Camtree Digital Library (Univ. of Cambridge)
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Giving instructions
Get PDFContext: This study took place in a public primary school in Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico. The teacher focused on a sixth-grade class of 27 students aged 11-12 from mixed English proficiency levels. While students generally had a positive attitude toward learning, misunderstandings arose when the teacher gave instructions, leading to frustration and disrupted lessons.
Aims: The research aimed to explore and improve the process of giving instructions in English lessons. It sought to understand students'perceptions of instruction clarity, their feelings during instruction, their responses to unclear instructions, and the teacher's practices when misunderstandings occurred.
Methods: The teacher used a student questionnaire, reflective journaling, and peer observations to collect data. The questionnaire, designed in English and Spanish, gathered students' opinions on instruction clarity and their preferences for different instruction formats. Journaling captured the teacher's reflections on student reactions, and peer observations provided external insights into instruction delivery and its effectiveness.
Findings: Students generally rated the teacher's instructions as clear but reported feelings of confusion or frustration, often requiring clarifications from peers or the teacher. Written instructions on the board or on paper were found helpful by most students during the exploratory phase. However, after implementing changes, including oral instructions with instruction-checking questions (ICQs) and written aids, students reported a preference for oral instructions. This shift was attributed to the engaging nature of ICQs. The new strategies reduced misunderstandings, improved classroom engagement, and enabled students to complete tasks more efficiently.
Implications: The study highlights the value of combining oral and written instructions and incorporating ICQs to ensure clarity and foster interaction. Other teachers might learn from this example by tailoring instruction-giving methods to their students'preferences, monitoring outcomes, and using evidence-based approaches to refine teaching practices
Maximising students' engagement to improve their language skills
Get PDFContext: This study focuses on a group of A2-level English language students at the Escuela Normal de Amecameca in Mexico. The participants, from two educational programmes (preschool education and ELT for secondary education), faced issues such as differing skill levels, overcrowded classrooms, and limited engagement during lessons. The teacher sought to address the challenge of capturing and maintaining student interest while improving their language skills.
Aims: The project aimed to determine whether the activities, strategies, and materials used in class were effective in promoting student engagement and improving their English skills. Specific goals included understanding students' perceptions of classroom activities, identifying their preferences, and exploring how these activities impacted participation, motivation, and skill development.
Methods: Data were collected using multiple tools, including student questionnaires, reflective writing, video-recorded lessons, and peer observations. These tools provided insights into students' preferences, participation levels, and perceived progress. Following initial findings, the teacher implemented an action plan involving a variety of interactive and engaging activities, such as games, songs, sitcom-based tasks, and mingle activities, and evaluated their impact through focus groups, further questionnaires, observations, and video analysis.
Findings: The study revealed that students enjoyed interactive activities like games, songs, and sitcoms, which were seen as fun and motivating while improving listening, speaking, and vocabulary. Mingle activities increased participation, provided opportunities for peer support, and created a more equitable learning environment. Despite overall positive responses, some students highlighted a lack of balance in skill development, particularly in reading and writing, and expressed concerns about limited opportunities for individual feedback in overcrowded classrooms.
Implications: The findings suggest that engaging students requires a variety of interactive, creative, and student-centered activities tailored to their needs and interests. Teachers might benefit from listening to students' feedback to design lessons that promote participation, balance skill development, and enhance motivation. Monitoring and feedback strategies, such as delayed feedback and recordings, may also provide valuable support in addressing individual learning needs
How do competitive activities affect student participation?
Get PDFContext: The study was conducted in Iguala de la Independencia, Guerrero, Mexico, at a public elementary school damaged by an earthquake. The teacher faced challenging conditions, teaching English outdoors to fifth graders in a noisy, shared space. The group consisted of 17 students aged 10 to 11 at a beginner English level. Competitive activities emerged as a promising strategy to improve student participation.
Aims: The research aimed to explore how competitive activities affected student participation in English lessons. Specifically, the study investigated the teacher's perceptions of student participation, students' feelings about competitive activities, and their behaviors during these activities.
Methods: Data was collected through reflective journaling, an anonymous questionnaire in Spanish, and peer observations of lessons. The journal documented student behaviors and engagement, the questionnaire gauged their feelings and preferences, and peer observers provided external insights into classroom dynamics.
Findings: The teacher discovered that students were highly motivated by competitive activities, especially team challenges, which they preferred over individual or pair competitions. Students reported feeling more engaged and collaborated well in teams. The introduction of relay-style challenges improved participation and reduced waiting time, fostering a supportive and inclusive environment. While most students responded positively, some isolated instances of distraction or interpersonal issues highlighted the need for ground rules. Observations confirmed that students were actively involved, attentive, and eager to succeed, with intrinsic enjoyment of competition outweighing the need for extrinsic rewards.
Implications: This study suggests that structured competitive activities can enhance participation and collaboration in language learning. Teachers might learn from this example to design activities that involve all students simultaneously, ensuring inclusivity and fostering teamwork. Feedback mechanisms like questionnaires and peer observations can provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of classroom strategies
Does the use of sentence stems help students invite their peers to make their reasoning explicit?
No full textBackground and purpose: Attempts from students to understand a partner’s thinking almost always derive from a teacher’s invitation (Attard & Edwards-Groves, 2018; Hennessy in Kershner et al, 2020, p.127). However, when students work in small groups, the teacher is not always present to play this role. This might result in less elaboration, which could limit attainment, as the positive effect of dialogic pedagogy on attainment outcomes is better seen in contexts with high level of student participation, encouragement to elaborate and question ideas (Howe et al., 2019).
Aims: Explore the use of sentence stems as a tool to help students engage in inviting peers to elaborate more.
Study design or methodology: Participants: One small group of three Y12 biology students. Resource created: Cue cards presenting invitation sentence stems such as ‘Can you tell me more about...?’, ‘Why do you think that...?’. Design: Action research, practitioner led. One baseline trial before introduction of resource, two trial sessions after. Data collection: Dialogues recorded, transcribed and coded using T-SEDA scheme (Hennessy et al., 2016), codes IB, B IRE, RE + students self-evaluation of dialogue (template G).
Findings: Students invite peers’ elaboration 3 to 5 times more with the introduction of the sentence stems tool. In response to these invitations, students build on ideas and elaborate more: word counts increase in ‘building on ideas’ turns (+70%) and ‘making reasoning explicit’ turns (+120% in average).
Conclusions, originality, value and implications: Equipping students with skills to invite reasoning and elaboration in their peers may lead to more building on ideas and elaboration which could have a positive impact on the learning outcomes (Howe et al., 2019; Mercer et al., 2003)
A case study exploring the types of knowledge year nine students need to work effectively with similarity and difference as a concept when learning about the Holocaust
No full textThis paper documents an explorative case study aimed at investigating the knowledge and ideas held by myself, as a teacher, and those of students when working with the complicated and often confused historical second order concept codified as ‘similarity and difference’ in the latest History National Curriculum. This case study centres around a seven-lesson enquiry exploring the variation in lived experiences of several different persecuted groups of people during the Holocaust. This paper argues that whilst the ideas and application of similarity and difference as a concept from myself and students were widely divergent, students chose to argue conceptually in several different ways. In observing and defining the different forms of conceptual argument students engaged in, I am able to draw tentative ideas about progression when arguing conceptually with similarity and difference
Embodied aspects of intercultural pragmatic competence:investigating the effects of using authentic video-based materials on confidence, fluency and accuracyin a Year 10 mixed-attainment language class
No full textThis paper reports on a proposed research project designed to explore the impact of using a video-baseddrama-inspiredintervention to improve levels of confidence, fluency and accuracy in relation to spoken French. Using anAction Research (AR) approach involving a sequence of 3lessons, Year 10 students of French working towards Higher-and Foundation-level GCSE were to be exposed to authentic video-based materials and invited to perform in a Conversational Shadowing activity and a process-drama exercise.Students’ confidence in relation to decoding and encoding of non-/paraverbal cues would be measured alongside the effects of the intervention on accuracy and fluency.Measures would include students’ perceptions of their own confidence and performance (to be assessed by pre-and post-viewing self-assessment tasks) and subjective teacher evaluations based on GCSE assessment criteria. The following offers a review of relevant literature and describes the proposed methodology. Anticipated findings and implications of the study for professional practice and the teaching of Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) are discussed
Sampling composition: how Year 12 music technology students use sample-based processes to compose electroacoustic music
No full textComposing with music technology is often perceived and documented to introduce the additional challenge of technological mediation to the composition process, especially when the technology is viewed as a tool which enables students to expand their creative musicianship as hyphenated musicians. In this article, I present a case study which outlines the particular processes and features behind four Year 12 music technology students’ electroacoustic compositions (a genre which only exists due to the creative utilisation of music technology), and consider the effectiveness of a pedagogical approach which I term a ‘semantically informed pedagogy’. Findings highlight the importance of catering for the students’ different musical roles and placing the listening experience at the heart of the composition process, in order for the human skill and determination behind the work of art to remain fundamental when threatened by the potentially mediating effects of music technology
Moments of mindfulness: exploring pupils’ perspectives on short daily mindfulness activities and their potential effects on the classroom learning environment
No full textThis small-scale case study explores the perspectives of Year 4 pupils on doing a daily mindfulness activity in the classroom and whether there were any perceived benefits to doing this over a 4-week period. Initially participants completed a questionnaire to indicate their understanding of mindfulness and provide a brief summary of mental wellbeing. A separate post-questionnaire with pupils and teachers, alongside a focus-group discussion, afforded an understanding of the observed benefits and pupils’ perspectives towards the intervention. Findings appeared to suggest that mindfulness activities can be beneficial in the classroom, particularly for reorienting pupils after a breaktime in preparation for learning. Furthermore, these activities are largely well received by pupils with high levels of enjoyment and desire to continue the activity post-intervention
An investigation into how high-attaining Year 9 students’ understanding of grammar is affected by contextualised grammar teaching
No full textThis paper explores an investigation, based on action research, into the impact of contextualised grammar teaching on a high-attaining Year 9 class’s understanding of grammar. Prompted by previous findings that have shown traditional teaching of grammar as a set of rules to have little benefit for student writing, these lessons sought to present grammar as a tool to create effect in written work. The findings suggest that students are able to make use of grammatical concepts learned through contextualised grammar teaching, and that such teaching does not have any detrimental effect on enjoyment or confidence. This paper argues for the potential of contexualised grammar teaching as an answer to grammar’s contested position in the National Curriculum for some classes, and as a way to engage students more meaningfully in the study of grammar
The use of L1 in the L2 classroom
Get PDFContext: This study took place in a rural middle school in Durango, Mexico, where an English teacher worked with first-year students (ages 11-12) who had minimal prior exposure to English. The class consisted of 27 students, most of whom were boys, leading to high energy and frequent misbehavior. Students often complained of not understanding English, which led to reliance on Spanish (L1) during lessons.
Aims: The research aimed to explore and address the overuse of Spanish in the English (L2) classroom. The teacher sought to understand her objectives for using L1, when and why it was used, and how her students perceived her use of both languages.
Methods: The teacher employed peer observations, a student questionnaire, and reflective journaling. Video recordings of lessons were shared with peers, who used an observation tool to document when and why L1 or L2 was used. The student questionnaire, written in Spanish, collected feedback on language preferences and perceptions. The journal captured the teacher's reflections on her teaching practices.
Findings: The teacher discovered that she used Spanish more frequently than expected, often to manage behavior, clarify instructions, and translate English. While students appreciated her use of Spanish for understanding, they also expressed a desire for more English exposure to learn the language. Observers noted that Spanish dominated lessons, though it was used effectively for explanations and maintaining order.
Implications: This study suggests that teachers in similar contexts might benefit from gradually increasing L2 use to foster comprehension and classroom engagement