TEFL Nashville Davidson

My topic for the research article is going ESA (Engage, Study, Activate) and why each component is important to the both the teachers and the students during class time. The tefl course has taught me a great deal about proper lesson planning. I learned that I was doing certain things wrong such as giving my students worksheets without properly explaining what they were suppose to do. In this essay I hope to cover each portion of the lesson planning phase and what it has taught me about teaching. Engage- This phase is also known as the warm-up phase. This is the part of class where it is important for the teacher to capture the student’s attention immediately. I feel that it this is where the teacher’s creativity can really shine the most. This will also allow the teacher to develop rapport with his/her students. I have learned that during this phase, even if you have to use the textbook (which most students and some teachers don’t like), it is important for the teacher to find away around the rigidness of the textbook. Find out what interest your students have or start off the class with something about yourself. An example of this would be a time when I was teaching my students about occupations. I put up two pictures on the board, one of my mothers’ in her nursing outfit and one of my fathers’ in his chef uniform. The children loved it because first, it allowed them to see what my parents look like and secondly, they also got a chance to know how my parents provided for me all those years ago. I noticed that just by doing this single act, the students were eager to tell me what their parents did for a living and they were interested in the topic of occupations throughout the entire chapter. Study- Let’s be honest, not many people (especially students) like to study. If they did, they would never try to avoid it as much as possible. Even in the study phase of class, it is possible to still make the lesson as fun and enjoyable as possible. As I said in the previous stage, try to find things that will interest the students. I have come to realize that using comic book characters work great with kids. I tend to use them on my worksheets because it will elicit the children to write and speak when they are in the study phase of class. I can tell you that as a teacher, I live for those moments when the student is stuck and then all of a sudden, they have one of those “ah ha” moments and figure it out what they are suppose to do. What is even more gratifying is when I try to help the student and they kindly ask me to go away. Figuring out something without the teacher’s help can be a great feeling and the teacher should not try to interrupt it. The study phase allows the students learn know vocabulary or grammar that they may have learned from the engage phase of class. It is important that the student be able to construct what it is that they have learned from the language. Activate- I view this stage as the Engage + Study stage of class. This is where it all comes together for the students. The students are going to make mistakes but, that is fine because this is the stage where mistakes are common and a classmate rather than teacher may point them out to you. Activities such as dice games, arts & crafts, and role playing allow the students to put what they have know or already know in a more fun atmosphere. More importantly, there is no book involved, and that is what the students tend to like the most.