Learning from my peers

Watching my peers teach at Neighborhood House has helped me glean strategies to augment my own teaching. My peers demonstrate a myriad of teaching strategies we’ve learned in our TEFL class; it has been helpful to see best practices incorporated into the lessons we actually teach.

I’ve observed my co-teachers calling on specific individuals by name while they are teaching. By knowing and using the students’ names, they are able to check the comprehension of quieter students and ensure that no one dominates the conversation.

Similarly, my peers elicit material from the students to use in their explanation of grammatical points. This produces material that is learner generated, resulting in high level of student interest and class participation. They ask students questions to produce vocabulary words, questions and phrases.

Many of my classmates do a fantastic job of floating while the students are working. While floating, I hear many of them handling error correction in a productive way by not just telling the students the correct answer. Many times they will ask if the student can see something that should be changed, and if they don’t, they will give them a hint to highlight the segment that needs correction. If the student is still confused, they will give them multiple choices to choose from, and at this point, most learners can self correct.

All of the practices I have observed while watching my peers lead to a very learner centered lessons; the goal of a good English teacher. It has been helpful to not only teach but to watch my peers embodying what we are learning in class.