Planning teaching

“Tell me, I´ll forget; show me, I´ll remember; involve me, I´ll understand”.

Chinese proverb

Our group tree started out our teaching journey with preparing and teaching of the topic “Promoting learning in classroom and virtual settings”. One of our group members took the initiative to create Prezi presentation where we all would contribute the information we consider to be pertinent to the topic.  In general the whole process of preparation for the first teaching was refreshing and awakening. Coming from the educational background where the group work methods and collaboration were basically quite nonexistent, it was rather challenging to arrive at the knowledge that I was not going to be the only person who will contribute to the final product and the quality of the final product I will be assessed on in the end is not going to depend just on me, but on other participants of the process. Being used to the educational pattern when I’m the only individual responsible for the success or failure of my work it was bizarre to share that responsibility with the people I didn’t know. Bizarre in the beginning, but rather rewarding in the end.

Rewarding because I found myself in an active learning position working along the lines of “high hierarchy” verbs like extract, analyse, reflect, collaborate, the verbs and the processes we were ourselves teaching about, contrasted to the traditional verbs for the educational system I am coming from like listen, read, memorise, recite. I was technically practicing beforehand what I was preaching afterwards. And that alone was a great learning experience.

Our group met twice at the preparation of the material stage. Team members who live in Oulu met in person in the OAMK library. The topic was rather broad, and everybody contributed the material based on his/her understanding of the question. The outcome turned out to be 36 presentation slides long. My contribution was about the ways of facilitating active learning in the classroom, VARK model and roles and personality of a teacher. Being a language teacher, I know for a fact that learning does not happen without doing. Reading or listening about the language and grammatical rules does not help students to speak or write in the language. It was very interesting for me to find out that the typical language classroom techniques of promoting learning work in vocational and higher education in Finland as well. The traditional lecture and discussion questions are by far not the only ways of teaching young people and adults today.

It was also interesting to find out from one of the tutors during feedback that the VARK model is not widely used in Finland in planning the lessons or courses, and in Finland the term “versatile teaching” is more appropriate.  In contrast to the University of Cambridge teacher training program I participated in prior to the start of AMOK program, where the Cambridge tutors emphasized the importance of addressing in every lesson the learning needs of students by planning to incorporate activities and tasks for visual, auditory, read & write and kinaesthetic learners. The bottom line, I guess, is to diversify own teaching and not follow the same pattern and use same type of teaching methods all the time. The goal is to make own teaching as versatile as to appeal to students with different learning needs.
We also presented on the importance of planning with specific learning outcomes outlined in the beginning to align the planning, teaching and assessment of the course; planning taking into consideration students’ cultural backgrounds and special needs in the classroom. The role and personality of the teacher, in my opinion, was also an important part of the topic, since no good or affective learning can take place unless students feel comfortable, safe and motivated to work in the classroom.

Team Bastu presented on the topic of documents and regulations which affect planning of the teaching in Finland. According to Finnish legislation there are Acts regulating the functioning of uuniversities and universities of applied sciences. Universities do enjoy freedom of research, art and teaching, but they also need to comply with the statutes and acts issued on education. Universities and universities of applied sciences have their own curricula, which can be found from the institutions. After the session I familiarized myself more closely with the curricula of the educational institution I’m currently doing my training in – Oulun aikuislukio. In fact, Oulun aikiuslukio has 3 curricula: adult upper-secondary education, curriculum for adult basic education and curriculum for preparatory training for entrance into upper- secondary education. Since I have been working in adult basic education, I got acquainted more in detail with its own curriculum and with the English language teaching section. The description of the learning objectives of the 8 mandatory English courses is connected to 7 areas of so called transversal competencies: thinking and learning to learn;  cultural competence, interaction and expression;  taking care of oneself, managing daily life; multiliteracy; digital competence; working life competence, entrepreneurship; participation involvement, building a sustainable future.  What is fascinating, in my opinion, English, or other subjects for that matter, is not just a subject matter on its own; the learning of English is one part of the students’ path to obtain the main competencies on the way of becoming a well functioning member of the Finnish society.

Owls presented on the topic of modern theories in competence-based education, in particular the constructive alignment theory and inquiry-based learning. In the field of teaching English I’d rather say the constructive alignment theory is more widely used than inquiry-based learning as a theory. For instance, I plan my lessons by writing the goals of the lesson in the form of the expected outcomes, as for example: By the end of the lesson, students will have understood and used the indefinite, definite and zero articles in their discussions about happiness. Then I choose and create activities that would allow students to achieve the planned outcomes, for example, use gap fills for restricted practice of the articles and then design freer practice in the way that students will have to use articles speaking on the topic. I will have in mind interaction patterns when designing activities for the lessons. If the assessment is planned in the lesson, the appropriate method of assessment will be chosen.
Inquiry – based learning is also used in teaching English, but more as a teaching method. Through the implementation of IBL, students usually propose the topics they want to research on and ask questions to tackle the problems they’re interested in. IBL makes learning more student cantered. IBL in TEFL (Teaching English as a foreign language) is connected with the use of information technologies, students can research information any place any time, analyse it in collaboration with others in or outside the classroom, even students from native speaking countries. Therefore, they are more in touch with the target language in the real-life contexts.

It was our first teaching session and at times the nerves got the best out of all of us, I believe. However nerve-wrecking it was to teach, the session was very interesting to participate in and very productive. The main conclusions I’ve drawn for myself:

• Teaching should be activating. The more we involve the students in activities, the more they learn. We are here in the classroom to facilitate the learning and do it along the lines of the societal demand, connected to the real life, using modern teaching methods and technologies.
• Teaching should be constructively aligned. Whatever we do in the classroom needs to be aligned with the planned expected outcomes of the lesson or course.
• There are documents and regulations that guide our planning of teaching. The regulations can be obtained from the educational institution we work for.

Planning is the cornerstone of teaching. No teacher can ever go into a classroom without a plan at hand with “I will fling it” attitude. We owe it to our students to do our best to facilitate their learning, students who trust us with their minds, time, motivation and effort, who come to expand their knowledge about the world with us. We can’t let them down.

Source:
Halinen, I (2018). The new educational curriculum in Finland. In M. Mathes, L. Pulkkinen, C. Clouder & B. Heys (Eds.), Improving the Quality of Childhood in Europe · Volume 7 (pp. 75-89) . Retrieved from http://www.allianceforchildhood.eu/files/Improving_the_quality_of_Childhood_Vol_7/QOC%20V7%20CH06%20DEF%20WEB.pdf