Teaching tips: The importance of teacher collaboration

As every teacher already knows, the job of a teacher is not only restricted to the classroom. Teaching involves a lot of time spent on planning lessons, creating resources and assessing students' work. Most people who are not teachers do not always appreciate how much time all this takes. Teacher to teacher collaboration can definitely make teaching easier by reducing time spent on planning and creating resources. It can also make teaching more effective when teachers give insight about the abilities or interests of individual students. I will be listing the different ways of teaching collaboration.

• Communication between colleagues: simply communicating with other teachers who are involved with your students' education is enough to find out more about the weaknesses, strengths or interests of the students. Use this knowledge to create more targetted lesson plans. For example: you might learn that your students are very interested in painting, so you might find that using the theme of art in your lessons will help students learn better.
  
• Share resources: why spend time creating lesson plans or resources when another teacher has already done this? Resources do not have to necessarily belong to your students' age group. Talk to the teachers who was teaching your students the year before and ask them for the lesson plans used for a particular subject that you are going to be teaching in the near future. Use this information to tie-in your lessons with what the students have done in previous years. This is a great way of introducing a new lesson.
  
• Share the work load: if you know of teachers teaching the same subject as you, then it might be a good idea to plan your lessons together. Decide on who does what; for example you can work on the lesson plans while the other teacher creates the resources to be used for those lessons.

Please feel free to share more ideas with us by leaving a comment with this post.
Take care, and as always, I'll keep you posted.

Social Networking Websites and Education

It's no secret that many schools discourage the use of social networking sites (SNSs) and some schools even go as far as to block access to these websites. SNSs allow people to publicize a lot of personal information which might jeopardize the professional relationship that teachers need to maintain with their students. There's also the fact that spending too much time on social networking sites, like Facebook and MySpace, will reduce productivity. However social networking websites are a social phenomenon and it is not showing signs of slowing down. What teachers need to understand is that, on a very basic level, these websites are there to connect people and allow them to communicate better. Education is heavily dependent on communication, so SNSs can be seen as a powerful educational tool.


As I wrote earlier, if you sign up for an account on an SNS you need to make sure that you don't share any personal information that may cause 'role conflicts' in your work place. Having said that, a social networking site will allow you to automatically share important online resources with you colleagues. You might be able to find Social networking sites which offer tools specifically tailored for teachers. These SNSs are sometimes referred to as Niche Social Networking Sites, the niche being education. SNSs will also allow you to easily share with your students, any information related to school and to the subjects you are teaching them. Social networking websites are not only about connecting people, they also offer a new way for encouraging participation through open services.

Education - The importance of Technology in the Classroom

I am currently working on a thesis regarding the use of technology in the classroom. Below is an excerpt from my dissertation:

The use of computers and the Internet is fast becoming an important tool in the education sector. It is becoming very common for technology to be used for assessing, training and educating students. According to a number of studies conducted by Barbara Means et al. (1997), the use of technology in the classroom has a number of advantages including, better collaboration between students, enhancing student motivation and adding to the students’ perception that their work is credible when properly referenced from the internet. Most educators are overcoming the barrier posed by these ever-more sophisticated technological tools and they now understand that technology is a particularly important tool for assessing their students. The fact that modern students are very dependent on technology proves how important it is that their teachers employ more modern methods in their classroom so as to meet the interests and capabilities of their students.

The use of technology in the classroom can certainly make teaching easier and more efficient by saving us precious time. I am currently in the process of creating an online application (which is part of my thesis) to be used by teachers and their students. I had been searching online for the ultimate teaching tool for years and I failed to find it. The applications that I found were too complicated, limited in functionality, or required a monthly subscription payment...so I decided to create it myself. This will be a website created by a teacher for teachers and it will be 100% free. As you might have noticed, the website will be called Mentor Buddy (www.mentorbuddy.com). I'm putting the last finishing touches to the whole thing and hopefully it should be launched sometime in late October. In the meantime the internet has a wealth of resources for teachers: from lesson plans to tests ready for printing. The internet can make our job so much easier, the trick is to know how to search for the proper information.

Teaching: staying creative

It's easy enough for new teachers to let their enthusiasm create creative and fun lessons. However, more seasoned teachers usually struggle to deliver a certain level of creativity in their lessons. Enthusiasm may start running dry after some years, particularly if you are being given students who just don't seem to appreciate your efforts.

None-the-less, there is no excuse for delivering boring lessons. Here's a list of things to do to give that little extra-something in your classroom:

• Care about your students: Knowing your students as individuals and understanding their needs, will give you a big motivational boost.
• Games: the internet is the best way to get great ideas for games to be included in your lessons. Games don't need to be fancy. Simple crosswords, word puzzles can be easily included in exercises and they make such a big difference.
• Re-use old materials: there is nothing wrong with re-using lesson plans, games, activities, etc, from previous years. Just make sure that you deliver the lesson with the same enthusiasm as the first time.
• Be modern: stay up to date with what's going on in the world. You might never know when you'll be able to use the latest cartoon character or movie star in your lessons. You need to understand what students are interested in and then incorporate that in your lesson. All it takes is to ask some direct questions...you don't need to be a detective :)

That's it for today. I'll keep you posted.

Teaching: Effective classroom management

I have already written a post about effective classroom management. This should hopefully be a more detailed and direct post tackling the subject.
As a teacher you MUST avoid:

• Over-appeasing students: some teachers will do anything to be the students' best friend. Keep in mind that before you are the students' friend, you are their teacher. If punishment is needed then use it.
• Ambiguous questions: questions need to be direct and easy to understand. A good way of overcoming this problem is to tell students who have understood a question to explain it to their peers.
• Not learning students' names: it is very difficult to conduct an effective lesson when you don't know the names of your students since directing questions to particular students or correcting student's behavior becomes overtly-complicated.
• not acting on bad behavior: verbal threats alone will not accomplish anything.
• Ignoring bad behavior: this is a definite no-no. Bad behavior will not stop simply by ignoring it. Act immediately on it. Set down some ground rules and give out punishment if students challenge these rules. Punishment may involve writing lines, take away a fun activity, whole-class punishment (use this sparingly as a last resort)
• Standing in the same area of the class during lessons: While conducting your lessons, move around the whole area of your classroom. This will discourage bad behavior.
• Silent classes: unless the students are working on a test or an individual exercise, your classroom must not be silent. It should constantly be a flurry of ideas and information.
• Being too serious: Lessons need to have some fun elements in order to make it interesting otherwise students will get bored and break your class-rules. Crack some occasional jokes and use lots of media for your lessons. On the other hand you must not over do this, otherwise students will not take you seriously.
• Overpraising students: don't praise students for doing things that they are expected to do.

That's it for today. As always, If you have any questions or ideas that you want to share with everyone, feel free to leave a comment.

Teaching: Using Videos in lessons

Videos can be extremely effective educational tools when used properly. They're a great way of breaking the usual monotony of ordinary lessons (although lessons should never be monotonous) and offers students a new and more exciting way of learning. Let's take History an an example: is there a better way for students to learn than showing them actual footage of real places? It's like a field trip without the included hassle. However you cannot simply rely on a video to do the lesson for you. You need to make sure that the lessons is geared towards the right direction and that the students understand the main points of that particular lesson.


The following list will hopefully help you understand how to incorporate the use of videos in your lessons:

1. Make a brainstorming session on the main subject and, on the white-board/chalk-board, write all the important points.
2. Instruct students to write down the points in more detail while watching the video. For example, if the video is about the effect of heat on objects, and one of the points is 'effects of heat on metal', then students should be able to write down more information while watching the video, such as: "heat forces the molecules of the metal to vibrate, this vibration allows the metal to expand..."
3. Allow yourself to pause the video when it reaches a specific point, and take the time to reinforce what the students have just heard. This will help students to easily understand which points are important.
4. After watching the video, the students should be more knowledgeable about the main subject. Go back to the points on the white-board/chalk-board and help students use the notes they took during the video, to give detailed explanations.
5. Tell students to write down a report on the subject. This is a great reinforcement exercise.

I hope that this article will help you deliver more interesting and entertaining lessons. As always, don't hesitate to leave comments.

Teaching: Physical Classroom Layout

Teachers who have their own classroom need to avoid the traditional classroom layout, i.e. straight rows of desks facing towards the white-board/chalk-board. Such classrooms are boring and, often, make teaching and learning less effective. A classroom needs to be dynamic, it needs to accommodate each lesson and facilitate different methods of teaching. Let's take group work as an example. Traditional classroom layouts were designed in a way to avoid interaction between students. However we are now aware of the importance of peer-tutoring. Education is all about communication and the classroom needs to allow this to happen. Arranging small 'islands' of desks is a very effective way of encouraging group work in the classroom. the best way of doing this is to arrange four desks facing each other. Arrange them in a way so that students can still see the board. Such classroom layouts will also allow you to move freely between desks. You cannot allow yourself to stand in just one area of the classroom. Moving around will allow you to interact better with the students and to easily supervise their work. You need to experiment with different layouts and don't be afraid to ask the students for feedback. Involving students in such decisions will allow for a better understanding between you and your learners.
For elementary teachers, it is a good idea to divide the class in different areas. For example, the 'Science Area' will include a small exhibition of materials used in previous lessons or a display of the students' own work. The "Reading Area" will allow students to spend some quite time reading, make this area as comfortable as possible, throw some cushions or small recliners. Make students understand that reading can be a fun way to relax. The reading area may also be used by students who have finished class assignments earlier than their peers.