Case study

In my case, it’s really hard to help a student throughout a complete year, or even a complete semester, since university students tend to focus only a small percentage of their time for each subject, and the rest to the vast amount of personal responsibilities they are likely to have. Case in hand: summer classes.

It is not the first time that I have taught such classes, and the contrast with regular classes is unparalleled. In summer classes, students apply themselves in the subject more actively and are more involved in their education. On the other hand, in regular classes, students barely speak during the lessons, neither they investigate nor check out the digital information given to them.

What I did in summer classes was to give students 2 or 3 classes mostly teacher centred, being bestowed more responsibilities to the students with each class. This helped me to familiarize myself with the students and to introduce them into the content and kind of activities they were expected to perform in the subject. For this part, I asked them to investigate the content of the lesson beforehand, then I would bring them a game for promoting discussion (for example, the “Who wants to be a millionaire?” game). Then I asked them to bring an activity with different contents to develop in a couple of lessons (I decide on a topic related to teaching the macro skills); this granted them the confidence to design, plan and apply the activities; and it worked as a practice for the future classes.

On the last 8 sessions (they were 13 sessions in total), students were in charge of presenting the content of the lessons, providing examples and modelling the activities for their partners. My role as a teacher was only of moderator of the discussions and fulfilling any gap in the information provided by the students; also providing with feedback, which was mostly focused on the positive aspects, providing an equilibrium with the stuff they should consider for improving. Students were even in charge of appraising their peers in the last 3 sessions. 

I provided them since the beginning of the semester with the instruments used for assessing their performances, therefore they knew the aspects evaluated, and were confident enough for doing this, especially since I asked them to specify first their experience with feedback and evaluation and to compare it with the feedback provided by me through the course of the semester. They did it wonderfully, reinforcing the positive traits of their partners and underlying how to improve their weaknesses through their strengths. I must say that I was quite happy how that groups turned out. I hope they continue learning and advancing as fantastically as they did in the summer.