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Activities to motivate the 12th form students’ learning in revision classes for the gcse examination at thach thanh 3 high school

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ACTIVITIES TO MOTIVATE STUDENTS IN REVISION CLASSES 2.3.1.. However, during the first few times teaching and helping students to revise for the GCSE, I had many frustrations because I o

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SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO THANH HOÁ

TRƯỜNG THPT THẠCH THÀNH 3

SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM

LEARNING IN REVISION CLASSES FOR THE GCSE EXAMINATION AT THACH THANH 3 HIGH SCHOOL

Người thực hiện: Hà Thị Lý Chức vụ: Giáo viên

SKKN thuộc lĩnh vực : Tiếng Anh

THANH HOÁ NĂM 2017

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I INTRODUCTION

1.1 REASONS FOR CHOOSING THE RESEARCH

1.2 AIMS OF THE RESEARCH

1.3 SCOPE AND OBJECT OF THE RESEARCH

1.4 RESEARCHING METHOD

II MAIN CONTENT

2.1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

2.1.1 Definition of motivation

2.1.2 Strategies for motivating students in classroom

2.2 THE SITUATION OF TEACHING AND LEARNING

BEFORE THE APPLYING OF THE RESEARCH

2.3 ACTIVITIES TO MOTIVATE STUDENTS IN

REVISION CLASSES

2.3.1 Using the first lesson for needs analysis and goal setting.

2.3 2.Changing ways for managing each lesson.

2.3.3 Changing ways for assessing students.

2.4 RESULT AFTER APPLYING THE RESEARCH IN TEACHING

III CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

3.1 CONCLUSION

3.2 SUGGESTIONS

REFERENCE BOOKS AND QUOTATIONS

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1.1 REASONS FOR CHOOSING THE RESEARCH

Passing the GCSE examination is the most important goal of all high school students after such a long studying period of 12 years In the school year of

2017, this is becoming more and more important and challening as the ministry of education has officially decided to merge the GCSE and the entrance examination to university into one The new way of changing has put students under a lot of pressure However, during the first few times teaching and helping students to revise for the GCSE, I had many frustrations because I often found many of my students were not motivated

in class There were always students absent from class, and even for those who came to class, some of them were often absent-minded, and some would even doze off in class Later, after talking with some of the students,

I realized that students found the class boring and didn’t feel they had learned much in class Since most students had access to the teacher’s book from which they could get the answers and background information for all the materials we used in class, they didn’t feel it necessary or important to

be attentive in class Frustrated by such feedback from my students, I decided to introduce some changes into my lessons so as to motivate my students

1.2 AIMS OF THE RESEARCH

- To introduce some activities in revision classes to motivate students

in learning to prepare for the GCSE examination

1.3 SCOPE, OBJECT OF THE RESEARCH

- Scope : Researching in the process of teaching revision lessons for the

GCSE English at Thach Thanh 3high school

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The study focused on 122 12 th graders from the classes 12A4, 12A6, 12A7 at Thach Thanh 3 high school

- Object: This subject is concerned with ways of organizing activities in the

revision class

1.4 RESEARCHING METHOD: Reading reference books , discussing

with other teachers, applying in teaching, observing and drawing out experiences

II CONTENT

2.1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

In order to solve the problem, I set myself two tasks for a literature review: finding out what is motivation and what are the strategies that a teacher can use to motivate their students; and how those strategies have been integrated into revision classes

2.1.1 Definition of motivation

Research has found that motivation is concerned with both a person’s behavior in carrying out a task and the reasons for carrying out that task (Maehr & Meyer, 1997) In terms of behavior, it is a kind of “personal investment” which is reflected in the “direction, intensity, persistence and quality of what is done and expressed” (Maehr & Meyer, 1997, p.373) In terms of underlying reasons, motivation is concerned with “why anyone does or does not invest in any particular activity” (Maehr & Meyer,

1997, p.380) Many motivational constructs have been identified that are believed essential in influencing people’s personal investment, such as task-oriented /ego-oriented goals, attributions about past success or failure, perceived self-efficacy, etc (Cf Dornyei, 2001) These constructs have supplemented the traditional social approach of intrinsic/extrinsic motivation in language learning (Gardner & Lambert, 1972)

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2.1.2 Strategies for motivating students in classroom

Researchers have found that both individual factors, such as interest in the subject matter, perception of its usefulness, general desire to achieve, self-confidence and self-esteem, as well as patience and persistence (e.g., Sass, 1989), and situational factors, such as those aspects of the teaching situation that enhance students’ motivation, may affect a given student's motivation to learn (Dornyei & Csizer 1998; Lucas, 1990; McMillan & Forsyth, 1991; Sass, 1989) The two sets of factors actually interact with each other and work together to influence student motivation in the classroom, as the interaction paradigm suggests (Maehr & Meyer, 1997) Being very much concerned with what a teacher can do in classroom to enhance student motivation, I focused mainly on situational factors, which primarily fall into the following three aspects

It has also been found that if teachers can make students active participants in learning, students will be motivated to learn (Lucas, 1990) More specifically, it is concerned with the quality of classroom activities and the way these activities are presented and administered It is suggested that the teaching materials should have relevance to the learning goals and

be of appropriate difficulty level to the students concerned, a variety of learning tasks should be presented properly with realistic goals and effective strategies in reaching those goals, and students need to complete those tasks by doing, making, writing, solving, creating rather than just passively listening (Ames, 1992; Dornyei & Csizer, 1998; Lucas, 1990; McMillan & Forsyth, 1991; Sass, 1989) When students find a learning task interesting, engaging, meaningful, and useful, they tend to be highly motivated to carry it out

In addition, it has been found that if teachers can provide students with

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opportunities to see their own progress and experience successes, students will gradually build up their self-confidence and be more willing to work hard (Dornyei & Csizer, 1998; Frosyth & McMillan, 1991) More specifically, teachers may first set realistic expectations for their students, then assign tasks that are neither too easy nor too difficult, and finally give timely and informative feedback that supports students’ beliefs that they can do well and help them see their own progress In this way, students will gradually build up their self-confidence and be more willing to continue to work hard (Dornyei & Csizer, 1998; Frosyth & McMillan, 1991; Stipek, 1988)

2.2 THE SITUATION OF TEACHING AND LEARNING BEFORE THE APPLYING NEW WAYS OF TEACHING.

This is the seventh year I have helped students to do some preparations for the GCSE exams By my experience of teaching and through discussing with other teachers who are doing the same job as mine, I found that revision classes were often boring to both the teachers and the students The after revision classes seemed to repeat the one before as the teacher gave some exercises, questions or tests and students were forced to deal with them in a fixed time The teachers then gave feedback and asked students to remember some skills that might help them in the real GCSE exams Most students expressed that they felt really tired and they could’t concentrate on what they are doing More than 70% of the 12th form students agreed they didn’t like sitting in revision classes The only reasons for them to attend those classes are to meet their parents’wishes as well as to follow the school’s curriculum Despite the teachers’ efforts, the students seemed not pay attention and started creating noisy chatting classes Sometimes, the classroom happened to be a bedroom because many students dozed off

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Although my colleagúe and I have confronted a number of difficulties, one

of which was students’ lack motivation The following table show the

students’performance before my changes in teaching:

lớp Sĩ

số

Điểm khaỏ sát THPT QG lần 1

Trên 7 điểm Từ 5.2 đến

7điểm

Từ 3 đến 5 điểm

Từ 1,2 đến 3 điểm

Nhỏ hơn hoặc bằng 1 diểm

12A4 41 1 2.6% 5 12.1

24.3

12A6 42 1 2.4% 6 14.2

21.4

12A7 39 0 0% 3 7% 8 21% 27 69% 1 3%

2.3.WAYS TO MOTIVATE STUDENTS IN REVISION CLASSES

As being a teacher of English for more than ten years, I am mostly

inspired by a famous saying by Albert Einstein: “I never teach my pupils I

only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” [1]

I carried out some changes to the way of teaching during the revision

period for students at grade 12 in two term of the school year 2016- 2017,

Bearing the motivating strategies and my own teaching context in mind, I

made the following three changes to my teaching: devoting the first

session for needs analysis and goal setting, changing ways for managing

each session, and changing ways for assessing students

2.3.1 Using two first lessons to needs analysis and goal setting

I used the first class to help students to understand what they are going to

deal with in the GCSE English examination Each students are required to

write down their own purposes and goals for taking the GCSE English

exam After learning the importance of giving students a clear purpose and

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goal at the beginning of a course, I decided to devote the first lesson helping my students’ to find out their own learning needs, learning expectations, and see the value of the revision lesson Therefore, for the first lesson, I spent the first period providing students with explicit knowledge about the revision process

2.3.2 Changing ways for managing each lesson.

Before I introduced this second change into my teaching, my teaching generally followed the textbook, although at the beginning of each session I asked two students to report two recent pieces of news respectively to the whole class My way of handling the textbook was like this: I usually asked students to do the related exercises in students’ textbooks, and then checked answers When some students couldn’t answer a question correctly, I usually explained those difficult points After making sure most students had understood a part, I would turn material for the next part and we would go through the same cycle again It seemed that the teaching objective was to finish the exercises in the textbook Since many students had the teachers’ book that contained all the answers to the exercises in our textbook, they didn’t listen attentively in class, and when asked to answer a question, some of them would simply read answers from the teacher’s book Obviously, they were coping with my questions rather than making use of the exercises

To make each session purposeful, engaging, and well structured for students, I divided each session (45 minutes) into three parts: skill training,

in lesson breaktime, and lecture Skill-training usually came first in each session so that when doing the following tasks, students would purposefully practice the skills they had just learned Regarding the revision materials, and the materials for the other parts were taken either

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from the textbook or other resources and I tried to make them relevant to the English test in the GCSE I also tried to arrange the materials in such a way so that they became increasingly difficult in terms of input speed, vocabulary, or sentence structures as we went through a whole session In this session I will ask students to discuss in group what are the kind of questions and what are the helpful tips to identify the answers to the questions At the end of this session I will ask some students to show their answer on board And here starts the session two: in lesson break time.However before the beginning of this session, I must set the rules.The student with the most correct answers will be rewarded with some nine gifts or presents The student with the least correct answers will sing a song or do what the winner tell him to do If the number of correct answers are more than that the teacher requires, the teacher must play a song or even sing a song to her student In this part, the class will have chance to listen to songs both in English or Vietnamese, watch their friends who have incorrect answers doing role play or some other funny activities I try

to create friendly and comfortably atmostphere Students will be able to give as many ways of explaining to the questions Making mistakes is acceptable and encouraged provided that students feel self-confident, free

to exchange ideas and excited about the lesson During this part, I will note down important vocabulary, structures, grammar rules…on the blackboard Those notes will be reteaching or explaining by my students in the third session In this part, my students will be able to revise their knowledge og language and represent it in front of the class They will be able to remember the lesson in classroom, not have to go home and learn by heart

as usual

2.3.3.Changing ways for assessing students

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In order to promote learner autonomy and personalize the learning process

as well as to help students see their continued progress and gradually build

up their confidence, I used journal writing ( both in English and in Vietnamese) to assess my students, in addition to the traditional assessment methods which included dictation, mid-term and final exams, and evaluation of students’ classroom performances

I decided to try journal writing because previous research suggested that journal writing can be both a reflective tool and a communication tool (Loughran, 1996; Morrison, 1996; Norton, 1998; Peyton & Reed, 1990) Therefore, it can be a personal writing place where students may reflect on their own learning experience, describe their feelings and reactions to the class activities and express their thoughts about the new way of learning In addition to being a reflective tool, journal writing may also offer a safe place for a written dialogue between the teacher and students where the teacher may provide individualized feedback to every student Furthermore,

it has been used in different subject areas and to people of different age groups Considering all the advantages of journal writing as well as the characteristics of my students, I thought it might be worthwhile to try this method, although it was totally new to me, in my listening course to satisfy the different needs of all my students in this mixed-ability class and to motivate them to work hard

For journal writing, there were two parts: reflections on in-class activities and their outside-class practices For in-class activities, I asked students to write about their feelings about the materials, the class activities, and importantly their own performances I sometimes asked them such questions as “How do you feel about the revision materials we had today? Are they at the right difficulty level for you? What are some of your

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