Nifty Tips to Enhance Student's Performance with the Cultural Forces at Work

Villa María

Jornada; III Jornadas deELT en la UNVM: Rethinking English Language Teaching; 2015

Universiad Nacional de Villa María

During the workshop, participants will first be taken on a short tour of the research on Teaching for Understanding (TfU) to receive an insight of the value of the set of guidelines that are flexible enough to help teachers transform their practice. Class activities will focus on strengthening the cultural forces at work in the English class. In particular, the following cultural forces will be addressed: ?Opportunities: There will be a rich selection of useful activities that will demand participants be involved in thinking and the development of understanding as part of the class work. ?Routines and Structures: They provide support to the thinking process and to students? learning, and provide tools and thinking patterns that can be used when students work independently.?Language: Using the language of thinking allows students to use vocabulary that describes and captures thinking. ?Technology: It can be introduced in class to maximize linguistic opportunities within Vygotsky?s Zone of Proximal Development and to foster collaborative and meaningful learning.