Staying Together
Large classrooms are a challenge. The standard student to teacher ratio is 15:1. That means for every fifteen students, there should be one teacher. In reality, this ratio applies in private schools. The student teacher ratio is important because students need support when learning. Are the students understanding? Are they writing the notes correctly? How can we teachers know the answers to these questions?
Teachers test. What kind of testing? Spot checking is especially highly useful in a large classroom. When we check each other’s regularly, every few minutes, we can be more sure that everyone is participating, everyone is learning. In this way, we can stay together.
The reality of our classroom environment is that we have a much higher student to teacher ratio. We are also in a hybrid environment, where some are live in the classroom with the teacher, and some are in another classroom only receiving instruction online.
Teaching to such a large group has its challenges. How to engage all students? How to ensure everyone understands and is completing the task? How can we know students at the back of the room can hear and see the large TV monitor broadcasting the zoom call?
The answer to all of these questions is simple. We cannot be sure. One teacher cannot be responsive to so many students at one time for an extended period of time.
This is why we need to use different tactics. Tactics that have been explicitly put forth as teaching tactics for the 21st century:
WoC students collaborate for learning.
Collaboration. After each new section of work, students exchange copy books to check each other’s work. See a mistake, fix it and explain the correction to the student.
Communication. Draw for learning. This makes learning immediate, concrete and permanent. There are lots of ways to communicate. Communicating with one’s self can mean writing. When we write, we have to think about what we are writing. Sharing information with another for feedback/correction is another form of communication.
For learning to be effective in any environment, and especially in a large multi-classroom online environment, the learning must be multidimensional and interwoven through many activities. Active learning over passive learning is truly the only way for one teacher to engage 100 students at a time.
Supervisors and student teachers matter too. Student teachers at the chalkboard capture what is being taught so that students have another place to look for information.
Live action classes are highly engaging and dynamic. With a goal to learn and become fluent in English, we must operationalize all forms of learning if we are to move beyond broken English with a rich learning experience for all.
