experimental practice demand high teaching

7/28/2019 Experimental Practice Demand High Teaching

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Experimental Practice

Demand High Teaching in the ELT Classroom

Simon Richardson

Word Count: 2499

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Contents

Introduction: Page 3

Description Demand High Tweaks Page 4

Objectives Page 6

Evaluation Page 7

Commentary Page 8

Post-Lesson Evaluation Page 9

Action Plan for Future Professional Development Page 10

Bibliography Page 12

Appendices

1. Learner Involvement in answering the teachers questions (Scrivener &Underhill, 2012,http://demandhighelt.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/demand-high-observation-task-2-tracking-the-question-pathway-au-js-pub.pdf )

2. Teacher Questionnaire3. Student Questionnaire

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http://demandhighelt.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/demand-high-observation-task-2-tracking-the-question-pathway-au-js-pub.pdfhttp://demandhighelt.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/demand-high-observation-task-2-tracking-the-question-pathway-au-js-pub.pdfhttp://demandhighelt.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/demand-high-observation-task-2-tracking-the-question-pathway-au-js-pub.pdfhttp://demandhighelt.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/demand-high-observation-task-2-tracking-the-question-pathway-au-js-pub.pdf


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Introduction

Throughout the professional development stage of the DELTA, I have been

striving to improve the way in which I communicate with my students. This is not

simply a matter of giving clearer instructions or using more concept checking

questions, but making sure of the opportunity to learn rather than merely receive

feedback at the Teacher-Student interaction stages of a class. I currently feel that it is

difficult to ensure that all students have a positive and validated interaction with me in

the classroom, due to varying confidence levels and dominance of particular students

in whole-class feedback. This is something I have noticed not just in my PDR lessons,

but across classrooms throughout my career. Furthermore, accepting and dealing with

mixed levels in the classroom can be a challenge. I have not always felt that the

students with the higher levels of English are consistently challenged in my classes,

because of the need to give extra support to weaker students. An example of this is

working with questions and answers. I find that if students volunteer answers it is

because they are confident of them being correct, but once the correct answer has

been accepted, moving on means that I have forgotten the other students and their

answers. Importantly, there is no analysis as to how these answers were arrived at. At

times I have felt too intent on following my main aim in the classroom, which is

centred around the area of language being studied in any particular lesson, rather than

pinpointing the moment within a class at which a learner could benefit from my

personalised input and therefore learn at the moment when they most want to. For

these reasons, I am looking to re-evaluate some of my interaction patterns within the

classroom, so I have chosen to experiment with some tweaks suggested by Demand

High that are specific to addressing this problem.

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Description - Demand High Tweaks

Demand High is concerned with upgrading student language at the moment

when they need it. Jim Scrivener writes that demand that comes precisely at the point

where the learner is capable of taking the next steps forward and helping the learner

meet that demand, rather than ignore it. This is a doable demand. (Scrivener &

Underhill, 2012) This means assessing the teachers management of the classroom

and allowing students more time to negotiate answers with each other, discuss reasons

and hypotheses, and argue or agree. The idea of making sure that the teacher is not a

hub where all answers go to is central to this idea, and it is in this shift of balance

where we can see that the principles behind this approach very much follow Caleb

Gattagnos idea of The Subordination of teaching to learning, the main principle

behind The Silent Way. Demand High suggests a number of classroom tweaks to

traditional methods, which are focussed on challenging students and focussing on the

subordination of the activity to deeper on-the-spot learning.

Not rubberstamping / Not seeing the teacher as a hub

Within the classroom, it is all too tempting to acknowledge the first correct

answer given, something that Scrivener and Underhill have labelled as

rubberstamping. The problem with this technique is that the way the answer was

arrived at is not being explored. Further to this, other students may not have arrived at

the same conclusion, and their incorrectness has not been explored. The tweak to this

technique suggests that instead of simply accepting the first correct answer, we should

withhold validation and ask another student to agree or disagree with the initial

hypothesis, inviting them to compare why they arrived at the answers they did.

During this interaction, the teacher can act as an observer, noticing the learners who

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are unsure and pinpointing why they are unsure by inviting them to speak. A potential

flowchart of this technique is displayed in Appendix 1. By encouraging this extended

interaction period between students in which the role of the teacher is decreased, we

can see that Demand High follows the Comprehensible Output hypothesis, put

forward by Swain. Rod Ellis references this in Second Language Acquisition,

stating that Output can serve a consciousness-raising function by helping learners to

notice gaps in their interlanguagesSecond, output helps learners to test their

hypotheses. (Ellis, 1997, P.49) If the teacher is seen as a hub where validation

occurs, learners have reduced opportunity to test hypotheses, which is an important

principle behind the output hypothesis.

However, Krashen does not believe that the notion of pushed output is

beneficial, as not all students will be comfortable with being forced to speak or

provide hypotheses, and the action of doing so will raise the affective filter, making

the task of language acquisition more difficult. Rather, he believes that L2

acquisition takes place when a learner understands input that contains grammatical

forms that are at i+1 (Krashen in Ellis, 1997, P.47) My classroom experience

indicates that this is not the case though. Cultural background can dictate that learners

are initially used to learning by receiving comprehensible input, but I firmly believe

that students respond to and enjoy the challenge of having their output pushed and

while there may be a period of acclimatisation, learners can learn to provide output. It

is simply a case of introducing them and helping them to adjust to a new style of

learning that may merely be unfamiliar, rather than unhelpful.

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Working one on one within the group

The idea of helping students upgrade in the classroom is central to Demand

High. It can be that we focus on the goal established in our lesson aims and drive the

student machine collectively towards that aim, making as sure as we can that it is

reached by the end of the lesson. However, Underhill believes that there are often

students who do not get the opportunity to upgrade anything specific in this way. He

has taken the mechanics of one-to-one teaching and applied some of them in the

classroom, finding that the whole group was magnetized by the work that the

individual was doing in front of them, by seeing the moves of learning made visible

just for half a minute. (Underhill, 2012, http://demandhighelt.

wordpress.com/discussions/) The principle then is that other students will benefit

from observing the one-to-one experience and will then be able to use that

observation for their own insights. The challenge here is making sure that non-

participating students are not ignored, and that they are somehow engaged in this

learning process. The suggestion is that these individual interactions should be short,

clear and focussed on a skill that all students can relate to, while the teacher maintains

the attention of students on the periphery of this interaction by looking at other

students as if to say Hey this is pretty interesting. (Underhill, 2012,

http://demandhighelt. wordpress.com/discussions/)

Objectives

How do students react to one-on-one teaching within the classroom? Does it

enable them to produce language that is upgraded?

How do peripheral students react while one-on-one teaching is happening?

Are they engaged, noticing the mechanics of learning?

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How do students respond to having their ideas challenged by other students? Is

there an expectation within a classroom that only the teacher can validate or

challenge?

How do students respond to being told No? Are they motivated to persevere

until they receive teacher praise, or do they feel overly pressured?

Do all students respond positively to pushed output?

Evaluation

I am going to provide observing teachers with an observation task to be

completed during the lesson (Appendix 2). The task requires focus specifically on the

students and their reactions to the tweaks outlined in the description stage of the

essay. They will be asked to comment on student reaction, levels of engagement

during one-on-one interaction and what they actually produce when interacting with

each other and with the teacher. I will also video the class with the camera focussed

on the students so that I can watch the video following the lesson and complete the

same questionnaire myself. I am interested here in finding out whether there were

specific times during the class where some students were not engaged, or whether a

high engagement level was maintained by all students at all times. Also, whether all

students appear to benefit from pushed output, or if they appear uncomfortable or

negative about the experience. Finally, I want teachers to comment on the extent of

which the overall lesson aim became of secondary importance to the moment at which

these teacher-student or student-student interactions were taking place, as I wish to be

able to evaluate whether Demand High techniques are merely additions to a lesson, or

whether they actually become the focus of the lesson itself.

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Students will also be given a feedback form in which they will be asked to

comment on their own feelings when directly involved and not directly involved in

one-to-one interactions, as well as their reactions to other students challenging their

ideas or offering corrections (Appendix 3). I am specifically interested here in levels

of motivation, interest and comfort as well as whether they felt they had learnt

something during the lesson. I will be asking them to grade their feelings on a scale of

1-5 in order to be able to compare all students, as simple yes / no questions would not

allow me to evaluate each student individually, something which I am keen to do

before reflecting on my lesson, seeing as a number of my in-class interactions will be

focussing on individual students.

Commentary

I have chosen some of the techniques suggested by Demand High as I believe

that they will be effective in providing students with a greater challenge within the

classroom, without putting them under undue pressure (referred to as undoable

demand by Scrivener). I am looking to balance student focus within the classroom,

giving more passive or lower level students the chance to be able to come away from

one of my classes knowing that they have learnt something specific and personalised,

which I believe will increase motivation levels. Further to this, both of my classes on

the DELTA course have been of mixed levels, meaning that there is less challenge for

higher level students within the class. The aim here is to also provide them with an

upgrade that they can take away. Both classes have also had students who have tended

to dominate, and the idea here is that through this change of focus and interaction

pattern, other students can get more opportunity to volunteer ideas.

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While I believe that there is clear value to all students when the teacher is

addressing them, the value of students interacting, scaffolding and challenging each

other is not to be understated, and it is specifically in feedback stages where I want to

reduce my role and hand over the class to the students. At the moment, I have found

that classes can become dependent on the teacher at certain times, and this can lead to

reduced output. I believe that this is especially true of East Asian classes, where

students seldom volunteer to speak. I believe that the Demand High techniques could

be applied to these classes with great effect, encouraging students to speak at an

earlier point of their learning and therefore to become accustomed to this interaction

pattern at a lower level.

Post Lesson Evaluation

In the one-on-one phases of the lesson, the students involved responded well

in the main, but it was noticeably dependent on confidence levels of that particular

student. This was reflected in the feedback, in which two students expressed concern

at the pressure of feeling singled out leading to embarrassment. However, the majority

responded orally that they were in the class to learn and mirrored this on the feedback

forms. When prompted to repeat a recasted phrase faster, most students responded

positively. A few giggled, but this may have been to lack of exposure to the

technique.

Noticeably, students on the periphery of these interactions responded

excellently. Some were mouthing the phrases themselves, which was noted by the

observing teachers. In addition, the feedback suggests that they found this part of the

lesson extremely helpful in terms of learning new chunks and having to the chance to

see them modelled, practised and developed.

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I felt that encouraging students to challenge each other and volunteer multiple

answers was a positive technique in the lesson and the students participated well in

collaborative feedback, but they did not really challenge or correct each other much as

a group, so I did not have as much opportunity to observe the effects of this technique

as I would have liked. That said, the majority of students stated in the feedback that

they had no issues with being corrected or challenged by other students within the

class, mentioning again that they were in the class to learn. Generally speaking then,

students seemed to believe that pushed output merely provided them with the chance

to learn more effectively and more quickly. Furthermore, I was pleased to see that

these stages and interaction patterns did not detract from the lesson aim, an assertion

that was agreed with by my observing peers. In fact, the use of one-on-one techniques

served to add depth to the language clarification stage of the class.

Action Plan for Future Professional Development

One-on-one teaching with low level learners:

I want to further explore the use of one-on-one teaching within the classroom. The

opportunity to improve fluency through requesting students repeat faster proved

particularly successful. However, I believe that this technique would be more

effective in classes where the students are comfortable with the teacher. I am not

convinced that this technique would be met favourably with unconfident or low level

learners, and this is something I would like to experiment with.

Further encouraging other students to challenge each other:

I did not feel that this was particularly successful, and I want to use this technique to

generate further discussion within the classroom, whilst reducing my role. I am going

to experiment with questions such as What do you think? Do you agree? or even

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prompting debate by openly disagreeing: I dont think thats right. What do you

think? in order to push output in the form of debate.

Further depth in the interaction pattern:

I would like to experiment with the use of Demand High questions such as Can you

say that again with a different verb? or Can you say that again in a different way?

in order to encourage creativity and wordplay in the class. I would like to see how

much can reasonably be demanded of a student in order to discover if there is a

consistent line between doable and undoable demand. In addition, I want to see how

much time can be spent on these interactions without detracting from the lesson aim,

and whether increased focus on this area of the class indeed magnifies the learning

process and delivers personalised student upgrades.

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Bibliography

Books

Ellis, R. 1997, Second Language Acquisition, Oxford University Press

Articles

Scrivener, J. & Underhill, A. 2012,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/oct/16/demand-high-teaching-

challenge-students, The Guardian

Underhill, A. 2012, http://demandhighelt. wordpress.com/discussions/

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Appendix 1

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Appendix 2

Teacher Questionnaire

1. During one-to-one teacher-student interaction, how are peripheral students

reacting? To what extent are they engaged?

2. How motivated did students appear to be when: Told no? Corrected or challenged by other students?

3. How do you feel students responded to being singled out and pushed to speak?(Look specifically at weaker and less confident students)

4. To what extent do you feel that working one-to-one with students andencouraging a more varied and student-focussed interaction pattern atfeedback stages takes over the class and distracts from the lesson aim? Do youthink this is positive, negative or simply alternative?

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Appendix 3

Student Questionnaire

I would like to know how you felt during my lesson today. Could you please read and

answer the following questions with a number 1-5 and write any extra comments thatyou feel are important. Thank you!

(1= Strongly Agree 2=Agree 3=Neither agree nor disagree 4=Disagree5=Strongly Disagree)

1. I was interested when the teacher was working with another student.

1 2 3 4 5

Comments:

2. I felt comfortable when the teacher worked with me alone while the other students watched.

1 2 3 4 5

Comments:

3. If the teacher said No to me, it made me feel bad.

1 2 3 4 5

Comments:

4. I dont like it when other students correct me: only the teacher should do that.

1 2 3 4 5

Comments:

5. I dont want the teacher to ask me to speak. Ill speak when I want to.

1 2 3 4 5

Comments:

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6. I feel like I learned something important today.

1 2 3 4 5

Comments:

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