Teaching for Underprepared Students

I found teaching method such as small teaching is valuable for improving teaching effectiveness. There are four segments for small teaching. In the early moment before class, I use it because it can boost students’ energy if they are underprepared.  After presenting some documents so that everyone who comes into classroom can see them before the class begins. The advantage is threefold: they can understand what I want them to do even though the class has not begun yet; students can come up with questions for the documents or for homework, and it will help build a rapport at the same time immediately after the class resumes. Thus, students will get engaged in formal class setting period in no time. The introduction segment is not suggested to choose to initiate straightly into content according to my teaching experience but taking variate ways to start. I prefer choosing a question that is related to the lesson goals to start. However, from my past experience, I got problems not in the introduction segment, but in the body segment where I attempted to introduce information as much as I expected before class and felt a headache when I couldn’t reach my teaching goals for the section. In another word, I could spend lots of time in learning how to improve my teaching effectiveness in the body period of a lesson.  I tried to use inclusive teaching approach, but I went around to help every student if he/she asked me questions, answering each question including the question I couldn’t answer immediately, and explained to them each time when I was not able to give an answer in the time they asked. By my experience, if students had questions not to get solved immediately, they would be hard to follow the content in the remaining class time they would expect to learn. I got stuck on this problem. However, realizing the importance of organizing teaching for achieving effectiveness, I understand all I expect to my students and all students expect to me are supposed to be organized and regulated. As input, what I should deliver to students must respond to learning context. My students come from college environment; it demonstrates our teaching is to connect knowledge to their experience of world rather than our experience of world. Therefore, bridging the two worlds in between is we take some time to look at their world first. It is not only about where they are standing, but also their cognitive standing, to help them make connection between their world and the world they need to experience.