Teacher Discussion Forums

I listened to a class of a junior high school. I thought the students were not intrested in this class. They were inactive in the whole class. The teacher gave five tasks in the class. I thoutit would be better for each taskto give students some awards or got Ss to do activities. Is It an effective ways to motivata the students?

Could you say something more details about the class? i mean what was its topic? Maybe the activities just not got many information gaps to arouse students' interests. Your idear is very good, but also depending on what kinds of reward and the level of the students.

Thank you for your reply. The title of this class was :modern agriculture . It manily introduceed the diffrences between the past Agriculture and modern Agiculture.The teacher got the Ss to finish five tasks according the content of the passage.It includes:pre-reading---The teacher wantsed to review some new words by using the brainstorm . It seemed that the Ss didn't know them at all. In order to get them to understand the passage, the Ss went on finishing the tasks such as: Answering the questions by onself, Filling in the blanks according to the given words, Filling in the blanks in groups etc. The Ss wasn't given
enough time. It seemed It's so boring for the Ss and they were not intrested in doing the activities.I think it would be better if the teacher if the teacher gave the students some awards whatever in the group activities or pairs work.

I think the reason why the students didn't concentrated on the topic "modern agriculture " is that they don't familiar with the modern agriculture.It's far away from their life. If you can ,You'd better provide some pictures and videos about modern agriculture to draw their attention.A guess game is a good way to motivate students.You can make students to guess the objects related to modern agriculture and make sure the word of these objects your students have already learnt.Before the class,you can also give the students assignment to make them get some information about modern agriculture.

A good idea. It'll be better if she did it in this way. how do you think the group work in teaching class of high school. How to make it more effective for the weak students in English class. I find there are always some students who are not intrested in it. When others do the activities, she/ he is just only a observer. the class I listened seemd more serious.
Good students are always participating in the activities, but the weak don't know what to say and what to do at all . They said they had no intreasts.

What do you think if you arrange some contrastive teaching activities ？I know your topic is “modern agriculture”.In my opinion, your topic is suitable for do some contrastive work. For instance,you can ask Ss what tools did we use in farming work years ago and what their counterparts are nowadays? Or something like that in order to make Ss realize that modern tech's advantages. .

you're right. I have done it just what you mentioned. But the students are not interested in the following activities, such as answering questions, filling in the blanks and report etc. They are so calm to these tasks.It seened that it had nothing to do with them just like other reading class.

I think group work is a good idea,which can effectively motivate Ss to participate in the class learning,however, my teacher has told me that there are two weaknesses of this activity.One is that the teacher can hardly master the whole class during the activity.You will come across many problems,such as the difficulty of classifying Ss (Good Ss may not like to work with weak Ss) and you cannot help every group.The other one is that some Ss will not participate in the activity,especially weak Ss.Ask for the second problem,there is a solution.You can give different work to different level Ss.For example,you can give some hard work to the excellent Ss and give much easier work to weak Ss.In this way weak Ss will not feel difficult about the task and glad to do it.And the excellent Ss will not feel boring about the task.(I think they like challange.)

How canI divide the students into different groups? Do I need to prepare two sets for each task?

I mean you should make good Ss and weak Ss work together.And you don't need prepare two activities,just one activities.Take the topic of sports for example, you can make good Ss to find history of it,whereas you can let weak Ss list the name of sport they know.

It seems to be a good way.