Week 6 - "Involve Me and I Understand"

How can you teach in classroom with many students in it?

     I would say that many of us feel easy to teach a small group of students. Teaching them is more enjoyable and less time consuming than teaching a large group. Large classes make us feel different, less confident, and sometimes require a lot of time. however we can't avoid them. Large classes are prevalent. But it doesn't matter for me now. This week I've learned so many interesting and useful ingridients to make large classes to be more fun and interactive. There are many techniques and even more technology tools that is provided in teaching large classes. Fortunately, there are also articles that can be useful for me to enhance learning by engaging students. The important thing is I can use techniques and technology tools in teaching student-centered classes in interactive ways. 

     This week  I read an article about teaching large evening class. In this article, Oscar Wambuguh provides techniques and technology in teaching evening class. He uses Intergroup Question to encourage students to read material ahead of time, help instructor cover course content, keep students motivated, and give students a sense of owning the question and the learning. He also uses Article Time and Short Quiz as well. However, He starts the lecture with a video clip and then uses the PowerPoint slides to continue his lecture. So I think I will implement those techniques and technology in my classes as soon as possible.

Interactive Powerpoint presentation.

      We're familiar with this icon, aren't we? This is PowerPoint, an easy-to-use presentation tool, which its use is only as effective as the presenter who is using it. This is my other assignment this week, create an interactive PowerPoint presentation. This is one of the technology tools that we can use in teaching large classes to be more interactive. There are several articles provided for us in this section. Now I know that I can use not only Microsoft PowerPoint but also web-based alternative, such as Prezi, SlideRocket, etc. The PowerPoint slide that I created is about reading a short story, and the quiz which is presented after that. So, I still try to learn more about how to make interactive Powerpoint slide and need more practices.

Implement the Technology Tool

     This week, I also tried to begin implementing the technolgy tool that I described last week. This is my last task for this week. I tried to use websites to enhance their listening skills. I've just used the VOA special English and VOA talk radio. I asked them to listen and watch the video in Learning English TV section about immigrants. After that, I provided them a paper that contains the subtitle of the video. I just showed to them the audio. They listened to it and fill the missing words. I didn't have much time to cover all materials and steps. As in fact, It didn't work well as I expected, but my students gave a good feedback to me. They said that this is an interesting learning. They paid attention to me, all of them. They can understand easily, but they have to study hard in improving their listening skill. 

I am very thankful to my instructor and collegues that help and inspire me to be better teacher. You are the best, guys. Thanks a lot.

Husni
Indonesia