Communication Skills

Communication Skills

The teacher uses knowledge of effective verbal, nonverbal, and media communication techniques to foster active inquiry, collaboration, and supportive interaction in the classroom.

Name of Artifact: Journal entry from Practicum

Date: Fall 2003

Course: FL 694

Rationale:

I chose this journal entry as the first artifact for the Communication standard because it deals with a kind of communication that is important for a teacher's personal professional development but is not often discussed.

This artifact is my reaction to an essay in the On Becoming a Language Educator: Personal Essays on Professional Development by Christine Casanave Pearson and Sandra Schecter. One of the focuses of the essay was that teachers need to make a practice of reflecting on what takes place in the classroom. Many things happen every day in classrooms that are obscure or hard to understand completely. It is important for teachers to communicate about the happenings in the classroom in order to gain a deeper understanding of the students' actions and needs.

Writing down our reflections is a good practice in order to come to terms with the happenings in the classroom. In addition, it's really the only way to acheive the expressions of all of our thoughts, uninterrupted. Although talking to someone about them is effective, we are often sidetracked or interrupted by external interferances.

Once we sort them down on paper, we can more effectively communicate our observations and experiences with other teachers, parents, and students. Personal reflection is an important part of communication for a teacher.

Name of Artifact: Focused Observation

Date: Fall 2003

Course: FL 694

Rationale:

This artifact is a focused observation that deals with the importance of questions asked by the teacher in the classroom. I found this really interesting because I had never thought about the questions that a teacher asks. In fact, before this observation I had never realized that a teacher's questions make up a majority of the class discussion.

In this lesson, the teacher I observed asked a lot of questions. It was an 8:00 class, and the activity was a class discussion about an article that the class read. If he had a hard time getting the students to answer, he would rephrase the questions until he began to get the answers he was looking for.

Through my own substitute teaching, I've also noticed that different students respond to different types of questions. Some students are responsive to open and general questions that allow for a variety of discussions. Other students respond better to questions that lead to a more directed and focused answer, and thus, a more specific discussion.

I realized through this observation that the way in which questions are asked is integral to the shape that the discussion will take. This experience has made me more aware of the questions I ask in my own teaching. In fact, I've noticed that my class discussions have been more successful since I've paid more attention to the art of asking questions.