Ground_Rules

Assignment One 1.1. Review what your role, responsabilities and boundaries as a teacher would be in terms of the teaching/training cycle. Recommended word count: 500-700 words The teaching training cycle consist of five stages. These stages are indentifying needs and planning, designing, facilitating, assessing and the final stage is evaluating. Within the cycle a teacher has roles and responsibilities. First of all a teacher will have to identify the learning needs of the students. This could be achieved by a student evaluation sheet, which details different criteria such as age, gender, background. This could also highlight any additional special needs of some of the students and try to use the appropriate resources to allow learners develop themselves, i.e. large print handouts. Finding out about the learning needs of the students could be done in an initial interview or a written test as well. He must carefully plan the lessons and the timetable of the class such as to cover the syllabus. Secondly, a good teacher must be a well organized person and he must try to design the course in accordance of the curriculum but bearing in mind the learners needs from the first stage of the training cycle. It is important for him to research the subject and be up-to-date with the latest developments. He has to structure his lessons with clear aims and targets. At this stage of the training cycle the teacher must tailor his sessions to the learners’ needs. Using visual aids, preparing the teaching style, checking out the actual resources that the school has and visiting the classroom before the course is a must that he has to do. If he is unsure about any of the above he could meet his fellow colleagues and make sure that he will fully take advantage of all the available learning aids. The third stage of the training cycle is to facilitate learning. It is the teacher’s role to deliver learning to everyone without decimation of gender, race or any other basis. They must value all learners individually and equally. ‘All students must feel that they are positively and equally valued and accepted and that their efforts to learn are recognized and judged without bias.’ Geoff Petty: Teaching today, A practical guide, 4th edition, Nelson Thornes, 2009) A teacher should create an effective and stimulating lesson for all learners. He could do this by using the different methods that he established at the designing stage of the training cycle. Also is important first to explain the day’s subject clearly and then to try and engage students by giving them group work, discussing them and generally interacting with them. The next stage of the training cycle is assessing the learning of his students. A teacher has the responsibility to continually assess throughout the course. He should give constructive feedback to the students and indications where they are not achieving. He should discuss the students’ weaknesses and give good advice on how to achieve a better outcome in the future. There are different ways to asses students. As a teacher he could assess them by evaluating their progress using formative assessment, marking students work and providing verbal or written feedbacks, giving them tests and maybe having recap sessions of previous lessons. The last stage of the training cycle is evaluation. According to Geoff Petty ( Teaching today, A practical guide, 4th edition, Nelson Thornes, 2009) evaluation is to give the value of something, to state its strengths and weaknesses.’ The evaluation could be done by using student evaluation forms or asking for feedback from the learners using comments box and by using postal feedback as well. Using a self evaluation sheet is another way of doing this last stage of the training cycle. All of the five stages of the training cycle are important and they all should be considered when a teacher is preparing himself for a course.