Teach English in GuAnzhuAng Zhen - Tianjin

Teaching a mixed ability classThe majority of my teaching experience has been lucky. For most of my 5 years experience, I was an SAT instructor. My only hardship was trying to crack smiles on my students? intense gazes and rigid studiousness. I was used to long hours, creating coursework, and being in front of a class. I thought that?s all it took. How wrong I was when I walked into my first class in Paris last year. Facing students from all ages, backgrounds, and cultures and even learning disabilities was another teaching challenge I had to deal with along with the language barrier. In retrospect, I would have modified my course instruction to create a more flexible environment that acknowledged and embraced a mixed ability classroom. An important modification that teachers should consider is creating more optional tasks for students to choose from. For example, based on a certain reading material, students can choose from a number of tasks to do such as 1) constructing a poem or statement in response to material 2) draw and explain a representation or outcome of the material 3) create several questions to the material 4) pick a theme or aspect of material to discuss, etc. Giving students several choices (thought not too much) will allow them to feel in control and thus more likely to participate and increase their optimal response. Giving students a range of tasks is one way that accentuates everyone?s differences. Teachers can go the opposite direction and try to level the playing field by constant mixture of games. With games, especially in team or group environments, students weak or strong must all participate and are forced to help each other. There?s a source of motivation but also a level of surprise that puts everyone on an equal. The key is to pick games that are not heavily focused on just one area but well-distributed in the area of reading, writing, grammar, listening, and perhaps random trivia thrown in for good measure, too. The goal is to get all the students involved and working with each other. Though flexibility and modification is key to coursework such as finding ways to simplify or extend problems, coursework should always be effective. In order to create more effective learning environment, students need to be aware of the workings of a mixed abilities classroom and learn the basic classroom skills that will train students to be better students. Teachers should write down goals of the day on the board and suggests ways or references for students to strengthen their learning skills via dictionary, workbook review, etc. Students should be used to working in groups or singles as the teacher may have to work in several rotating subgroups dependant on each groups needs. Though some teachers may find these teaching techniques more time-consuming on their part or find it incompatible to their teaching subject, I would say that mixed ability classrooms are a growing and inevitable development across the academic landscape. All teachers should be familiar with learning how to address their students needs as a class but individually as well. Sometimes, these decisions are out of the teacher?s hands, but we as teachers can still control how we adapt the classroom so that everyone feels challenged.