Different learning strategies have been applied without yielding expected results but instead providing conflicting findings on the best method to ensure the success of the learners. However, these problems narrow down to inadequate knowledge of the actual strategies used by the unsuccessful learners in contrast to what the best planning method would bear fruits. For instance, in teaching practice today, teachers may ask their students to write journals in order to encourage them to reflect on the certain aspect of their learning accomplishment. When journals like this are used, learning can be left fairly open and free to enable students’ think of their learning and what they have accomplished so far rather than having strict focus on the writing conventions or the correctness of their work. This challenges to think a lot and reflect on their learning (Patty D 2006).
In such like a situation, student’s reflection is determined and strategies ascertained to help them analyze, think aloud and follow protocols to the tasks given. This combined effects analyses and offer detailed and insightful picture to the students hence giving them a memorable experience as well as the picture of their learning hence making them active. The students become active task model users as they also explore different task model theories to solve problems presented in their learning experience. The lesson planning therefore is intended to share some useful characteristics with students that helps them observe conventions of academic writing as well as present quality journals and encourage them to extend their limits to do and produce quality work. This enables them to provide quality personal response to the guidelines laid out for the completion of assignments.
While creating a lesson plan, it is important to include how one goes about creating the plan. This often includes the beliefs underlying the planning as well as the statement about the view of the plan in regards to the need of the stake holders, where the ideas in the lesson came from and other influential reading experience in addition to the contextual experience and knowledge as well as the facilitating factors. It is not a bad idea to justify and explain the choices made in the development of the plan. In addition to the how one goes about creating the plan, there should be a justification to the choices made while creating the plan. During the planning, the planner needs to know how the lesson fits into the rest of the course in terms of the content, language, skills learned and practices and as to why such a plan is appropriate. This will dictate the choice of the resources and activities involved in addition to the teachers and students roles as well as the engagement of each team (Kays 1999).
In the situation of the discussion, the planner should always present with the reader or listener in mind. It is advisable to produce introduction which sets the scene for the lesson plan. This includes the contextual information, goals, how it relates to the students and whatever lessons the planner has developed throughout the course. It may include paragraph formats as well as topic sentences to orient the reader to what is in the plan or even subtitles to various sections of the discussion to ensure maximum clarity.
In this plan my contextual application is that rural students in a classroom and performed to the tune of the stakeholders constraints. These students were of mixed gender and mixed age groups as well as mixture of cultural upbringings and different proficiency levels. I also needed to think of special considerations as well as the purposes and motivational levels to enhance their learning capabilities. In the activity section, I will introduce the activity as well as have an overview of the goals and how these contribute to the bigger goal of the class. This was a step by step description of the goals of the class and course studied. I also transitioned from one idea to another by asking question to the students as well as explaining graphs in the course study book while drawing my own graphs and relating these graphs to enable easier understanding of the connection. This includes the explanation of the horizontal and vertical axes as well as enabling the students to listen, understand and also draw and explain their own graphs. I sampled the students work and projected them to show what the trend of understanding among them students looked like while using their own work to motivate them of their own achievements (Steinber 2002).
In the course emotion, I taught English and making sure the students learned English language within eight weeks. This was a university level course in the university classroom of thirty students in a class of fourteen boys and sixteen girls of ages ranging between 18 and 25. The class had a representation of children from Korea, China, United States and India. As expressed, most of these students came from different countries with different backgrounds with the aim of taking the English course to improve their English skills so they can enroll in the EFL course in the University. The class thus served as a prerequisite to the EFL in the University of South Australia.
The goal of this course was to ensure the students understand their own emotion and how they can manage it. Before they finish the course, the students were able to understand the methodology and encourage students to commit to creative planning of classrooms to have the experience and good relationship between the learner and the teacher for a motivational learning experience. The topic was related to the English learning language task therefore the purpose was similar to the learners structural English that created awareness and understanding of how English works for the purposes of class practices.
While teaching, students will be divided into a group of six and explain to them the purpose of identifying emotions and ask them if they had felt such emotions. This session will be followed by an activity of discussing the emotions to ascertain the correct answer based on the feelings exhibited by the students. The students will facilitate the learning through listening, reading writing, participation with other members and filing their report back to class on a written or a white board. Under activity one that entails describing the emotion, the students will describe the activity and how to se emotion word to describe and find the checkpoint. This will be facilitated through their group discussions among themselves enabled their ability to reflect on the pictures. I will also explain the purpose of the activity to the students to help them in their reading and discussion analysis amongst their members of their group as they think of the words in their groups. In order to explain the activity purpose, the students will the words in each word search puzzle and answer the questions at the end of the report. This will involve reading, thinking and writing down each words and the meaning while filling in the blank spaces. This process will enable the students familiarize themselves with the emotions as well as develop their emotions in an attempt to educate them in the need for emotional awareness. Each of the activities will take 20 minutes (Richard J. C. 2005).
In order to identify the emotions in others, the students will be divided into groups of six for twenty minutes as well as give them a facial expressions as they make guesses as to the pictures from the websites and describe on an activity while pasting the pictures on a piece of board and give the answer sheet to the questions at the end of each activity. Through thinking about the facial expressions whether positive or negative, the students will write down and give back the report needed in words to the class. In conclusion, the students will give a ten minutes feedback and evaluation and report back what they have learnt from the topic as they reply to ones another’s feedback before I mark their work and provide a conclusive reply to their work. Some of the responses for the emotions may be, afraid to be an expression of fear or worry, angry as an expression of feeling mad with a person, act or ideas well as ashamed which would entail feeling bad after doing a wrong.
References
Kays, S. (1999). Reward Pre Intermediate Resource Park. Oxford, Macmillan Heinemann.
This is a useful resource park of communicative activities for students of English. The activities are mainly target to the preschool and intermediate level students. The book integrated four skills and provides good personalization and review tasks across all levels. These activities are set in ideal situation that makes them fun and enjoyable to students in addition to being used as a supplement course book to students. The resource book is much user friendly as well due to to its index, themes and grammar points that are in alphabetical order.
Richards, J. C. (2005) Tactics for listening Development. Oxford University Press.
The textbook consists of 24 lessons. Each lesson describes a topic relating to daily life experience. Topics in the book lessons are useful in helping learners acquire life skill especially effective listening skills. The book allows learners to practice their listening skills effectively. Learners learn to listen in various ways and practice speaking as given in the instructions of this book as well as giving direction, descriptions and suggestions. The book is useful for leaners practicing listening skills.
Alexi, Sherman (2007) “The Absolutely True Dairy of a Part Time Indian”, New York.
The book is useful in helping individuals acquire the basic communication skills especially the skills relevant in communication that go a long way to help students of literature to acquire the communication themes required in effective communication.
Miklowitz DJ. (2002) “The Bipolar Survival Guide: What You and Your Family Need to Know” New York: Guilford Press.
Pettry, D (2006), “Exploring Emotions through ACTIVITIES”
In order to be an effective communication one needs to be able to control their emotions and as such, the book is useful in exploring various emotional issues that relates to effective communication. It has various chapters that are disintegrated into sections that deals with various levels of emotional discomforts.
Steinber (2002) “Peer Groups and Intimacy, Young adolescents' experiences with parents and friends: Exploring the connections.”
Students exploring communication levels are often associated with adolescent issues that affect their communications skills. The book explores how communication skills are influenced by the adolescent issues that affect the communication of various students. It is a useful book especially to the adolescent teenagers exploring different levels of communication among peers, teachers and other members of their immediate society.
