What grabbed my attention in this chapter? Firstly, there are some key ideas such as "understanding" as our learners' goal. It is vital to mention that our students must understand what they are asked to learn and not only to make them take in and recall the information given by the teachers.This idea is logically opposed to the typical instructional design used in some schools nowadays.
Personally, I agree on this point because not only teaching must focus on covering contents and activities, but also students must grasp the meaning of these issues and use the language in real-world situations.
Secondly, as educational purpose is understanding, the idea of a "backward design" will make our students' learning more effective and productive. This is because the backward design, as a first step, provides the vision of desired and specific results so as to see the purpose of the activities and achieve the goals. Equally important is to take into account our learner's needs, interests, previous achievements before designing learning experiences, assignments and assessments.
Finally, we as teachers, must reflect on these relevant ideas that will deal with time-consuming,but it will provide meaningful results in the teaching-learning process.
Thus considering the learners`needs, the output more than the inputs, the "why" and "so what" questions about learning will help this design achieve the goal student understanding of the language and teachers think more deeply.
I absolutely agree with you when you mentioned that teaching is a responsibility for both teachers and students. The question is, How do we make students become involved in their own learning process??
ResponderEliminarI totally agree with your idea of increaing output since students' education regarding English leaves them almost no opportunities to produce the language. Perhaps some teachers (including myself of course) have failed in designing programs and syllabus having large amounts of acitivities hoping that our students sor of learn by doing without considering those important elements describes previously such as the students' past experiences, etc
ResponderEliminarOk, I agree with the fact that "understanding" is one of the keys of our students' goals... that students must understand what they are learning....but Where would you place the higher cognitive skills such as students' ability of evaluating and creating? (remember the pyramid) I think that teacher-designed units should consider higher congnitive skills,of course, not playing down the importance of the affective and linguistic factors as well.
ResponderEliminarI totally agree with you,students must be aware of what they are learning and doing, not just repeating like robots.
ResponderEliminarI agree too, students must be able to understand what they are saying or what they are doing, if we expect that our students just repeat what we say or just write what we write on the boards, they are not going to learn in a meaningful way and at the end they won't be able to see the purpose of learning the language.
ResponderEliminarI also agree with you in the sense of the involvement of our students in their own process.They will not be able to provide appropriate responses if we do not use a design that provides them with clear purposes and explicit performance goals.In other words, students have to be aware of what they are asked to do is for a purpose and that the activities included in our lessons are planned carefully and not chosen at random.
ResponderEliminarI couldn't agree more, but in our discussion we have not included how teacher-trainees are being taught to foster understanding. If we are committed to changing how our subject is being taught, not only we but the new teachers as well must be part of this process of not only covering contents but also seeking meaningful learning experiences.
ResponderEliminarDefenitely the key word is "understanding". But it is not understanding the contents taught, it is actually understanding the REASONS why those contents are tought... they need to knwow why things are done the way they are.
ResponderEliminarI agree with you when you say something like "teaching is a responsibility for teachers and students". Students need to know what and why they are going to learn. You really need to make them part of the process, but: how do we do such thing if, in my case, I see everyday that students don't care about their learning, their homeworks....they don't even care about being SOMEONE in life. ( a professional)
ResponderEliminar