This week was interesting. One of the tasks I had to fulfil for this TA was to look at the pupils’ learning styles and difficulties as well as my CT‘s teaching approaches and strategies on dealing with these learning styles as well as their difficulties.
One strategy my CT uses in class was silent reading. She uses silent reading as a tuning-in activity. She said that as she’s also their Mathematics teacher in addition to being their English Language teacher, her use of the silent reading period is a signal to the pupils that it is now time for English Language and that their minds have to switch away from Mathematics. In fact, one of the routines after a short break is when she says “switch on your minds”, the pupils will mime a ‘switching-on’ motion and saying “switching on” in a sing-song voice.
One thing I took away from this week’s TA was from my conversation with my NIES. He asked me if students were learning. He said that no matter what strategy we used or what approaches we were to take, the very first question we have to ask ourselves as teachers would be “will the students learn?”
