第６号（2001）
| TEACHING : Guidance from SIS English
Program Joy Kaplan English The English Department at Senri International School strives to offer our diverse student population a variety of interesting courses to meet the needs of all skill levels. Courses range from conventional grammar translation and conversational English, to courses similar to those offered to native speakers in a typical international school, such as literature based (for example: Shakespeare), skills based (speech and debate), and content based (global issues, human rights) courses. We also offer courses focusing on intercultural themes (for example, "Relationships Across Cultures"), and courses pertaining to the special interests and talents of our teachers (music, drama, children's literature). It is our hope that students will leave our program with more than just reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills. Our courses are designed to promote creativity, critical thinking skills, multicultural awareness, and individuality. How can these goals be achieved? Presently, our staff is quite diverse, consisting of teachers from Japan, England, Australia, America (Iowa, Massachusetts, and Texas). Our different cultural and educational backgrounds are expressed through our differing teaching practices. Students at Senri International quickly learn to adapt to various teaching styles and to expect the unexpected! Students choose to enroll in our school because they want exposure to many cultures. In order to keep the program balanced, teachers do follow certain policies in regards to what kind of writing is practiced, how much vocabulary is introduced, which texts are to be used, etc., but how each course is structured and facilitated is determined by the training and the idiosyncracies of the individual teacher. The enviable freedom to teach what we want to teach in our own style is a major factor contributing to job satisfaction and lends a certain dynamism to our program. Our methodologies are as eclectic as our courses and reflect our predicament as an international school made up of individuals with various values and aspirations. Our diversity makes it impossible and inappropriate to legislate a single methodology, however as we teach and develop our curriculum, there are certain pedagogical concerns which we keep in mind. These concerns are presented in the form of the list of questions below. This list may be useful for teachers of any subject at any level to reflect upon their teaching practices and to encourage innovation in lesson planning: *Does the activity make use of the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy? (Does it move beyond memorization and comprehension?) * Is the activity developmentally appropriate? (Does it take into account the social, emotional, and intellectual issues specific to children of a certain age group?) * Does the activity assume mastery of emerging skills? * Does the activity carry any existential import? (Is it relevant and authentic to students? Is it meaning ful?) * Does the activity include any content or connect to concepts in the overall academic program? (Human rights, the environment, etc.) * Does the activity promote affective goals? (Global, caring, creative, etc.) * Does the activity promote competition or cooperation between students? (Will the activity promote "cheating"?) * Does the activity cause students anxiety, or does it give them confidence in the new language? * Does the activity take into account theory and methodology from Second Language Acquisition Research? * Does the activity motivate students to want to use the language? * Is the activity open ended? (Is it designed to consider more than one "correct" response?) * Is the activity something students can evaluate themselves or learn from? * Does the activity respect diverse learning styles? * Does the activity make use of resources outside of the classroom? (Library, computers, nature, community, etc.) * Is the activity student-centered or teacher-centered? (Do students have a sense of ownership?) * Is the activity integrated across the four skills? (Reading, writing, speaking, listening) * Does the activity anticipate new concepts? (Will students make discoveries?) * Does the activity encourage or inhibit risk-taking? * Does the activity refer to and build on previous activities? * Does the activity allow for individual and group work? * Does the activity promote positive classroom behaviors and a safe learning environment? * Can students articulate the theme or purpose of the activity? * Does the activity offer a genuine alternative to instruction in a conventional Japanese school or juku? * Is the activity grounded in students' frame of reference and does it expand upon that frame? * Does the activity allow the teacher to share their culture or special knowledge/skills with students? * Does the activity respect student individuality? * Does the activity allow the students to surprise the teacher? (Do student ideas, utterances, responses, etc. Guide the teacher? Is the teacher flexible enough to respond to the students? |
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