Strategies for your own lectures

Taken from https://nekellecelestine.com/2015/01/20/back-to-lecturing/

Strategies for Your Own Lectures

By Prof. Jonathan Acuña-Solano, M. Ed. School of English Faculty of Social Sciences Universidad Latina de Costa Rica Wednesday, May 11, 2016 Post 273

Oftentimes you find yourself questioning whether your lectures in class are or are not engaging enough for your learners. But, aren’t they? Part of our teaching lies on our strategies to disseminate information that can be stored in our learners’ brains for later use in the lesson, in the course, or even in the program. But are we really aiming at it?

Let me share a bit of what I regularly do. Perhaps, this simple exercise can help you find the best way to structure your presentations.

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Step 1: Come up with a brief description of your class and lecture topic

English Language Teaching BIN-29 Literary Criticism Hybrid Learning-oriented course Lecture Topic: Reader Response in literary analysis

In this course students are exposed to 7 basic literary analysis techniques, but the target one was Reader Response. The idea is to have students understand that literature awakes emotions and feelings in the readers and how all of these contribute to our comprehension of literary pieces.

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Step 2: Think of a possible strategy for making that class lecture more active at each of the following moments in the class period: a) At the beginning of the class: Schema activation activity with a short story or poem that can produce an impactful awakening of emotions and feelings among learners. b) In the middle of the class period: Think-pair-share activity to have students work on https://www.focusgroupit.com, which is a website where pupils can have an exchange of ideas after a question has been posted. c) At the end of class: An exit-ticket activity in which students will provide me with feedback on how much they understood the topic and what else they need I must continue building for their understanding of the topic.

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Step 3: Predict any positive outcomes you would expect and challenges you might encounter with implementing these new strategies in your lecture.

At this point, I don’t need to predict any positive outcome since the activity was

already carried out with very positive results. Due to the fact that my students know I like to use technology in my teaching, they find my activities entertaining and I see learners nicely engaged with my monitoring, of course. The only challenge I have encountered is making sure that students get a good Internet connection in our room.

Though for sure I am not re-inventing the wheel, what really counts here is the reflective exercise that can –meta-cognitively- help you see yourself teaching and how students are being impacted by your way of instructing them. So the next time you want to qualitatively “measure” the scope of your teaching consider the following:

a) Be certain of what your topic for presentation is and how it fits into the class continuum; b) Consider a number of strategies that can be used at the beginning, in the middle, or even at the end of your class session; and c) Predict that scope of your teaching in terms of positive outcomes and potential challenges you will need to cope with.