Dear Fiestas,...

Doing a classroom action research is considered a challenge for some. One of the challenges is to come up with a topic. For a start, we can always refer to any ELT books. They usually provide topics for classroom research at the end of every chapter. It's as simple as that, right?
Happy researching :)

AJ

April 27, 2009
by WIND


Once I read a book on creativity and found an interesting analogy described by the author. It's like this:

“Perhaps being creative is more like being involved in an automobile accident. There are some traits that make one more likely to be in an accident—being young and male, for instance—but usually we cannot explain car accident on the basis of the driver’s characteristics alone. There are too many other variables involved: the condition of the road, the other drivers, the type of traffic, the weather and so on. Accidents, like creativity, are properties of a system rather than of individuals”
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1996)

lesson I learned related to my teaching in my classroom:
the system I develop in my classroom will contribute much on my students' performance. No matter how smart a student is, s/he cannot maximize his/her potential in class if the teacher doesn't develop such system to facilitate it... and the other way around

what do you think?

AJ

Dear Trainers,...

In the spirit of writing journal, I tried out sharing a journal that I wrote to the training participants in Fatmawati after they shared theirs. It turned out that the result of the journals from both sides match. I guess the participants and I see eye to eye about the training. Have you ever tried that? Try it. :)

AJ
Dear Fiestas,...
Some of you came during the In service training in Pramuka, right? Just want to ask a question: Have you shared what you got with your colleagues?
Sharing is caring, right?
Not sharing is...why not?
:)

AJ

Dear Fiestas,...
LIA is preparing for its conference in Jogja. A special website dedicated for the even is being prepared. Besides giving information about all the Professional Development info, it also features some of you, teachers. Yes,...YOU!! Look forward to checking it out. The website address will be available soon here in this blog. I can't wait, can you? :)

AJ

Dear trainers,...

Inductive teachings is kinda cool, right? I mean when compared to deductive ones. Hereby I invite you to share some of your best practices in training room to boost other trainers to try and modify or even to come up with their own.

Here's one:
Instead of telling the participants the characteristics of spoken English, I ask them to quickly memorize and then act out two dialogs with different settings, characters, means of communication, purpose and the choice of language. After that, I ask them to find all the differences. All that comes after that is my part to confirm their answers. What do you think?

FIESTA

Let's not argue that drilling IS important for students. I have this one technique I would like to share to you guys.

I number the target expressions I wrote on the board. After that, I say one number and the students have to repeat the corresponding expressions.

After several times, I show them numbers that they can guess such as:
-the number of students/ boys/ girls in the class
-the telephone number of the building
-the number of room they are in
-McD's delivery order phone number and so on
and the students say the corresponding expressions.

The next step is that students ask each other their phone numbers. The same thing happen, students have to say the corresponding expressions.


Drilling using numbers with three variations above worth trying, I think. :)
Happy drilling!