Practice Activities – FP007 CM

PRACTICE ACTIVITIES:
CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT -
TECHNIQUES AND REFLECTIONS ON PRACTICE

GENERAL INFORMATION:

The practice activities consist on two tasks (four questions) you must answer following
the instructions. Your submission must fulfil the following conditions:

- Length: 4 pages (without including cover, index or appendices –if there are any-).
- Font type: Arial or Times New Roman.
- Font size: 11.
- Spacing: 1.5.
- Alignment: Justified.

The activities have to be included in this Word document: keep the activities’
statements/questions and answer below them. In order to make the correction process
easier, please, do not write the answers in bold, so it will then be easier to distinguish
between questions and answers. Remember that the document must still fulfil the rules
of presentation and edition, and follow the rubric for quoting and making bibliographical
references as detailed in the Study Guide.

Also, it has to be submitted following the procedure specified in the “Subject

Evaluation” document. You must not send it to the teacher’s e-mail.

Do not forget to read the assessment criteria, which can be found in the document
“Subject Evaluation”.

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 Practice Activities – FP007 CM

Name and surname(s): Romina Bossi Mejía

Paulina Muñoz Gallo

Group: FP 007 2021-02

Date: May 22nd 2021

Advantages and drawback for innovating

strategies in the classroom

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Content

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………...... 4

Question 1.1 ……………………………………………………………………………… 5

Question 1.2 ……………………………………………………………………………… 6

Question 1.3………………………………………………………………………………. 6

Task 2 ………………………………………………………………………………………7

Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………........8

Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………………. 9

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New strategies inside the classroom would be a beneficial method to use in

order to get the students’ motivation. Meanwhile, there are some other who does not
want to take the risk and innovate in their methodologies, likewise classes continues
the same and that is prejudicial for the learners.
Thus, teachers should look for new procedures to innovate classes consequently, to
motivate their students.

Practice Activities

Task 1. Reflection exercises.

Read the reflection and answer the questions. Scriviner 2012 presents the
following reflection of Ken Wilson in his blog (2010):

Source: Scrivener, J. (2012). Classroom Management Techniques. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Advantages and drawback for innovating strategies in the classroom

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Questions 1.1.
How do you feel about the reflective question: “it isn’t a big chunk of your time,
is it?” What implications does it have for some teacher’s management of
classroom time? Do we consider activities in terms of time consumption or in
terms of assumed utility? Justify your answers with arguments from the
materials and the readings.

We consider that “isn’t a big chunk of time” since any new task for motivating
students like moving their desks away, it will catch students' attention and that would
never be a waste of time.
Some teachers prefer to play safe and stick to the plan, referring to the syllabus and
that does not allow teachers to create different activities for the students.
The majority of teachers/instructors when they are preparing a lesson, they always take
into account the time consumed in each activity. Preparing these types of tasks,
mentioned before, will not only create a big disorganization, since students are not
used to do this, but also a big time wasted. 
Teachers prefer not to take risks nor step out of their comfort zone, therefore keep
doing the same regular activities.
On the other hand, for us, as teachers, our main goal is to acquire our student’s
learning so we focus more on the utility of the activity than in the time involved.
We can take our students out of their common positions and create this new
environment where they can share directly with their peers, feel secure and make a
wonderful atmosphere in which the students acquire new knowledge.
“Teacher talk is of crucial importance, not only for the organization of the classroom but
also for the processes of acquisition. It is important for the organization and
management of the classroom because it is through language that teachers either
succeed or fail to implement their teaching plans. In terms of acquisition, teacher talk is
important because it is probably the major source of comprehensible target language
input the learner is likely to receive.
Nunan (1995: 189)

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Questions 1.2.
To what extent does Wilson’s story cater for individualised learning? What
advantages and what drawbacks can you identify with the ‘procedure’
described? (Ur, 1996:236) Explain your answer.

The paradigm associated with the concept of “All the students in the class are
expected to learn the same thing at the same time in the same way” (CM: 45).

However, in the activity described we can infer that in Wilson’s strategy it is

considered the pace of each learner to develop the task and obtain an individualized
learning. It takes into account the emotional and cooperative part of a group.
“Individualized Learning refers to learning experiences in which the pace of learning is
adjusted to meet the needs of individual students. In other words, individualized
learning focuses on the question of “when” students receive a learning activity. In
individualized learning, all students go through the same experience, but they move on
at their own individual pace” Greg kearsley and Richard Culatta (n.d)
According to the procedure described, we can recognize some advantages, for
instance, students could use more English and get more practice, also foster students’
responsibility and independence, eventually create a less threatening environment, and
at this point we can relate it to the concept of scaffolding where students have the
opportunity to use better language skills.
In such a way as in any other assignment, we are able to recognize some drawbacks
such as the noise level maybe too high and this it will be a huge distraction, also
students tend to use their mother tongue in order to get easily understood or to make it
easier, and the most important part, stronger students dominate and the rest lay on
them.

Questions 1.3. Considering Ur’s statements in our module, do you think the
technique described could be used with mixed- ability groups? If so, would this
always result in more successful SLA for learners?

When the teacher creates or plans the lesson he/she must take into
consideration not only the content he is going to teach, but also the competences all
his/her students have, well known as Mixed-abilities.
“A metaphor of mixed ability class which works for me is to think of the class as a lift
(elevator). Everyone needs to get into the lift to start with. Some students will run into

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the lift, some will have to be dragged in. Some students will travel right to the top of the
building, some may stop at the third floor and some may only reach the first floor, but
everyone will have travelled somewhere successfully.” (Jim Rose 1997:3)
That is why it is very important to focus on them to create several techniques that
he/she is going to use to deal with them, in terms of motivation among other precious
values that get involved when he/she puts into practice this kind of activity. 
Mixed abilities have better results than individualized learning, since we let the learners
develop each other’s values, increase their tolerance, share experiences, interest and
ideas. All these terms can be successful in the acquisition of SLA.

Task 2

Below, we have listed some common assumptions in the field of TEFL. Do you
strongly agree or disagree with any of them? Choose two statements that would
make you react in either direction, explain how they would relate to each other,
in the light of the bibliography of the subject, and try to reflect on why they made
you feel strongly in either approval or disapproval.

As teachers we are doomed to repeat teaching behaviour that we ‘learnt’ through

our ‘apprenticeship of observation’.

We consider that the word “doomed” is not the best way to describe it, since it is
not a negative aspect, everything depends on our personal experience. We are able to
see the bright side of it. In our early years as training teachers, we tend to imitate to our
past teachers because in fact we are not really sure how to do it, we face the theory
and the reality at the same time and also since that is the way we were taught, but
when the years go by, we observe and learn about our students and what strategies fit 
best for them, and here is when  we realized about the concept of teacher thinking,
when we have a conscious knowledge of our history it would be useful to be aware
about it, to overcome the tendency to imitate other teacher’s behavior. “Often despite
their intention to do otherwise, new teachers teach as they were taught. The power of
their “apprenticeship of observation”, and of the conventional images of teaching that
derived from childhood experiences, makes it very difficult to alter teaching practices
and explains in part why teaching has remained so constant over so many decades of
reform efforts” Kennedy (1991:16)

Our beliefs as teachers affects our classroom management more than any other
factor in the classroom.

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  We as teachers teach in the way we believe it works best for our students, but
these beliefs eventually do not fit with the reality of course books, in that case, we can
notice some drawbacks between what we firmly believe, “espoused belief”, and how
we really act, “theories-in-action”, and these can create contradictions in our learners.
“The central role that beliefs played was evident not only in how these teachers
organized curricula and designed lesson tasks, but most significantly in their approach
to instruction. Those teachers who considered grammar and accuracy to be a priority in
instructional goals adopted a structural core for their curriculum design and developed
lesson tasks which emphasized language code. On the other hand, the majority of
teachers in the study were less concerned with structure and focused more on
language for communicative purposes. They organized curricula with a functional or
topical core and emphasized students interaction task” (1996:207) Burden and
Williams. Both statements chosen are directly related to each other since the way we
were taught despite it was unconsciously, we tend to repeat that model in our classes,
and this affects our classroom management as well. However, when we finish our
stage of new teachers and get more practice, we choose our own pattern. In
consequence we can create a brand new strategy that shapes our beliefs. 

Despite all things we can do, our beliefs, our new strategies and so on, it is
difficult for some teachers to achieve a big change inside the classroom, since there
are several issues that they should consider before doing it. Regardless of the fact that,
there are some others they are willing to face the challenge to break this paradigm.

Bibliography

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[1] NUNAN, D (1995) Language Teaching Methodology. Hemel Hempstead: Prentince

Hall.

[2] GREG KEARSLEY AND RICHARD CULATTA (n.d) Learning concepts:

Individualized Learning from

http://instructionaldesign/concepts/individualized-learning/

[3] ROSE, J. (1997). Mixed Ability: An Inclusive Classroom. English Teaching

Professional 3 (July), 3-7.

[4] KENNEDY, M. (1991). An Agenda for Research on Teaching Learning. East

Lancing, Mich: National Center for Research on Teacher Learning.

[5] BURDEN, R. L. & WILLIAMS, M (1997). Psychology for Language Teachers.

Cambridge: Cambridge University.