Hi!
Welcome back to the teaching practice 2021 series!
In this entry, I would like to share with you some thoughts about the use of teaching materials by the teacher. In my opinion, the choice of teaching materials affects the process of learning and teaching. Picking the proper aids can sometimes decide whether the lesson would be successful or not. Today I will focus on the lesson conducted in 3rd grade and it was mainly practicing listening and reading skills.
In this classroom, the students and the teacher have a coursebook from the "Starkids" series published by Express Publishing. There is a pupil's book and an activity book "Starkids 3" for 3rd graders. The teacher said that this coursebook is not very extra but it is minimum what they need to know. Students seemed to be quite pleased with those books. Another advantage of the coursebook is its online version with interactive tasks which makes the teacher's work a little bit easier with this remote learning and teaching situation.
During the lesson, kids were listening and following the comic story about the childhood of the characters from the book. They had a few tasks to do. One of them was to listen and tick the correct sentence that appeared in the story. Another task was to fill in the gaps and explain - "Who said that?". I think that students really liked the characters and the story. Then children were practicing reading together by roles.
I can say that during this lesson students were effectively practicing reading and listening skills. The teacher also told me that she is required to work more with the coursebook in remote teaching mode because it is easier for parents to help children with homework and keep up with classes. I am sure she would be willing to use more varied teaching aids when it would be no longer distance teaching.
What do you think about coursebooks? Are they good teaching aids?
Zuzanna
I think that having a good course book from a reputable publisher can definitely help the teacher in making the learning process organized and purposeful, especially if the course book has additional online resources or online practice activities.
ReplyDeleteAnd, as you noticed, during remote studies it's way much easier for parents to keep track of their children's learning if there is a course book, rather than a collection of scattered printouts, handouts, worksheets and what not.