Language Teaching Methodology

The Learners

The classroom consists of young students aged between 7 and 10 years. They have come from different countries with their patients to settle in Australia. Most of their parents have come to Australia for work, education and residence. Most of the students are from Asia, Middle East and in countries in Central and Eastern Europe such as Romania, Czech Republic and Poland among others. The students have intermediate to low proficiency in The English language. This is because English is not their first language. They have different first languages depending on their countries of origin. Consequently, the class is diverse, and the students have different abilities in terms of the four skills.

With reference to diversity, the students differ in terms of language, religious and cultural backgrounds. Nevertheless, they all want to fit in the Australian context. They would like to learn English for communication purposes. Additionally, these children want to access Australian education facilities where English is the only language used. Therefore, this class has to equip the students with language skills that can enable communication and comprehension of different contexts. Moreover, the instructions should help the students to blend in the Australian society without numerous challenges.

The Topic: Past Tense

The topic has been selected because students have to explain events they have already experienced or tasks they have already engaged in or past memories. They have to recount the experiences using spoken word or written assignments. Therefore, this class will not just improve the speech skills of the students but students will also interact with the past tenses of different verbs, both regular and irregular verbs. Moreover, the students will be able to enhance their communication skills by communicating past events Past events, in this case, means many years ago, a week ago, few hours ago or even a minute ago.

The goal of the lesson: students will be able to share events from their perspective

Lesson focus: Creating events that contribute to the experience of students

Objectives

• Students will be able to relate to events and explain how they understand them
• Students will learn past tense of different verbs by using them in their explanations
• Students will learn communication skills by interacting with their classmates and the class at large
• Students will learn to put a context into their perspective

Teaching Resources

The teacher understands that students are not empty slate. They have prior knowledge and experiences that can contribute to learning (Steffe & Gale 2012). For example, in this case, the students understand activities, events and tasks when spoken to in their mother tongue. Therefore, the teacher has to build on what the students know to introduce opportunities for improvement of their proficiency in English. Moreover, the teacher has to create an opportunity that helps students to put together their experiences for the purposes of learning. Consequently, the teacher will use activities that actively engage the students. The teacher will select activities that use language to accentuate on comprehension of meaning to achieve the set objectives (Brown 2007). Therefore, the teacher will use different unrelated events to put the students in different context. This will not only help the students to explain different events, but they will be able to interact with more verbs and diversify their vocabulary base (Hedge 2000).

A Video of Tom and Jerry

The students will watch a clip of Tom and Jerry titled “The Dog House (Tom & Channl, 2015). Subsequent to watching, the students will share the happenings in a group of three and come up with the summary of the occurrences.

Sequence

The teacher will introduce the lesson by explaining the past tense. The teacher will ask the students to watch the video keenly because they will have to tell a story of the contents of the video. After playing the video, the teacher will also the students to share in groups of three and write a short story of what happened. The story should flow, explaining one event to another. The teacher will randomly select three different groups to share the stories. In between, the teacher will pose questions to the class to gauge understanding and to help the students learn different tenses of words. Some of the questions the teacher will ask include,

• Why was Tom the cat following Jerry the rat?
• Why did the dog beat up Tom?
• Why did Tom destroy the dog’s house?
• Why did Jerry climb onto the dog’s head?
• If you were the dog, what would you do to Tom?

The teacher will also let students pose questions about the video to their fellow classmates. This will pave a way for inquiry-based learning in that students learn by finding answers to their questions (Alvarado & Herr 2003). Accordingly, the teacher will play the different sections of the video that will help the students to come up with answers. The teacher will relate the activities of the video with the students’ life experience to create more opportunities for recounting. For example, in the video, the dog was building its house when Tom destroyed it while following Jerry. Based on this, the teacher will ask the students to explore their memories and share experiences pertaining to childhood misfortunes. This is because, children have a rich past experience based on different life events. By sharing these events, they will be able to recount their memories and also express themselves (Brown, 2007). They will also interact with their peers while sharing these events (Brown, 2007).

In order to help the students express themselves more, the students will ask questions that steer more talking. Some of the questions include, “so what happened? Why? How? And so forth. Moreover, the teacher will also allow the other students to ask their peer question to get details of their experiences. This is with the aim of creating an interactive class through which students can learn from one another (Hedge 2000). Throughout these activities, the teacher will work collaboratively with the students to identify the verbs used in their past tense. Subsequently, through discussions and brainstorming sessions, the students will identify the present tense of these words. In this exercise, it is evident that the teacher will use different learning and teaching activities including group work, video watching, discussions, brainstorming and students sharing before the class. This is to avoid monotony and to meet the learning needs of all the students. This is because students do not respond to teaching and learning methods equally (Scrivener 2011).

Different Colours of Clay

This activity will require different colours of clay because the students will have to model.

Sequence

The teacher will give each student some clay of their desired colour. Subsequently, the students will make any object of their interest from the clay. The objects will range from fruits, pets, animals to airplanes. The students will be free to make a choice about the objects they wish to make. This is a hands-on activity that allows students to explore other skills, abilities, and talents. Moreover, this activity promotes active learning (Ferlazzo & Hull-Sypnieski 2012). After the students are done, in pairs, each student will explain to the other how he or she made the object. For example, if student A made a car and student be made a cat, student A will explain to student B how he made his car and the other way round. Each question will have to ask his or her partner as many questions as possible so as to get understand how he or she made the object, why and when was the first time he or she ever made such an object, among others.

After students sharing in pairs, each student will share the story of his or her partner. For example, student B will explain how student A made the car, why and when was the first time. Therefore, this exercise will provide an opportunity where the student recounts the story or experience of another party. Additionally, through this exercise, the student will learn by asking questions to the other student. This will contribute to inquiry-based learning and learning through interaction and socialization (Brown 2007). Therefore, the student will be working on their social skills and inquisitive skills. This exercise will also ignite critical thinking skills because students have to think of the appropriate questions to get the right answers (Alvarado & Herr 2003).

Integrated Skills Activities

Recount of Interesting or Memorable Experiences with Their Pets

After watching the video of “Tom and Jerry, the video will ignite the students to think about their pets or toys. Accordingly, the teacher will give the students the clay so that they can make their toys or pets. In groups of four, the students will talk about their toys and pets. This will include revealing their names, who bought the toy or pet, why and when. Due to the reason that the class consists of international students, the students will have a chance to share their culture (Kelly & Eggington 2000). For example, the students will share the meaning of having a pet or a toy in different cultures, which animals cannot be kept as pets and why and the most commonly kept toy in their respective countries. The reason for this is to help students appreciate one another’s culture. Students should understand that diversity in culture should not be a source of conflict; rather, all cultures should be celebrated (Kelly & Eggington 2000).

After sharing with their classmates in groups, each student will share a story about the most memorable event with his or her pet. The student will explain what happened and why it happened. They will give a detailed account of the event. Consequently, they will explore their language skills by using vast vocabulary. Additionally, they will work on their speech skills because they will have to explain the events using spoken word. The students, on the other hand, will ask questions to gather as much detail as possible. The teacher will make sure that each student asks a question to the presenting peer to activate inquisitive and critical thinking skills (Hedge 2000).

Role Playing

Based on the video of “Tom and Jerry, the students will play different roles in different activities to enhance their grammar, boost their communication skills and work on their inquisitive skills.

Doctor and Patient

This activity will be based on an event in the video when the dog throws Tom away. Subsequently, Tom hits a tree and falls down. The class will assume that Tom fainted and was rushed to the hospital. After being treated, the students will assume that Tom woke up. Therefore, one student will pose as Tom’s doctor, and will ask Tom different questions about what happened before he fainted.

Telephone Conversation- Reporting to a Police

In this activity, one student will play the role of the dog in the video while the other will be Tom. The dog will be given the name “Puppy”. The role play activity will be based on the event where Tom destroys the dog’s (Puppy) house. Therefore, Puppy has to call the police and report the incident. The police officer will have to ask a number of questions about the incident and how it happened. The police officer will also ask for directions or the address to reach Puppy’s neighbourhood and arrest Tom. When the police officer arrests Tom, he or she has to ask Tom numerous questions to establish the motive behind the action. The police will conclude that Tom has to face trial in the court of law.

In both these activities, the student will have an opportunity through which they will interact with different facets of grammar. Role playing enables firsthand and active learning (Scrivener 2011). After completion of these activities, all the students will execute an assignment which will involve recounting what happened in the two learning activities.

Teaching Methodologies

In the above activities, the teaching methodologies have focused on the student-centered approach to learning. This is because the student and the teacher will play an equal active role in the learning process. The teacher will be an authority figure and will play the role of a facilitator or coach in the student learning and overall understanding of all the learning materials (Scrivener 2011). Moreover, the teaching methodologies will promote active class participation. The students will engage in hands-on activities and create experiences that promote learning (Alvarado & Herr 2003). Such activities make it easier for the student to remember content in comparison to use of lectures and other teacher-centered learning activities (Ferlazzo & Hull-Sypnieski 2012). Additionally, the teaching methodologies will promote the enhancement and development of different skills including social, interactive, inquisitive, and critical thinking skills.

Bibliography

Alvarado, A & Herr, P 2003, Inquiry-based learning using everyday objects: hands-on instructional strategies that promote active learning in grades 3-8, Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, California.

Brown, H 2007, Teaching by Principles: an interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy, 3rd Edition, Pearson Longman, New York.

Ferlazzo, L & Hull-Sypnieski, K 2012, The ESL/ELL teacher’s survival guide: ready-to-use strategies, tools, and activities for teaching English language learners of all levels, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA.

Hedge, T 2000, Teaching and Learning in the Language Classroom, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Kelly, J & Eggington, W Eds., 2000, The Socio-politics of Language Teaching, Multilingual Matters, Clevedon.

Scrivener, J 2011, Learning Teaching 3^rd ed., Macmillan, Oxford.

Steffe, L & Gale, J 2012, Constructivism in Education, Routledge, New York.

Tom, & Channl, J 2015, Aug 17, Tom and Jerry Cartoon The Dog House Full episodes, {Online} Retrieved Aug 20, 2015, from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9nzz4s1U5o