2 Week 8 Reflection

Dear All,

One more demanding and instructive week have passed since we started our online course. This week’s topics were about interactive teaching in large classes and ways of using interactive power point and preparing interactive PPT. On Nicenet, there was again very fruitful discussion ongoing same as the previous weeks. Besides, for our projects tasks, we are required to find a partner for peer reviews. My partner is Zlatka and I am very happy to work with her .

This week it dawned on me the fact that interactive lecture is strikingly different from the traditional teaching. The latter is concerned with the teacher being the controller of the learning environment. In contrast, in interactive teaching all of the students participate in an activity and students are in control of their learning. Moreover, I noticed that what is generally forgotten in second language classrooms is to give a reason for doing a task. This point is also highly important in NLP theory. If learners know why they should be involved in a particular task, this can increase self- awareness and motivation, too. It is a fact that if you have a real purpose for something, you are more willing to spend time on and make effort for it, which can eventually result in success. At that point Interactive lectures are very successful at giving students a purpose for learning. Interactive activities such as think-pair share, concept test or the question of the day are good examples which help students develop thinking skills since they give students opportunity to organize their thoughts and engage them in learning process.

However, while teaching large classes, I couldn’t avoid being a traditional teacher because I always found it hard to keep students interest or I had no idea how to involve students in their own learning but thanks to videos and readings of this week, I have much knowledge about how to handle large classes.

What I liked most about this week was preparing an interactive PPT. I always thought that I am skilled at preparing PPT because I usually deliver my lessons through PPT; however, this week I am quite surprised because it was the first time I’ve heard “interactive PPT”. After watching the videos and reading about creating interactive PPT presentations, I was ready to create one. For the first time, I spent considerable amount of time but my second trial was much better. I am thinking of using my jeopardy game for my literature class.

I’d like to end my sentences here. I am again looking forward to writing my reflection for next week.