[MUSIC] Once again let's welcome you back to Teach English Now. In our last module we talked about presenting information and modeling that information, both of which usually occur in the main part of the lesson. This now brings us to activities we often do towards the end of our lesson plans, guided practice and independent practice. In the next few videos, we'll talk about guided practice, and after that, we'll discuss independent practice. In this video, we will start our discussion and talk about how to effectively create guided practice activities. Let's begin. A few years ago, a friend of mine went to helicopter flight school, a rigorously physical and mental course that would certify him to be a helicopter pilot. His course started out by learning simple vocabulary related to helicopters. Then, he had to memorize every intricate part of the machine. After a few months of listening to lectures on how to fly and studying mechanics, maps of various terrains and so on, his class was taken to a flight simulator. Which is a giant indoor machine resembling video games from the 1980s, pilots-to-be sit inside the machine with a giant screen surrounding them to simulate flying an actual helicopter. The simulator's controls were organized exactly as the dashboard of an actual helicopter. After weeks and weeks and hours upon hours of practicing in the flight simulator, the flight instructor announced that it was finally time for my friend and his classmates to try flying the helicopters themselves. So, do you think that the flight instructor just tossed the helicopter keys to these students, wish them luck and wave to them from the run way as my friend and his classmates fired up the helicopters and attempted to take off on their own for the first time. Absolutely not, and for good reason. If the flight instructors would have actually done this, what do you think would have happened? That's right, total disaster. Those poor first time flyers would literally have crashed and burned, if they ever managed to get the helicopters off the ground. So to prevent such catastrophic outcomes, each student was assigned to one flight instructor. These pairs were given their own helicopter. The first time flying, the flight instructor did most of the work and only let my friend do a tiny portion of the flying. Over the next few weeks of daily flights, my friend became more comfortable. Confident and skilled at flying, his instructor gradually let him fly more and more of the time and eventually his instructor became a meer observer, as my friend handled all aspects of flying, from take off to landing. He later passed his pilot's exam with flying colors. Graduated from fly school and now is a very successful helicopter pilot. So, now you're thinking what in the world does this story about some guy learning to fly a helicopter have to do with language learning, lesson plans or guided practice? Believe it or not language education is very similar to flight instruction. In that after techniques are modeled, whether for speaking English or flying a helicopter, teachers need to guide students through each technique a time or two or ten so that students can practice the technique while still having the instructor or other classmates present as a safety net, in case mistakes are made. In language learning, we call this guided practice. This step in lesson planning is important to remember, because we want our students to succeed. If we model a technique and then immediately give a test, essay or a presentation. Without a guided practice activity, students metaphorically could crash and burn. Just as a pilot would, if he attempted to fly a helicopter alone, for his very first flight. In language instruction, guided practice comes from a theoretical principle that suggest generally, students can't simply do precisely what a teacher says immediately after the teacher says it. Students need time to consider, process and practice skills that you have asked them to master. Guided practice often takes a portion of a complete independent activity and allows students to work on a particular portion of that larger activity. For example, instead of working on an entire essay, students in a guided practice might be instructed to work on a single body paragraph or perhaps the introduction. Similarly, a teacher might encourage students working on irregular verbs to focus their attention on only a few irregular verbs, all with a similar pattern. And later on, they could go to another set of verbs with a different pattern. Guided practice often takes shape as either teacher led activities or group directed activities. The group directed activities are often called less guided practice, because the teacher in this case is more of an observer and advisor than an active participant. In either case though, the activities are structured to break down more difficult tasks. In teacher led activities, it is wise to ask a variety of students to contribute. This can be done through question and answer or even by beginning a sentence and prompting students to finish the sentence. Thus, in teacher led events you are often the language production starter and learners are the language production finishers. While trailing off may sound like a technique of an absent minded professor, it is in fact a technique to engage students and allow them to both predict and create language. In group directed activities, teacher should select groups carefully by ensuring high and low performers in each group. If your task has specific roles that are assigned to each member of a group, ensure that low performers are given the more difficult role. Studies have shown that when low performers are given more difficult tasks, interactivity increases and allows for better overall performance within a group. Guided activities should ideally challenge students to think critically about the instruction and give them the requisite time to understand the lesson. A critical goal for guided practice is to get learners to a point where they can perform a task independently or at the very least, feel comfortable attempting to. So, whether you're learning a new language or learning how to fly a helicopter. Guided practice prevents students from crashing and burning and instead sets them up for success so that they can literally or figuratively zoom off into the sunset without a hitch. In our next video we'll get to see how three different teachers handled guided practice activities in their classrooms. Thanks for watching. [MUSIC]
