Emily Quade is a current MIIS MATESOL student with background experience teaching elementary school students. As a part of this year’s Northern Regional CATESOL 2010 Conference, she presented about a topic she knows well — centered-based instruction.
Emily’s presentation, “Practical Tips, Tricks, & Good Stuff for Centered-Based Instruction“, focused on centered-based instruction, a form of instruction where students rotate from stations within a classroom and do different activities. One benefit of this form of instruction is that the teacher can work at one station and focus with just a few students at a time, while the other students are doing self-guided activities. A challenge, however, is selecting activities that will keep students engaged and learning while on their own at each station.
As an experience elementary-school teacher, Emily wanted to provide other teachers with an introduction to activities that she knows work, as well as keys to management and organization of this approach because she believes centered-based instruction is “a really fun and engaging way [for students] to practice reading [and] writing.”
Emily loves that when students are doing centered-based instruction, they get a chance to work on skills that are really productive, and then when they get to the station with the teacher, they get that “golden time” that is difficult to get when the teacher is focused on an entire class.
One of the best parts about centered-based instruction is that it’s a form of instruction that can be adapted to any age or level, and can focus on the specific skills you want learners to practice.
The hours of hole-punching, photocopying, and prepping activities for the presentation seems to have been well worth it for Emily, because the Bay Area Chapter of CATESOL invited Emily to come to one of their events and present again on the same topic, with a focus on K-12 learners.
Emily found presenting to be a positive experience because “in the field of education, being able to share is really important.” We look forward to her future presentations!
If you’re interested in finding activities and handouts from Emily’s presentation on centered-based learning, you can look at Emily Quade’s page on the CATESOL North 2010 blog.