·【多倫多大學(xué)學(xué)習(xí)報道】建立課堂Community Circle, 讓課堂教學(xué)更加有實效
發(fā)布日期：2013-10-29 信息來源：
Merits of building community circle
---Based on Professor Jackie Eldridge's class
and her recommending book
Recently, there is a heated discussion on the proportion reduction of English in the entrance exam. People have different reactions on the coming change. Personally, I think it is a meaningful change, for we can focus on more ability improvement rather than exam in our future English teaching. We can make our teaching more practical, which I have learned most since i came to Canada. The teaching in Canada mainly focuses on teaching people how to think and how to communicate so as to make their ideas understood by others. What impressed me most in their class organization is to build community circle in class. We usually say group work in our teaching.
Actually, we have been talking a lot about using group work, too. And we have tried many ways to make the group work effective in involving all the students in the class. Here I learned from Professor Jackie about how to create the learning community , which might inspire us a lot in making our class teaching more effective.
Some teachers are still wondering if the group work does work so well. However, there are certainly some merits of building community circle :
1. Help the students make a transition from whatever has gone on in their lives outside of school to the classroom .
2. Have the students feel included in the classroom community before working on the tasks.
3. Involve the students in creating and sustaining a positive learning environment.
What is the spirit of community? The special spirit of community doesn't just happen by having people work in small groups, or by using randomly selective cooperative learning activities. Building community is a deliberate process that a teacher facilitates over a period of time.
At the beginning, the teacher should create inclusion for every person by practicing the set of positive Tribes agreements, which include attentive listening, appreciation/no put downs, participate/right to pass and mutual respect. The purpose of these agreements is to build a positive learning environment and to build a positive learning environment and to have students become responsible for sustaining the agreements:
1. Attentive listening: we will listen with our eyes, ears and heart.
2. Mutual respect: we will treat people the way we want to be treated.
3. Appreciation/no put -downs: w will speak kindly to others and think of other people's feelings.
4. Right to participate/pass: we have the right to pass in certain activities, and to know that the more we participate , the more we gain.
In the practice of the beginning, the teacher gives students many opportunities to present themselves in positive ways, organize students in sharing, discussions on curricula, learning collaborative social skills, reflecting on the day and celebrating. The daily community circle creates protective factors: caring, sharing, participation and positive expectations. The teacher can also have students get together in pairs, triads, and groups of four or five to promote inclusion and working on academic topics.
For example:
" find two people you still do not know very well and for five minutes share your favorite summer outdoor activity."
"Turn to a neighbor and for a few minutes discuss how you understand the sentence in the passage."
So the purpose of the beginning period is to build inclusion in the community and have the students to sustain the four agreements so that the group work can carry out the tasks efficiently in future. The teacher will use all possible strategies to reach the goal first. Once the community circles are set up successfully, both your teaching and the students' learning will be more effective.
（英語教研組 周文杰）
