Why English Is Tough in Japan | A New Japan
(Originally posted at Searching for Accurate Maps. Reproduced here with permission.) An interesting article on English education in Japan over at The Diplomat. Referring to the Japanese government’s making English classes compulsory in 5th and 6th grade (that’s the last two years of primary school for you non-U.S. readers) onwards, law-school graduate Hiroki Ogawa writes, [...]
Tools for Teaching 2
Having had my first day of teaching since beginning to read Fred Jones’ “Tools for Teaching”, I can now give you a preliminary report. I know you’ve all been dying to hear about it, so here it is. I had 4 classes today, 3 of which are pretty draining. I used the following ideas from Fred [...]
Tools for Teaching
Fred Jones Tools for Teaching: Discipline-Instruction-Motivation by Fred Jones is proving to be one of those books that soon gets me pulling out my pen and note cards – not to record things I want to rememberfrom the book , but to write down new ideas I’m getting as I read it. Here’s an example: in [...]
Sy Ying Lee
I got this link from Ben Slavic, and he got it from Beniko Mason. It’s somewhat technical – it’s aimed at language teachers who are somewhat familiar with Second Language Acquisition theory, especially the ideas of Stephen Krashen. If you are new to these ideas, the content of the presentation may contain many “upside-down bananas”, [...]
Caring and teaching: only one is difficult
Cover of Stand and Deliver I recently saw “Freedom Writers“. The reason I hadn’t watched it before then, apart from it’s general unavailability in Japan, was Dan Meyer’s review of it, wow! 3 years ago. Thanks to Google Search, it took me less than a minute to find Dan’s review. After watching the movie, I [...]
Do people have a right to education?
Cover of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal On the BBC news website is an article reviewing the British educational scene 2000-2009. At the top is a photo of a banner which reads in part “everyone has a right to education“. This idea seems to have entered common consciousness: it is now almost part of what I [...]
“Why don’t children like school?” and “How to teach critical thinking”
Cover via Amazon Why Don’t Students Like School? – Because the mind is not designed for thinking. (pdf) Don’t be put off by the ludicrous-sounding subtitle (what he means, as he explains later, is that thinking is hard work and we avoid it wherever possible, usually by relying on memory instead). It’s well worth reading. [...]
Needs
Image via Wikipedia Here is a comment I posted to a discussion about Needs, a blog post at Scenes from the Battleground. I suggest you read the original Needs article first. It will hopefully make the following more intelligible. Update: I have edited this slightly (tho it is still too long and wordy) after reflecting [...]
Facing The Future
Facing The Future Originally uploaded by duncmc [Update: Comments have been closed.] So, where to, now? I tried direct instruction. It “worked” in that,* students meekly did what they were told* it gave students a feeling that they were in a “proper” class, taught by a teacher “in charge”* it was easy to sort the [...]
Looking back (5)
Where To Now? Originally uploaded by Katelyn Gibson Gatto and Holt made the most convincing arguments, and provided the most practical help. Holt pointed out that children (people) learn most from what they themselves actually do, rather than from what teachers do (or don’t do): “Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the [...]
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