have my students do some homework with their computers or laptops, which
makes them more interested in learning than reading textbooks or doing paper
homework so much. Following are some of my students’ work.
School year: 2019-2020
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Teacher: Tran Thi Van Anh
CREATING EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
Students’ sample work
Grade 12 – Unit 10: Endagered species
Grade 10 – Invention of Television
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Teacher: Tran Thi Van Anh
CREATING EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
2. Advantages and disadvantages of the study
2.1.
Advantages of the study
Teachers are always enthusiastic and creative in not only teaching but
applying new techniques in teaching as well. Both experienced teachers and
young, active teachers usually work together to find out better solutions to
improve teaching and learning problems.
Nowadays, students are better at soft skills, such as computer skills,
group-working/ pair-working skills, self-study skills and so on.
2.2.
Disadvantages of the study
Length of time for a teaching period is relatively short. As a result of
this, it is difficult for teachers to deliver their knowledge to the students.
Besides, the content of the subject is too overwhelming. It requires teachers to
provide students a large sum of knowledge in a limited time, only fourty-five
minutes.
3. Evaluation of the study
3.1.
Ingenuity of the study
After one-semester experiment on my students, I am really confident
about the effect of this study. I myself can recognize the change in the teaching
and learning environment in my classes. My students pay much more attention
to the lessons as a result of my integrated activities. Moreover, they become
more and more mature and responsible for their every behavior in class due to
the classroom policies they have developed by themselves. Last but not least,
blending technology in learnning really works because my students seem to be
more eager with homework than ever before. It is the chance for them to show
their technological skills; therefore, they have to prepare their work carefully.
3.2. Effect of the study
From my observational field notes, I came to the following evaluations
over the strong points of my real lesson. Students were enhanced to self-study
and were stimulated to work in class activities.
School year: 2019-2020
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Teacher: Tran Thi Van Anh
CREATING EFFECTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
(The 1st term of the school year 2019 - 2020)
Class
10C4
(44)
10C5
(44)
12C9
(33)
The number of students really joins class
activities before applying to the new
method.
35
students
30
students
20
students
The number of students really joins class
activities after applying to the new
method.
40
students
41
students
33
students
3.3. Applicability of the study
This study has been applied to teaching every subject, not only English.
Many teachers in different subjects or levels can conduct it and get positive
results as well.
However, to make this study work, the most important factors are
teachers and learners. Teachers need to be energetic to design new activities
and knowledgeable to supply assisstance for students if necessary. Learners are
supposed to be active, eager to work hard, even by themselves.
Nowadays, technology in education is not a new thing, thus teachers at
every school in every part of the country can apply this study to improve the
quality of learning and teaching.
School year: 2019-2020
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Teacher: Tran Thi Van Anh