Participants: 

Tonje, Åse, Siv, Marte 

Meeting place and time: 

Zoom-meeting 17.11.2021 at 10.00 

Experience with Zoom: 

Zoom worked well when we first figured out how to join the meeting, but we had some problems with joining.  

 

Summary:  

 

Being a teacher in the language classroom.  

How do you cater for a lot of language input in your own classroom and how much of this takes place as the teacher talking to the students. 

You can cater for various ways of language input in your own classroom by establishing rapport so the classroom is a safe place to learn and speak English (Harmer: 114) For example, by starting the class by asking basic questions that you know the students can answer or to rephrase if the students do not understand what you are saying before explaining in Norwegian. The students should also encounter the language in other contexts, it is especially important that they encounter authentic language which they can do by listening to podcasts. The teacher should also be a prompter, to encourage the students to continue talking English and suggest how they can continue talking (Harmer: 117). You can also support the language input in your classroom using gestures, using mime or pictures to support the students learning (Harmer: 150). The most important part of being a good language role model is to speak English as often as you can, so the students can imitate you, and to continue challenging yourself as a teacher. 

 

teaching good learning strategies,  

Scaffolding, to support students in as many ways as possible is important for teaching good learning strategies (Harmer p. 151. Learn to take notes, explicitly with a teacher. Example: What did you learn that you did not know before, sum it up in a sentence. The use of mindmaps, VØL- skjema, Friend diagram, get an overview about what they know are also good learning strategies. Learn basic- how to approach a new text – BISON. How to learn how to search online – reading the first sentence (topic sentence) read the title, look at the picture and then ask if this is relevant for you. Use their classmates as learning resources – give constructive feedback to others. For example: when a group is giving a presentation, give the audience a task: what are you wondering about, what do you think was good and what can they improve in the future. We also talked about teaching strategies.  

 

working with pupils of different educational needs. P. 143 

The keyword here is differentiation (Harmer: 145), both when it comes to tasks, expectations, content, tests, feedback, and amount and type of scaffolding. Some examples of such adaptation can be to have the students work with different content or different sides of a topic. For examples having students at a lower level working on the surface of a topic, learning the basics, while students at a higher level can be given a task where they must “dive in” and go deeper. You can also provide different levels of the same task and give the students the opportunity to choose themselves. Or provide them with an overview of what’s expected at the different levels, making them aware and assess where they are, and what level they should aim for in order to challenge themselves, but with a reasonable chance of success.  

 As stated above, one should also adapt the way you give feedback in order to what each student needs in order to keep learning, whether you focus in detail to push the student further or to motivate a student who is struggling. Level of support must be adapted: need to challenge higher level students as well as lower level students. In order to do so, one must first identify each student’s strengths (Harmer: 146).