Didactic Sequence

DIDACTIC SEQUENCE

A didactic sequence is a group of activities created in order to reach an objective. Those activities must follow an order and an organization. That means that each activity has its own purpose and all of them work together in order to reach a bigger objective.

Violence affect teachers

There are many types of violence that affect the learning proccesses unless education at all levels acknowledges the violence in the lives of people and its impact on learning, many students will not only fail to learn, but may also experience the educational setting as a silencing place, or another site of violence, where they are controlled, diminished and shamed by institutional structures or classroom interactions.

Studies using diverse indicators of violence exposure and academic performance have shown an inverse relation between these variables. Exposure to community violence is a risk factor for poorer academic achievement

The Effect of Large Classes on English Teaching

There are considerable studies concerning the influence of class size on students' improvement but a shortage of consensus on the definition of large and small classes. Thus, this section and the one that follows intend to probe into the causes to plateau of English learning and teaching in large classes. It is the language teachers who hold a negative view against large classes as they believe having many students in one class can cause some problems that affect them and their students. Some commonly comments heard by teachers are: there is no communication, the class is out of control, lack of individual attention and difficult to set effective group activities. Other teachers always emphasize that it is impossible to concentrate on all students and therefore not enough reinforcement will be made to encourage all to participate in different activities.

On the contrary, teachers in small classes are able to pay great attention to their students and the benefit from the presented activities is considered to be high. From that we can say that it is abundantly evident that English teachers encounter great challenges when teaching large classes as they encounter difficulties in knowing all students in the class, having time for all individuals or presenting effective activities and therefore many students, especially the weak ones, tend to lose concentration. Another problem which is borne out in the words of the teachers and hinders the learning process in large classes is identifying and controlling students who tend to distract their classmates from concentrating on the lesson. Lazear (2003) assumed that if a student misbehaves and begins disturbing the class, the teacher has to attend the disturbance and control the noise. Such action from one student or more in a large class will block the learning of that moment and demolish the capability of others to learn. 

Activities for working with large classes

According to Harmer (2007), despite the problems of big classes, there are things that teachers can do such as using worksheets to hand out worksheets for many of the tasks which they would normally do with the whole class. Pair work and group work play an important part since they maximize students´ participation. There are ways of doing this: first rows turn to face second rows, third rows to face fourth rows, etc. It is important to make instructions especially clear, and agree on how to stop the activity.

An additional activity is chorus reaction where the class can be divided into two groups, the front five rows and the back five rows. Then, each row/half can speak a part in a dialogue, ask or answer a question, and repeat sentences or words.

Leer más: http://www.monografias.com/trabajos107/influence-large-classes-english-language-teaching-learning-process-in-ecuadorian-high-schools/influence-large-classes-english-language-teaching-learning-process-in-ecuadorian-high-schools.shtml#ixzz4jYmV4EW1

Lack of Confidence to Speak English

if   If any students confront any difficulty in learning English, they are able to observe what successful students do and copy their behavior. Kelly and watson (1986) mentioned that attitude in communicative situation can influence people’s behavior in that situation. Because they feel silly speaking a language in which they know they are making mistakes, they do not have the English to express the concepts that the teacher wants them to express, the topic / activity that they are supposed to be talking about in English is boring, so they talk about something else in their mother tongue.

It    It is commonly understood that students’ lack of confidence usually occurs when students realize that their conversation partners have not understood them or when they do not understand other speakers but sometimes this occurs because they have lack of vocabulary or interest or fear to make mistakes ‘Mistakes are okay because without mistakes there is no learning!’ (Dörnyei, 2002, p. 93).

     To sum up, it can be well said that, ‘Lack of confidence’ is really a headache for both the teachers and the learners, especially of University levels.

What are the Methods and Strategies that Teachers Need to use on Large Classes?

Discipline is easier, and you can devote more resources and time to giving each student the attention that they need.  Things don’t always work out like that, though. Call attention to the things your students are doing that meet your expectations. A classroom where each student deeply trusts the teacher has the potential to be a great environment for learning.  Lesson plans need to be crystal clear. It is important to begin each day with clarity about what students should know and be able to do by the end of the class period, and every second of  day should be purposefully moving you toward that end. Even when the entire class is misbehaving, there are always some students following directions. Punishing the class as a group only incites further resistance.

Teaching English without teaching English.

Roberto Guzman shows us that we can help our students develop a critical thinking in this way to learn English to improve learning experience for students. I look at critical thinking as a series of abilities that take students beyond simple comprehension of information. A critical thinker uses logic and evidence to prioritize and classify information, find relationships, make judgments, and solve problems. We need to identify the level of cognitive. The major levels of cognitive learning can be classified as memorizing, understanding, and applying

Memorization. This is rote learning. It entails learners encoding facts or information in the form of an association between a stimulus and a response, such as a name, date, event, place or symbol.

Understanding. This is meaningful learning. It entails learners relating a new idea to relevant prior knowledge, such as understanding what a revolutionary war is. The behaviors that indicate that this kind of learning has occurred include comparing and contrasting, making analogies, making inferences, elaborating, and analyzing.

Bloom's Taxonomy

Cognitive taxonomy is based on the idea that cognitive operations can be classified into the six levels of increasing complexity. What this taxonomic theory has, is that each level depends on the ability of the student to perform at the level of the previous levels. For example, the ability to evaluate. The highest level of cognitive taxonomy is based on the assumption that the student, in order to be able to evaluate, has to have the necessary information, to understand that information, to be able to apply it, to analyze it, to synthesize it and, finally, Of quality. Taxonomy is not a mere classification scheme, but an attempt to hierarchically order cognitive processes.

KNOWLEDGE: Implies knowledge of specific facts and knowledge of ways and means to deal with them, knowledge of the universal and the specific abstractions of a given field of knowledge. They are, in general, elements that must be memorized.

UNDERSTANDING: Understanding compression involves the simplest aspect of understanding, which consists in grasping the direct meaning of a communication or a phenomenon, such as the understanding of a written or oral order, or the perception of what happened in any particular event .

APPLICATION: Knowledge of application is what concerns the interrelationship of principles and generalizations with particular or practical cases.

ANALYSIS: Analysis involves the division of a whole into its parts and the perception of the meaning of the same in relation to the whole. The analysis includes the analysis of elements, relationships, etc.

Synthesis: Synthesis concerns the verification of the union of the elements that form a whole. It may consist of the production of a communication, a plan of operations, or the derivation of a series of abstract relations.

EVALUATION: This type of knowledge includes a critical attitude to the facts. The evaluation may be related to judgments relative to internal evidence and judgments relative to external evidence.