TEACHER ROLES

Managing learning and

teaching
 The role of the teacher
Influenced of humanistic and
communicative theories.
Learners’ needs and experience central to
the educational process.
Heart of language course: students’
learning experiences and their responses
to them.
Good lesson: student activity taking place.
Teacher: no longer the giver of
knowledge, but the facilitator and the
resource for the students to draw on.
 A variety of roles
1. Controller
2. Prompter
3. Assessor
4. Resource
5. Tutor
6. Organiser
7. Observer
 Controller

Teachers are in charge of the class and of

the activity.
Teacher-fronted classroom.In many
educational context, this is the most
common teacher role.
The role is performed when:
announcements need to be made;
explanations are given; there is a
question-answer session (elicitation stage)
;teaching new information
 Organiser

Organising students to do various activities

Giving them information
Demonstrating what is going to happen
Guiding them in the performance of the activities
Grouping students
Closing things down when it is time to stop
Organising content feedback: questions or
detailed discussion of what has taken place.
If instructions are not clear, students will not
understand what they are supposed to do and
may not get full advantage from an activity
Stages followed by a teacher when acting as an organiser

Engage
Instruct (demonstrate)
Initiate the activity
Stop the activity
Organise feedback
 Assessor

A teacher acts as an assessor when:

Offers feedback and correction
Grades students in various ways
Indicates whether or not students are getting
their English right
Students need to know what for and how they
are being assessed. In this way, they will have a
clear idea of what they need to concentrate on.
When facing a poor performance and constructive
criticism is not offered, students tend to feel
extremely unhappy. We should not make them
feel they are being unfairly judged. A bad grade
can be made far more acceptable if it is given
with sensitivity and support.
 Participant

Teachers may want to join in an

activity not as teachers, but as
participants in their own right. For
the teacher, participating in an
activity is more enjoyable than acting
as a resource.Students will enjoy
having the teacher with them.
Drawbacks: Teachers can easily
dominate the proceedings.
 Resource

Teachers will want to be helpful and available.

No teacher knows everything about the
language.
Teachers can be one of the most important
resources students have when they:
Ask how to say or write something
Want to know what a word or phrase means
Want to know information in the middle of an
activity about that activity or where to look for
something.
 Tutor

Teachers working with individuals or

small groups.
The term implies a closer relationship
than that of the controller or
organiser.
Teachers will allow more personal
contact and real chance for students
to feel supported and helped.
 Observer

Observe what students do, especially

in oral activities: opportunity to give
useful individual and group feedback.
Also, it is an opportunity to notice
the effectiveness of the materials
and activities proposed by the
teacher.
 Prompter

Sometimes the teacher needs to

encourage students to participate in
different activities, when they are
confused about what to do next
This is the role of the prompter
especially in speaking,
communicative activities
It needs to be used only when
necessary, with discretion
 WHICH ROLE?
Teachers need to be able to switch
between the various roles, judging
when it is appropriate to use one or
the other.
Teachers need to be aware of how
they carry out the selective role and
how they perform it.
 Giving instructions
When we give instructions we should keep
them as simple as possible and try to put
them in a logical order
We should give handouts or ask students
to open their books after giving our
instructions
When we give instructions is a good ideea
to check that the students have
understood them
The best kind of instruction is
demonstration
 Grouping students
1. Whole-class teaching (lockstep) is
suitable for lecturing, explaining or
introducing new things, controlling what
is going on.
2. Solowork is about students working on
their own
3. Pairwork increases the amount of talking
time
4. Groupwork also increases the amount of
student talking time
Harmer 2001:114
Harmer 2001:114
 Solowork
This can have many advantages: it
allows students to work at their own
speed, allows them thinking time,
and allows them to be individuals
Putting students into pairs or groups (Teacher-Assigned Groups,
Students Choose Groups, Randomized Group Work)
Teacher-Assigned Groups
1. Turn your row and talk to the person next to you. Rows of
students turn their desks to face one another. This is a very quick way to
have students share ideas, listen or team up with a partner.
2. Randomly mixed up pre-assigned groups. You might not need
specific students together, but you do want speed. Pre-assign groups of
students so that they just have to get together without long transition
time.
3. Grouped according to same skill level. Perfect for differentiation.
You can have ability-specific tasks assigned to each group.
4. Grouped to mix skill levels. Students learn well when different skills
and levels are mixed. With this you can make sure your strongest students
are intermingled with others.
Grouped according to interest. If you’re aware of different interests of
your students via discussion or a survey, you might want to put them
together and have them connect their common interest to the task.
Day-of-the-week group. Assign each student to a specific partner or
group for each day of the week. So if it’s a Tuesday, have them get
together with their Tuesday group, which is different from the other days.
Students can also create each day’s defined group.
Students Choose Groups
Students given options. Try describing what
different group tasks are available, then letting
students choose which task they’d like to join.
Students choose an option, and mix with
others. You could also try letting students
choose which task they’d like to do, but then
creating a group consisting of students with each
of the other tasks. In a reading class, you might
have one student be a “vocabulary finder,” one be
a “summarizer,” etc.
Students grouped based on responses. Give
a survey or quiz, and group students according to
what they think or how they score.
Randomized Group Work
Use sticks or names from a hat. Write students’ names on popsicle
sticks, shake them up in a cup, and pop out the number of names you
want in a group. Much like casting lots. Or you can literally pull names
from a hat.
Use colored index cards. Let students choose colored index cards from
a stack, and sort them based on the colors they picked up. You can even
write items on the cards that further indicate tasks or topics.
Use synonym vocab word cards. Have sets of synonyms written on
different index cards and randomly pass them out. Then have students
find the other person in the room who has the word that means the same
as their card. Also try antonyms!
Famous pairings. A variation on the synonym cards, pass out cards that
have various pairs of duos that pertain to your course. Have a “Huck Finn”
and a “Mark Twain” cards, or “Einstein” and “E=MC2” cards.
Pick colored pencils/markers. When creating a poster or colorful
project, have students grab one colored utensil and ask them to mix with
others with different colors.