As part of a professional development class on language teaching every week I have to reflect on a lesson planning topic. Here are some of the discussion prompts and my personal take on them:
Which of the six events in Robert Gagne’s instructional design theory resonated the most with you? Why?
ATTENTION, ATTENTION, ATTENTION!
I have been teaching for many years and I’ve recently realized that my favorite part of this job is actually lesson planning!
Being a very imaginative and creative person I love planning each activity picturing/envisioning the students expectations, needs, reactions and their possible doubts and questions and creating materials and activities that will help them discover the language.
I enjoy each of the events in Gagne’s Instructional Design Theory for different reasons however I find that I do use them in a fluid way: for example, since I use a very inductive teaching style, I rarely present the content “frontally”, instead I give the students input and then I guide them through a series of activities specifically tailored to help them discover the language rule or structure → the students are the ones analyzing and stating the rule and I am just a helper and a guide in the process, I also stimulate prior recall of instruction throughout the lesson, every time either the structure we are working on or the transactional language we use in class allows it or requires it.
With that said, as a communicative teacher with an affective-humanistic heart and a cognitive brain ;), the event that resonates with me the most is GAINING, to which I add MAINTAINING, STUDENT’S ATTENTION.
Attention is the “door” to students’ brain: when they are paying attention the door is open, information is actively processed and understood and learning happens, when they are not the door is closed and learning and acquisition cannot take place.
My work with very young children taught me a lot about PASSIVE [or involuntary] and ACTIVE [or voluntary] attention. The first one is an instinctive reaction we have in response to “noticeable” stimuli in our environment (imagine for example what happens when we hear a sudden loud noise - we startle and instinctively we “give” all of our attention to that event), the second is a complex, voluntary cognitive process which requires mental effort and is sustained by wants and needs.
When I teach very young learners I can rely very little (if at all) on voluntary attention and so I use puppets, colorful materials, songs, games and movement to gain and maintain their involuntary attention. They pay attention not because they decide to do it, or because they want a good grade or because they’re thinking that learning a language will help them as adults in the workforce, they pay attention because what I am doing is grabbing their attention, it’s fun and exciting and they are happy to participate and follow my lead in the activities., and if an activity is not “working” they immediately “let me know” by getting distracted and withdrawing their participation!
Adult students, on the other hand, have a highly developed “voluntary attention muscle” and usually have some kind of intrinsic or extrinsic motivation for learning a language (from school to work to simple curiosity) which helps sustain their active motivation for prolonged periods of time; that means that, as adults, we are able with the right amount of effort to pay attention through painfully boring lessons or incredibly dry essays because we consciously recognize that what we will learn will satisfy our needs or wants. But why make learning such an effortFULL and painful activity for our students?!
Even in the case of adults learners engaging their involuntary motivation is the secret to making the learning process easier and much more pleasant. I always try to stimulate my adults students’ senses with age appropriate songs, images, games etc. throughout the lesson to gain and maintain their attention for the entire time.
Engaging the students’ involuntary attention is like transforming a boring essay into a spellbinding 3D movie, the students will learn without realizing it and almost effortLESSLY ;)
I have been teaching for many years and I’ve recently realized that my favorite part of this job is actually lesson planning!
Being a very imaginative and creative person I love planning each activity picturing/envisioning the students expectations, needs, reactions and their possible doubts and questions and creating materials and activities that will help them discover the language.
I enjoy each of the events in Gagne’s Instructional Design Theory for different reasons however I find that I do use them in a fluid way: for example, since I use a very inductive teaching style, I rarely present the content “frontally”, instead I give the students input and then I guide them through a series of activities specifically tailored to help them discover the language rule or structure → the students are the ones analyzing and stating the rule and I am just a helper and a guide in the process, I also stimulate prior recall of instruction throughout the lesson, every time either the structure we are working on or the transactional language we use in class allows it or requires it.
With that said, as a communicative teacher with an affective-humanistic heart and a cognitive brain ;), the event that resonates with me the most is GAINING, to which I add MAINTAINING, STUDENT’S ATTENTION.
Attention is the “door” to students’ brain: when they are paying attention the door is open, information is actively processed and understood and learning happens, when they are not the door is closed and learning and acquisition cannot take place.
My work with very young children taught me a lot about PASSIVE [or involuntary] and ACTIVE [or voluntary] attention. The first one is an instinctive reaction we have in response to “noticeable” stimuli in our environment (imagine for example what happens when we hear a sudden loud noise - we startle and instinctively we “give” all of our attention to that event), the second is a complex, voluntary cognitive process which requires mental effort and is sustained by wants and needs.
When I teach very young learners I can rely very little (if at all) on voluntary attention and so I use puppets, colorful materials, songs, games and movement to gain and maintain their involuntary attention. They pay attention not because they decide to do it, or because they want a good grade or because they’re thinking that learning a language will help them as adults in the workforce, they pay attention because what I am doing is grabbing their attention, it’s fun and exciting and they are happy to participate and follow my lead in the activities., and if an activity is not “working” they immediately “let me know” by getting distracted and withdrawing their participation!
Adult students, on the other hand, have a highly developed “voluntary attention muscle” and usually have some kind of intrinsic or extrinsic motivation for learning a language (from school to work to simple curiosity) which helps sustain their active motivation for prolonged periods of time; that means that, as adults, we are able with the right amount of effort to pay attention through painfully boring lessons or incredibly dry essays because we consciously recognize that what we will learn will satisfy our needs or wants. But why make learning such an effortFULL and painful activity for our students?!
Even in the case of adults learners engaging their involuntary motivation is the secret to making the learning process easier and much more pleasant. I always try to stimulate my adults students’ senses with age appropriate songs, images, games etc. throughout the lesson to gain and maintain their attention for the entire time.
Engaging the students’ involuntary attention is like transforming a boring essay into a spellbinding 3D movie, the students will learn without realizing it and almost effortLESSLY ;)
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