Pedagogical Contents

Game on, Grow on!

Learning does not need to be boring! How Teacher A manages the classroom always makes me burst into laughter. She always makes sure to carry brain-bender games in her pockets before starting every lesson. Bonus! During Fridays, if lessons are already done, Teacher A hosts games that the students want for the entire class period. Her students and I share the same excitement and motivation when entering her classes.

Now, it is not all about the fun in games, there is also a balance of the fundamentals. When the learners are ready to go beyond gamification, transformation begins. The students are engaged and motivated to learn seriously. Teacher A and other faculty members that I observed whenever teaching English mostly rely on the Sprint Textbooks to teach lessons. Moreover, teachers utilized televisions, projectors, speakers, laptops, and whiteboards to teach lessons. Most lessons that I have come across are English Grammar. But wait a minute, most teachers teach English in Thai? It was pretty much expected that English classrooms are teacher-centered meaning that any activity in the classroom is led by the teacher in charge.

Authentic Assessment

Oral-based assessments and exercises featured in the textbooks typically assess the students' proficiency in memorizing and reproducing grammatical structures and vocabulary lists. Though heavily sourced from modules, that doesn't stop teachers from showing off their creativity. In Teacher A's case she'd always try to incorporate game-like elements in her activities, both as a way to engage students, but also make an otherwise mundane task more fun. Moreover, as long as she's able to, Teacher A utilizes the English language to teach her students and translates it to Thai when necessary.