Mid- Term Report on Checking Learning

How does the teacher monitor the learning of the students? How does s/he check that learning is
taking place?

Teacher A
How does the teacher check?
-Teacher A manages his classes adhering to Theme-Based approach, integrating with task-based
activities to enrich students' learning.So, his students are largely autonomous, managing their
own learning being guided by the teacher, making their own contributions to class discussions,
communicating with each other in groups organized by the teacher rather than individual work
that happens sometimes.At this point, what the teacher does to monitor their learning is to get
them engaged in different activities and tasks during the class so that he will have a chance to
observe their level of engagement, differentiate ones who have relatively more difficulty in
completing a task/activity from the others who are more autonomous in order to get a chance to
help these students and direct their learning more by tutoring.One example of this act of
checking learning is when teacher A got the students to work on a text, elicit items from the text,
such as literary devices, the message etc., and present their findings at the end.After observing
the students working on the text one by one and helping those who needed (act 1), teacher A also
asked them questions and got a chance to see to what extent learning took place for each student,
by listening to them and measuring their level of comprehension through their
speeches/explanations based on the text they analyzed (Act 2).In another class, teacher A got the
students to work on a text by asking them to define relevant items in the text, asking them
questions about their findings.Then he handed out some small notepapers on which a brief info
was written to guide the students and asked them to find a partner to discuss with.Through this
pair work, teacher A had a chance to get literally everyone engaged and listen to the pair
discussions and see to what degree they could talk about the relevant text in a communicative
way (Act 3).One frequent way of checking their learning was to get them to deliver their
presentations in group in front of the whole class.In this case, students had their artefacts on
which the presentation was based and which they prepared either in the class or outside of the
class.Owing to the given speeches and delivered presentations, teacher A had a chance to check
their learning both visually and auditorily (Act 4).To literally make sure that learning occurs, in
the next class, teacher A asks the students one question that requires them to recall their prior
learning and explain the question with their own words or he initiates a brief quiz on either
Kahoot or other alternatives.This quiz/test gives him a chance to check degree of their learning
(Act 5).To exemplify, one of the quizzes was about specific vocabulary that students were
expected to achieve.Lastly, there have been moments when I saw all the students brainstorm on
the subject topic.For this to happen, teacher A utilized an application on the smart board so that
students could connect with their mobile phones.This brainstorming gave every student a chance
to gather their opinions together, talk/reflect on the topic and get prepared cognitively, while it
gave the teacher a chance to check their learning before the teaching (Act 6).So, the common
ways of checking learning in teacher A's class is:
• Observing students and helping if necessary while they work on a text.
• Asking questions and elicit meaningful answers from them.
• Getting them engaged in communicative activities/pair works so that they can give/take
comprehensible input.
• Getting students to give speeches/deliver presentations in groups.
• Running quizzes to recall prior learning after teaching (in the next lesson)
• Brainstorming and discussion related to the day's topic.

My Comments
-When it comes to my comments related to ways of checking learning, I believe teacher A's first
act of checking (tutoring) is something every teacher who bases his lessons on modern pedagogic
approaches such as task-based language teaching and aims at learner-centredness must do,
because learner autonomy may be challenging to implement in case teachers don't put in
necessary effort.According to cognitivism, learning happens through each student's mental
processes such as taking the information in, organizing it and applying for solutions of problems.
However, without observing the students to tutor them by directing their mental processes to
learning, learning may fail because students may be unable to construct these mental connections
on their own, which is something I experienced as a student.That's why tutoring plays a vital role
in enabling learning.On the other side, constructivism suggests that students should take an
active role by getting engaged in communicative activities to create meaning from experience
and interpretation of real world.This theory is something that is seen to have been applied in
teacher A's classes, because one way of teacher A's checking learning is to get students to take
part in communicative activities, which is exemplified in act 3 where students discussed a text
(supposedly authentic) by changing partners, which increases the level of comprehensible input
they take from the peers since they discussed with different persons.So the third way of checking
learning applies to my teaching principles, too.After all, as Vygotsky suggests, social interaction
is crucial for learning to occur and in the pair work mentioned above, I observed that more
proficient students provided their partners with scaffolding.On the other side, that teacher A
initiates a quiz or asks students questions to make them recall their prior learning can be linked
to connectivism which is vital in today's world.Teacher A gets students to recall their prior
knowledge and build the new information on the prior one, enabling the students to recognize the
information sets in their mind, which I think makes the learning durable, especially when the
subject topic is grammar (not in this class).So I would keep this same in my class, as well.Lastly,
that teacher A encourages students to give speeches and presentations applies to my perception of
learning, too, because I believe this implementation is a great way of enabling students to gain
confidence in speaking foreign language.Clearly, giving a speech in front of the others will make
a positive effect on the student, making them feel like they're achieving something
worthwhile.As teacher can utilize these speeches/presentations to measure their learning, this
also makes the students check their own learning, given that the other students ask the presentor
question about their presentation.

When does the teacher check?

-As explained above, teacher A checks the learning at different times.He gets students engaged in
activities as in pair work example or tasks that require them to make their oral contributions and
produce their artefacts as outcome hanged on the bulletin board by the teacher weekly.He also
observes them when they work on a specific text and helps students who seem to have difficulty
in individual work.Teacher A checks the learning after teaching, as well, by asking them
questions that require them to recall their prior knowledge or initiating a quiz on the smart
board.Similarly, as mentioned above, teacher A sometimes gets the students to brainstorm about
the specific topic before he moves on to teaching the real content.So, we can say teacher A
checks learning before, during and after teaching.

Why does the teacher check?

-Teacher A generally presents new thematic subjects to the students so that they can take part in
communicative discussions.A large point in checking learning is to engage students by making
them active participants of the class, reducing the role of teacher and increasing the role of
student.So, the purpose of checking learning is to increase students' activity level and extend
their repertoir of world knowledge through different themes, which also includes lower-level
aims such as increasing their knowledge of vocabulary encountered in texts or enabling compre-
hension of certain texts by means of individual analysis/reflection and class discussions.Another
thing featured in the class is collaboration since there are lots of activities realized in groups.So, I
believe another reason of checking learning is to encourage collaboration through partnership
and shared assignments.Lastly, teacher A aims at having students produce something tangible as
outcome displayed in the class to reflect their learning at the end of tasks.

Is the purpose of checking achieved?

-The learning in teacher A's class ends up with success most of the time, because he guides the
students well enough to direct their behaviors and actions in the class, facilitating the
activities/tasks and accelerating the whole learning process, especially when he tutors the
students during individual works, removing any question mark in students' mind about how to do
a task.The degree of oral contributions of the students in reply to teacher's questions and
completion of the tasks through presentations are good indicators of successful learning and their
activity and engagement level, even though not every student contributes actively, which
manifests that teacher A should observe the students better and enable diversity in terms of those
who contribute in order to guarantee that learning occurs successfully for each student. However,
when taken a general view, teacher A reaches what he aims at.To exemplify, as mentioned above,
teacher A gets the students to take quiz (vocabulary) from time to time.The amount of mistake
made by the students is remarkably little, indicating that the learning occurs successfully in terms
of teaching language items.This is also the case with tasks most of the time, since each group
shares their finding at the end.However, I witnessed one, maybe two times when a task allocated
to be done outside of the class was postponed due to the students' imprudence and teacher A had
to extend the deadline or when some groups couldn't make their contribution because of
insufficient amount of time.Even so, most of the time, teacher A achieves the purpose of his
teaching: creating an environment in which students can actively learn new topics/themes by
participating.

(Additional Class)
Teacher B
How does the teacher check?
-Teacher B conducts her classes mostly through grammar exercises, such as "fill in the blanks" or
"find the synonym of a word" in the coursebook that is also projected on the smart board. She
asks question randomly, trying to engage everyone.Most of the time, she gets the correct answer,
which is a good way of checking students' learning. When students respond wrongly, she gets
them to fix their own mistake by giving feedback and leading students to reflect on the mistake
inductively (7).Likewise, she conducts written quizzes to measure degree of students' learning at
certain periods.Moreover, after grading the papers, she distributes them back so that students can
see their own mistakes.She was also observed making quiz on Kahoot about tenses (8).Another
thing is that teacher B assigns tasks to students to complete outside of the class, as projects that
are prepared on cardboards.Although I didn't get a chance to observe what it was for, it must
have been to measure students' understanding of language items through their use of those items
in a more comprehensive way integrated with broader topics (9).So, teacher B's regular ways of
checking learning are:
• Asking questions and giving feedback if students respond wrongly.
• Conducting written quizzes/kahoot to check their learning (especially grammar items,
tenses as observed)
• Assigning homeworks/projects to the students.

When does the teacher check?

-The moment she checks the learning is mostly during teaching, by asking them questions,
especially uninterested students, and giving feedback.Even so, she also checks their learning
through quizzes or homeworks conducted/assigned after teaching.

Why does the teacher check?

-Since it's different from teacher A's class that is IB class where students' proficiencies are much
better, teacher B checks students' learning either to teach a language unit, mostly tenses, or to
teach vocabulary items.Besides, teacher B also aims at getting students to reflect on their own
learning through quiz papers.On the other side, she also tries to promote students' speaking skill
and increase their activity level by trying to reveal their opinions through feedback and question-
answer practice, even though it's not a communicative act.
Is the purpose of checking achieved?
-As the person who graded the quiz papers personally, I can say that learning isn't achieved to a
great extent, because I saw that a lot of students couldn't respond to some questions that focused
on revealing their knowledge of grammar or that lots of students responded wrongly. So,
according to the test results, the purpose of checking learning is not achieved.On the other side,
some students respond to the questions asked in the class correctfully while working on language
exercises and they put in a lot of effort to make their own contributions by trying to speak.These
show that students can't process the new information in the mind and transport them to the long
memory since they can't internalize the information, even though they mostly succeed at
answering questions correctfully when they work with the teacher together.So the purpose of
checking is achieved in the short run during teaching, but not in the long run.

My Comments
-In a classroom where students are still at the stage of learning without having a good proficiency
in language, I think it's the right thing for the teacher to take a larger amount of role as
controller.Unlike the other class where students are autonomous, teacher B is doing well by
taking over more responsibility.Asking students questions during exercises is a good way of
engaging them and seeing whether they make grammatical mistake while speaking.She also
assigns homework to sustain their learning.However, the quiz conducted shows that students
can't construct the new language item in the mind, causing a failure in learning.Referring to
cognitivism, we can say that the students don't succeed at forming mental processes to establish
the new information.For this problem to be removed, teacher B must recycle the language items
more much and slow the pace of progress of new language items down if necessary.One thing
that I would do would be assigning more much homework or reviewing previously learned topics
more frequently to consolidate students' mental processing and make the learning
durable.Besides, I have never observed a communicative activity like opinion gap or information
gap happen in the class, which is a significant deficiency that also needs to be handled.

Ege Tezcan 3231210057 Mid Term Task: Report