Skip to main content

You can't beat a good teacher

All the international evidence says the same thing.  Forget technology, school structures, iPads, academies and the latest methodology; if you want to raise standards just get a really good teacher in front of a class.

So far, so obvious.

I have just returned from a weekend "retreat" in York with one of my barbershop choruses. We are doing our final preparations in the run up to the national convention in Bournemouth. We are fortunate to have an extremely gifted and experienced chorus director. This is what she does well:
  • She has superb knowledge of her field, so we have confidence in what she tells us
  • She has high expectations but tells us we can achieve them with hard work
  • She models good performance
  • She is passionate and enthusiastic about what she is doing and shares that with us
  • She praises us when we do really well, not just quite well
  • She admonishes us quite agressively when we go wrong, but not in a vindictive way - we perform better afterwards
  • She smiles a lot, is funny and enjoys banter with the chorus
  • She is sensitive to individual abilities and needs
  • She sets out clear goals (short and long term), works hard for us and is well organised
  • She makes us do things repeatedly until we get them right
  • She invites input from the chorus
  • She believes in improvement through both practice and explanation
She would have made an inspiring school teacher.


Comments

  1. wonderful post.
    carry on..
    thanks a lot for sharing.

    A Good Teacher -Paragraph

    http://banparagraph.blogspot.com/2012/05/good-teacher.html

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is the natural order hypothesis?

The natural order hypothesis states that all learners acquire the grammatical structures of a language in roughly the same order. This applies to both first and second language acquisition. This order is not dependent on the ease with which a particular language feature can be taught; in English, some features, such as third-person "-s" ("he runs") are easy to teach in a classroom setting, but are not typically fully acquired until the later stages of language acquisition. The hypothesis was based on morpheme studies by Heidi Dulay and Marina Burt, which found that certain morphemes were predictably learned before others during the course of second language acquisition. The hypothesis was picked up by Stephen Krashen who incorporated it in his very well known input model of second language learning. Furthermore, according to the natural order hypothesis, the order of acquisition remains the same regardless of the teacher's explicit instruction; in other words,

What is skill acquisition theory?

For this post, I am drawing on a section from the excellent book by Rod Ellis and Natsuko Shintani called Exploring Language Pedagogy through Second Language Acquisition Research (Routledge, 2014). Skill acquisition is one of several competing theories of how we learn new languages. It’s a theory based on the idea that skilled behaviour in any area can become routinised and even automatic under certain conditions through repeated pairing of stimuli and responses. When put like that, it looks a bit like the behaviourist view of stimulus-response learning which went out of fashion from the late 1950s. Skill acquisition draws on John Anderson’s ACT theory, which he called a cognitivist stimulus-response theory. ACT stands for Adaptive Control of Thought.  ACT theory distinguishes declarative knowledge (knowledge of facts and concepts, such as the fact that adjectives agree) from procedural knowledge (knowing how to do things in certain situations, such as understand and speak a language).

La retraite à 60 ans

Suite à mon post récent sur les acquis sociaux..... L'âge légal de la retraite est une chose. Je voudrais bien savoir à quel âge les gens prennent leur retraite en pratique - l'âge réel de la retraite, si vous voulez. J'ai entendu prétendre qu'il y a peu de différence à cet égard entre la France et le Royaume-Uni. Manifestation à Marseille en 2008 pour le maintien de la retraite à 60 ans © AFP/Michel Gangne Six Français sur dix sont d’accord avec le PS qui défend la retraite à 60 ans (BVA) Cécile Quéguiner Plus de la moitié des Français jugent que le gouvernement a " tort de vouloir aller vite dans la réforme " et estiment que le PS a " raison de défendre l’âge légal de départ en retraite à 60 ans ". Résultat d’un sondage BVA/Absoluce pour Les Échos et France Info , paru ce matin. Une majorité de Français (58%) estiment que la position du Parti socialiste , qui défend le maintien de l’âge légal de départ à la retraite à 60 ans,