Building New Schemes in English Teaching

I have been always interested in building a new class scheme based on the student and the teacher essential emotional needs. We, as human beings, need to get motivated for every single aspect of the life and academic studies are not the exception. In response, we have created different solutions and resources to get students’ attention, but all the resources we use or we create are not enough. They just motivate a part of students’ emotions and later they do not work well anymore. Being aware of those facts, I decided to look for a way to establish a connection between motivation and teaching practices, new schemes where both teacher and students develop a strong, meaningful environment for learning and teaching. In this occasion, I will be briefly explaining the first steps for developing meaningful English lessons, and the challenges for this practice. 

Meaningful English Lessons

Based on my practices and researches, a meaningful English lesson includes emotions excitement and English usage at the time that students use multiple intelligences and become culturally stronger. In order to gift students a lesson they can keep in mind forever, it is important to connect to the emotions before explaining and going deeper in any topic. When we reach the students’ emotions and we let them to express their feelings a new atmosphere in the classroom is generated, and this is just the starting point to create a new scheme. Once we got the new classroom environment, which is possible due to the students’ emotions excitement, we are able to introduce any topic we have planned and the meaningful lesson is starting. Within the emotional atmosphere and the students’ willingness to be challenged to any unexpected topic, we can give students task they will accomplish by using all their multiples intelligences, those tasks will include the use of art giving students constant cultural immersion.

Lessons General Structure

So far, I explained the general sense for the scheme I believe in.  And now, it is time for giving you a brief explanation regarding the general structure this kind of lesson follows. The structure is basically the traditional warmer, development and closing stage. However, the secret is kept within each material selected to give the class the different scheme. For this lessons every single class topic will be related to any convenient piece of art.

The first step is to keep clear which is your objective, is it to start and get your students used to the new scheme you attempt to use? Or is it just to give them a special activity? Or is it just to introduce any topic in a different way? Once you have your objective clear you must reflect about the nature of your class, students’ ages, culture, religion, likes, dislike and every fact that might give you the real students’ worldview in your class. With this information, the linking of the class reality with the nature of the pieces of art you select will work properly for the lesson. 

By the moment you have set your objectives and materials, you must be creative and prepare a warmer that must open a question, a reflection or the feeling of uncertainty which will keep the students expecting the end of the lesson as a rewarding goal. After that, you must be prepared for the plethora of students positive or negative reactions paying special attention and letting them to express their doubts, opinions or arguments. The warmer and the freedom the students might feel will determine the success of the lesson, remember that you will use the outputs from the students to link their point of view to what you prepared for the class.

After the warmer, develop your topic and give the students the opportunity to interact and participate as much as they can and want. That will give you the best opportunity to clarify what they really need to be aware of, and also to reward their knowledge and approaches to the class. When students feel and are sure they manage the lesson they will demand more and will be motivated to enhance and work in more difficult activities. 

Once the lesson was developed, the closing stage is ready to be done. By this moment, let the students summarize the class and present opinions and reflections. Once they finish, you must close the class by clarifying the initial question, doubt or expectation showing the whole sense of the class. 

Challenges 

Breaking paradigms in English teaching is not impossible for our spirit of willingness. However, our world educational system and Venezuela educational system have sowed a strong sense of behaviorism that it is even evident in the students’ reactions to the changes we attempt to create. That is why, sometimes the school and universities conditions establish the first difficulties. In one hand, the institutions authorities reject our practices; and in the other hand, our students reject them too. Hopefully, our students preserve the spirit of evolution and with a bunch of persistence we, teacher and students, will establish the path to the new necessary schemes we need to enhance the education in our society.

By Professor Diego Navarro Petit.

Meaningful English lesson based poetry, music, painting and drama are coming soon…

Building New Schemes in English Teaching by Diego Navarro Petit is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.