Relabel your teaching

Particularly useful if you have regular performance management in your company, but might also work for lesson observation feedback more generally:

Fag break during class- Fostering learner autonomy

Waffling on while students doodle in their notebooks- Dictation: New Methods, New Possibilities

Badly graded language- Catering to mixed levels

Coffee stain or badly placed holepunching on the original that hides some of the reading text on the handouts- Authentic materials

L2 interference, e.g. using Konglish, because you’ve been in the country so long you can’t remember how people back home speak- Using English as an International Language/ English as a Lingua Franca

Letting your students chat while you stare out the window- The Silent Way

Chatting/ Not planning- Dogme

Offending your students with cultural faux pas- Awareness raising

Students correcting your grammar explanations/ spelling- Elicitation

Laughing at your students’ mistakes- Experimenting with alternatives to traditional error correction

Texting someone while they are doing pairwork- Using technology in class

Flirting- Giving students individual attention

A text that is much too difficult for them to understand- Teaching guessing vocabulary from context and skimming/ scanning skills

Finishing lessons late- Adding value

Starting late- Introducing students to cultural differences such as variations in the way time is viewed

Dating students- Fostering international understanding

Sleeping with ugly students- Responding to student needs

A lesson where they don’t learn anything new- Revision

A lesson which is much too easy- Confidence building

Being fooled during placement testing by a student who has guessed what you are going to ask them and rehearsed their answers but is actually Elementary- Using CEFR Can Do statements

Bringing your children into class because your wife has left you and you can’t afford a babysitter- Using realia

Any more?

This entry was posted in TEFL and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

2 Responses to Relabel your teaching

  1. Damian Williams's avatar Damian Williams says:

    Hehe, excellent post Alex!

    Stretching out an activity because you haven’t planned enough and still have 10 mins left – fully exploiting materials.

    Like

  2. Alex Case's avatar Alex Case says:

    Nice! Or

    Stretching out one worksheet for a whole class – materials-lite

    Like

Comments are closed.