Lesson planning, CCQs & ICQs

Hi everyone! Welcome back to a new entry! ☺️

Today we are going to review last class´ topics, which were Lesson planning, CCQs, and ICQs.

The last two were totally new for me, and I was impressed by how teachers do so much more behind the scenes, and everything they do to teach their students is backed up with the theory. I thought it was just a coincidence their way of asking questions. 😄

Thursday´s session was asynchronous since University was crowded because of its anniversary, however... We had material to work on! I went through it, and as soon as I started reading I realized that we would find something new and interesting. I watched the videos on lesson planning and I totally agreed that planning our lessons is vital to save plenty of our time, teachers can recycle PPTS, worksheets, realia, etc, besides, this helps to avoid behavioral problems since everything is planned according to time, so students ideally won´t have too many gaps to get distracted.  I recorded my opinion on Vocaroo too, I have to admit that I love Vocaroos! And I always talk for hours. 🥲😅

Then I read the PPT you teacher, had prepared for us. As I posted on Padlet, I reflected and I realized that planning is as important in a classroom as it is in life. And sometimes, you have to improvise as well and be flexible. The idea is to find a balance as you gain experience as a teacher.

Finally, we got to the core of the topic and we learned about CCQs, which stand for Concept Checking Questions. This is for teachers to check if students have really understood a concept, a word, or a grammatical structure. We shouldn’t trust  100% when we ask: "do you understand?" and students say they have because they might just be shy and might not want to be in the spotlight. We have to go beyond and start asking the right questions to make sure they truly understood, for instance: If we want to explain what the word extroverted means, we shouldn´t just say the definition, but to start asking different questions that include what being extroverted actually means and what it doesn´t mean.  For example: can a table be extroverted? No, extroverted is just for people. Is an extroverted shy?  Are you an extroverted person? Is Dowey Jr extroverted? Yes, he is! 

On the other hand, we have ICQs. These are kind of related to CCQs but they are different. ICQs help teachers and students to check instructions, teachers constantly ask students questions like: so, what are we doing guys? are we working in pairs or in groups? Is it a roleplay or a listening activity? instead of just giving instructions. The idea is to make students engaged. It is also a good idea to pay attention to their facial expressions, confused faces or kids looking down the floor. I remember my teacher would walk around to monitor what we were doing and he would ask in a non-invasive way what we were doing, to guide or make the class summarize what we were supposed to be doing.👀

This was a very interesting class, I hope to see you aroud! Good Bye! 👋🏻