Ten Tips on Building Positive Student-Teacher Relationships
January 11, 2010 by admin
Filed under Teaching Tips
Curriculum, materials, methods, and relationships determine the conditions of learning. Of these four, relationships are the most important and especially crucial for the success and progress of the at-risk reader. Observing these activities can provide an ELL teacher with a ‘window’ into how the students perceive and read letters and sounds. Nieto (1999) recommends that teachers build positive relationships with students and their parents as a way for students to succeed in school.
Teachers can begin creating a step by step at-risk reading program beginning with a focus on letter-sound correspondence and gradually progressing to include various aspects of oral exposure and early literacy. Nieto (1999) and Ladson-Billings (1994) view a nurturing environment in the classroom to be as critical to student achievement as an appropriate literacy curriculum that meets the needs of individual students.
• Provide a supportive environment and establish a trusting bond.
• Cater levels of activity to students’ level. Try and make sure that the learning tasks pose a reasonable challenge to the students: neither too difficult nor too easy.
• Help students recognize links between effort outcome – learning is a long term plan of effort and investment.
• Break down learning steps into understandable pieces.
• Minimize student’s performance anxiety during learning activities.
• Mark the student’s correct and acceptable work, not his or her mistakes. Always give a comment whenever possible.
• Recognize and give credit for the student’s oral participation in class.
• Encourage students to pursue tasks based on interests and talents.
• Always give shorter tests.
• Be realistic of the reading tasks and additional assignments and their level.
Tutorials is another effective way to build positive interpersonal relations.
Procedures during one-on-one tutorials:
1. Share observations including positive points such as accentuating what the student can do in the target language.
2. Discuss tactics for managing behaviors such as establishing a contract.
Follow-up: Provide positive reinforcement about specific students to school administrators, educators, parents, colleagues and other teachers.
The English language learner category is perhaps the most undefined and silent of all language learner types. Educators have identified special needs and slow learners, learning disabled learners, ADHD and ADD learners. Any student who has trouble coping in the heterogeneous classroom can be considered an at-risk learner and would particularly benefit from extra interpersonal attention. Teachers can use these procedures to nurture the interpersonal element in both whole and small instruction especially in teaching/learning situations of language learning difficulty. Various strategies and activities work for different types of students; it is important to identify and select the right activities and procedures early on as success breeds success.
