The technology
Technology in its essence is an algorithm, a pre-arranged program of action that contains a series of steps to help achieve a certain goal. Technology is a set of methods and means to achieve a desired result; a way of converting the given into the necessary. Technology includes the sequence of operations and procedures, it is related to the machines, equipment, tools and materials used. But what is pedagogical technology? In the beginning, this term was associated with the use of certain technical means in training, while today this term means a way, a way to build a product with certain qualities. There is a regularity, especially expressed in pedagogical technologies, namely - new technologies become obsolete and must be replaced by new ones. But every new technology rests on an old one that serves as its foundation. New technologies often negate the old, but at the same time contain the important and valuable things from the old.
The lesson
The lesson is a structure modeled by representatives of different cultures, teachers who reproduce their experience, attitudes, values and culture and at the same time their individual knowledge and attitude towards the world.
The lesson is a structure that unites a group of children, representatives of different social groups, with different value orientations, with different traditions, with different social prestige. The lesson should increasingly expand the opportunities for individual freedom, provide sufficient choice in actions and a sense of security for each child.
Children are highly susceptible to suggestion, therefore they perceive the information presented to them with all their senses, they also perceive the behavior of the teacher. They imitate him, he is an example for them, perceive his truths and values, empathize with his moods and thus build their ideas about the world. Therefore, the responsibility of the teacher is extremely great. Through the lesson, the students build ideas, concepts, images, form a system of knowledge, skills and competences for getting to know the world in which they live and eventually, if they have the opportunity to change this same world. They develop skills for applying the acquired knowledge in new, non-standard situations.
The main lesson that the modern teacher must impart is how to learn. The main task is to teach children to learn. Experts are of the opinion that there is no way to teach today's children skills and knowledge that will guarantee their realization in the labor market in the future, if they will occupy work positions that have not yet arisen. Therefore, a holistic approach in teaching is needed and the most valuable skill that children should be taught is to get used to learning, i.e. to learn how and from where to absorb new information that will be useful for their development and career, and to not stop looking for information and improving themselves, because school or university cannot prepare them for everything that awaits them in real life. In a holistic approach, we observe a high degree of autonomy for learners. The learning process is no longer dominated by the teacher, but is modified into a shared responsibility. The relationship between teacher and student becomes subjective-subjective rather than subjective-objective. The teacher's authority is built, not imposed.
Planning – the first technological stage of the lesson
The lesson is a planned and purposeful activity. It is prepared in a certain way by the teacher. It is a dynamic process of communication between two subjects - a teacher and a student, during which the learning objectives are realized. Lesson planning is important to the educational process. The lesson plan supports the activity of the teacher by clarifying the objectives of the lesson, preventing the omission of important components, helping to achieve longer-term goals. Planning the individual stages of the lesson is necessary to present the information correctly. Each stage of the lesson builds on the previous one, so it is important to have a connection between the individual stages. However, we cannot plan a lesson in a strictly fixed framework. The plan should be flexible and open-ended. Until recently, learning was focused primarily on the teacher and the learning materials. In modern foreign language learning, the so-called communicative approach, which is student-oriented, is increasingly relevant. This means that the individual stages of the planned lesson are aimed at the needs and desires of the students. Because not all children learn in the same way. Planning a lesson is a creative process. Yes, the teacher should be guided by the textbook he uses, but at the same time he should present the lesson in his own way. Children are different. There is no way to present the same lesson in the same way in different classes.
At CEO, the main goal is to develop students' communication skills in the studied language. Language should not be considered only from the side of its formal features. More important is its application in social settings. It is also important to ensure socio-psychological conditions in class, to build a positive learning environment. The motivation of students is also important.
The first stage of the plan is introductory and set-up. Entering the class, the teacher, with an appropriate response and certain actions, must set the students up that they are no longer in a physics class, for example, but have an Italian language class. After greeting, checking of absentees, etc. administrative activities, it is good for the teacher to start with a cue directing the students' attention to the material from the previous lesson. This can be done with specific questions or a homework check.
The second stage of the plan of the lesson are the activities that will be carried out on the teaching and learning of new knowledge or the exercise of already learned knowledge. There is no lesson without structure. Today, most authors distinguish several types of lessons:
- Lesson for new knowledge
- A lesson for consolidating knowledge and forming habits and skills
- A lesson on summarizing and systematizing knowledge, skills and habits
- A lesson on applying knowledge and skills
- Lesson for control and assessment of knowledge and skills
- Combined lesson
Each type of lesson differs from the others in its purpose and content. Therefore, when planning, we must first determine what kind of lesson we will teach.
A lesson plan includes different activities. We can conditionally divide them into mechanical and communicative. Today, we all know that using only mechanical actions is highly incorrect as they demotivate students. In mechanical work, children do not put enough thought and do not use their full potential, respectively do not absorb the knowledge presented to them to the maximum extent. Mechanical actions in learning would be helpful for children with autism. For children without SEN (special educational needs), it is more appropriate to offer communicative activities where the student, not the teacher, has a leading role. The main target activities of the CEO are:
- receptive – listening and reading and
- productive - speaking and writing.
It is incorrect to think of receptive activities as passive. For example, when students listen to or read an unfamiliar text, they selectively perceive the information and then each interpret it in their own way. Therefore, these activities are active, not passive.
A common mistake when working with an unfamiliar text is to move immediately to the translation of the unfamiliar words after listening or reading the text. This approach is wrong, because in this way children mainly concentrate on unfamiliar words and lose orientation, do not understand and perceive the text in its entirety as new information. Of course they must have some lexical stock gathered in advance. That is, when we start teaching a foreign language, in the first lessons, after getting acquainted with the alphabet and the rules of reading and writing, it is better to emphasize the acquisition of new words. However, students should then be guided to work with the text as a whole and try to extract information from it even in the presence of unfamiliar words. The text usually has questions that students should familiarize themselves with in advance, i.e. before they get to know the text, it is good to see the questions to it. This is followed by listening or reading the text, analysis or who understood what and how, and only at the end is the analysis of the unknown words and translation, where again the students must have the leading role. Instead of the teacher providing ready-made translations of the words, it is good to let the children analyze each word and try to arrive at its meaning by themselves (through a similar-sounding word in their native language, through a word from another foreign language with a common root, etc. .). In this way, continuous activity is maintained in class, children are not distracted and their attention is focused on the lesson. The translation of the text is then not the goal of the lesson, but a means to its overall understanding.
When we plan the tasks during the lesson, we should use a variety of forms: in groups, in pairs, individually, and by individual activity we do not mean exercises in the textbook, but doing some independent work. The tasks themselves should provoke situations close to real life. For example, in lessons where the main goal is learning concepts of communication, acquaintance, description of appearance or character, it is good for children to compose simple dialogues among themselves:
- student A asks "What's Maria's hair like?" and student B answers
- student A asks how to get to...and names a real place known to all the children in the class, and student B answers by not only informing the questioner with the new expressions learned, but also trying to explain whether the place is close, on foot or by car means it is better to move etc. according to the vocabulary learned so far.
The role of the teacher during the entire learning process should be guiding, but the students should be the leaders, they should complete the tasks. The teacher is an authority, but he does not flaunt his qualities of knowing and able. A distance between the teacher and the students is necessary, but it should not be extreme in order for communication to flow smoothly and the atmosphere to be pleasant.
So far we have talked about planning a separate lesson. It is important to mention that we must have planned the entire training course beforehand. At the beginning of each academic year, each teacher prepares a written distribution of the learning material by learning units, by week, according to the timetable and class level, taking into account weekends and vacations, etc. The material should be so planned that there is technological time both for teaching it and for learning it (in the form of practice hours).
When planning both the overall activity and each lesson, it is good to be guided by three main things: introduction to the learning material (vocabulary and grammar), practice and independent use.
When we start planning our lesson, first of all we need to be clear about the purpose of this lesson ie. what students should be familiar with. The lesson objectives are derived from the learning content. The next step is to select the methods and means by which to achieve the intended goal. When setting goals, continuity is needed - from a familiar goal to the new part of the material. It is good to anticipate what difficulties the students would have and how we could overcome them. Our goals should be oriented not so much to the learning content as to the expectations of the students. The activities that we will propose for the realization of the intended goals must be graded and build on. If our goals are too high or too low, we will most likely demotivate students. An important point is the planning of the logical connections between the individual activities or the so-called communication bridges. The lesson should not be interrupted, but should move smoothly from one activity to another. This is done with certain cues or questions to set the children up for the next activity and their minds to move smoothly to it. Example: we have a new text with a new grammar. After getting to know the text and analyzing the vocabulary, it is not appropriate to suddenly move on to an explanation of the grammar, because this way the children's thinking is fragmented. It is appropriate to guide them to the new grammar by offering them the following activity - we extract individual words or sentences from the text and they must notice features, new things. Only then do we explain what it is and pay attention to what new grammar needs to be learned.
The third stage of planning of our lesson is its conclusion. At the end of the lesson, the teacher, in the form of a discussion, should evaluate the lesson and ask the students to do the same. Let the students say what they managed to learn, whether it was useful for them, what they found difficult, what they expect for the next lesson, etc. All this is done for the purpose of feedback for better communication. When we grade individual students or the class as a whole, the grade should be positive, followed by recommendations for avoiding mistakes. "You got the word order wrong" and "Your sentence is correct, you just need to reverse the word order" indicate the same error, but convey a different message. In the one case, the emphasis is on the student's mistakes, which is embarrassing and often demotivating, and in the second case, the emphasis is on the success that the task is completed, and the attention is directed to the mistakes so that they are noticed and cleaned up without emphasizes them.
Implementation – the second technological stage of the lesson
First and foremost is the message the teacher brings to the classroom. Students should enter the classroom with the mindset that they are in school not because of the teacher or because they are required to be there by law, but because of the message the teacher brings, the knowledge they will receive. Children need to feel that the teacher is there for them, because they can be useful.
Memories have been shown to be largely based on emotions. So why not bring emotion into the classroom!? The lesson does not have to be dry and businesslike, in a strict academic setting, for the knowledge to be absorbed.
In the second stage, everything that happens is the result of the interaction between the learner and the trainer. That's why no two lessons are the same. The course of the lesson itself depends on many factors: the emotional state of both the teacher and the student, the time of the lesson (early morning, late evening, before vacation, etc.), the specific mental abilities of the learners, their degree of motivation, teacher-student relationships. Although the lesson is pre-planned, it takes place in an unpredictable way. Sometimes the presence of certain factors from the above may prevent the lesson from taking place according to its preliminary plan. In such cases, it is important for the teacher to be able to improvise. He must be able to navigate in order to be able to approach creatively and sensibly and responsibly. During the lesson, there should be communication between teacher and students, not just audio-lingual dialogue. A major role is played not so much by verbal communication: reading, writing, speaking, listening, mediation, as by non-verbal, expressed through gestures, kinesics (body language), tone, facial expressions, proxemics (the distance between communicators), clothing. In our society, communication is mostly non-verbal. A proper understanding of non-verbal communication helps us implement a holistic approach to teaching. She helps us better. In the first technological stage of the lesson, we saw that it should be open and flexible. This is especially necessary during its implementation. Our lesson plan should follow some outline, but its framework should allow for corrections and changes depending on the specifics of the particular lesson. And they can be many.
It has been found that the more teachers are concerned about the needs of their students, the greater their trust in them. This, in turn, helps to develop a more complete and in-depth interpersonal communication. There are two key traits, according to researchers, that lead to success in teaching and communication - the flexibility and consistency of the teacher's behavior. Flexibility is the ability to take into account the nature of the communicative situation and choose the appropriate teaching style according to that situation. Consistency is the consistency of the teacher's behavior when he communicates with his students and has to decide how to organize and implement the learning.
Teaching is an art, like the performance of a dramatic art, because with certain characteristics and behavior such as voice, gestures and movements, the teacher must capture the attention of the students, hold it and affect them emotionally; like other performing arts, it is important to demonstrate a strong personal presence and high energy in teaching. Teaching style is a projection of the basic learning strategies, methods, and techniques that a teacher uses in the classroom to help students learn how to learn.
Reflection - the third technological stage of the lesson
Reflection is a concept from psychology, which means introspection of one's own thoughts and experiences. It is a process where person becomes aware of his inner mental states. The individual reflects on what is happening in his consciousness. The word comes from the Latin word reflexio, meaning 'reflection', 'turning back'. Or to put it another way, reflection is a person's ability to mentally separate himself from the world, to realize himself as an individual, unique and different from everything and everyone around him. It is reflection that is taken to be the boundary between man and animal in terms of the psyche.
Reflection is a multifaceted process of deep reflection. Through it, one learns not only from one's experience, but also from one's reflection on it. As early as 1933, philosopher John Dewey opined that reflection is important in teaching and learning. It is not so much the experience itself as the reflection on it that leads to learning. We gain experience once from the experience and a second time from our reflections on it and on the experience we have gained.
There are five main components of the Gaining Experience cycle and reflection is one of them. These are: doing, remembering, reflecting (thinking deeply), coming to conclusions, preparing for the next action. What is important in this case is that deep reasoning leads to conclusions that are the basis of our next action.
Why are we talking about reflection here? As I already mentioned, the implementation of a lesson does not always proceed according to the previously prepared plan. Sometimes the lesson goes completely outside the scope of the plan. That's not always a bad thing. But in all cases, after the end of the lesson, it is good, even mandatory, for the teacher to thoroughly analyze the situation and, if any problems have arisen in the classroom, based on recalling the incident and reflecting on it, come to conclusions about where and why a problem occurred , so that he can avoid it in the future. In this way, the teacher (and a person in general) makes a self-assessment, which is practically the true assessment of a given activity. Self-assessment or critical reflection underpins the choices a teacher will make in deciding their future activities. Thus, he not only aims, but also aims. When a person himself sets the goals of his future activity, he achieves personally significant professional development. The modern learner is expected precisely to be a "reflective practitioner", i.e. to act and then to reflect on his activity "why" and "how". What is the difference between assessment and self-assessment? The first comes from outside, and the second is the result of internal criteria for correctness. This is where the desire for possible change comes from. Assessment leads to "I have to..." and self-assessment leads to "I want to..." In the former, the teacher becomes a victim of circumstances, while in the latter it leads to creative actions. The essential difference is that in goal setting the goals are more likely to come from outside and be imposed, whereas in goal setting they are set by the teacher himself, of his own volition. Thus, the probability of their realization is much greater, while at the same time the subject does not feel compelled to do so.
In conclusion
The three technological stages of a lesson are closely related and interdependent. The fact is that a lesson cannot be based on improvisation, because then the learning becomes chaotic and ineffective. There must be a plan. But if our plan is in a rigid framework and does not allow flexibility, then its 100% implementation is difficult to implement. A well-conducted lesson is a well-planned one whose plan allows for freedom and breadth of action, where the atmosphere in the classroom is pleasant and relaxed and allows students to awaken their creative potential and to be active participants in that lesson. However, there are always problems. I won't focus on them here, because they can be of any nature: a class with predominantly unruly students, a class before or after vacation, reduced classes, first class in the morning, last class in the evening, students with troubled families...and what else no. All this inevitably leads to adjustments more or less in the preliminary plan. Therefore, at the end of each lesson, even if there is no problem and the plan is fulfilled, the teacher must make a thorough self-evaluation, which will help him avoid the problem in the next lesson or, in the absence of one, give him the opportunity to propose and implement additional, more interesting and creative activities.
References:
1. Ch. Assistant Professor Radiana Drinova – lecture course in the discipline "Lesson Technology"
2. Associate Professor Yordanka Simeonova, Ph.D. – lecture course in the discipline "Lesson Technology"
3. www.pomagalo.com
4. www.wikipedia.com
© 2023 Iliana Dechkova