New Posting Schedule for sendaiben.org
New Year, New Plans
Along with the new Reviews Page, I have decided to be more deliberate about reviewing materials and organizing the reviews into a useful resource.
From next week the blog will alternate between news and opinion pieces on Tuesdays and reviews on Fridays. Once I run out of things to review we’ll change things up again, but I don’t see that happening any time soon 😉
I hope you find the changes useful!
Micro or Macro Teaching?
Are you seeing the big picture?
Just as in economics, there seem to be two main approaches to education.
Micro teaching involves discrete items and lesson plans. Macro teaching, on the other hand, deals with skills, motivation, and long-term goals.
Clearly both are necessary, but it is easy for teachers to focus exclusively on micro education: after all, that is what they have control over and what students and administrators are likely to look at.
For the last couple of years, first with extensive reading and then with discussion courtesy of my collaborator Daniel E, I have been focusing on macro approaches. For certain contexts, particularly ones where students have already spent a lot of time focusing on discrete language, a focus on general language skills, independent study, input , and content works really well.
This year I will be making an effort to try something similar with students at Cambridge English.
The rumoured teacher handbook for teaching discussion classes is also becoming more real day by day. I’ll keep you posted.
Reviews page
New year, new features
Happy New Year!
The eagle-eyed among my visitors may have noticed the shiny new ‘pages’ menu in the top right-hand corner of the site. You’ll find all the reviews I have done gathered there, and I aim to add to them more regularly in 2014. I hope you find it useful.
Please feel free to add your comments or questions.
2013 Annual Review
Last year I started doing an annual review and yearly plan at the end of the year.
2013 was a pretty good year for me. Accomplished a lot, failed to accomplish even more, have a big list of things to get on with next year.
I’m going to try and keep up a bunch of habits, as well as aim at bigger goals. Here are my habits for 2014:
- do quarterly, fortnightly, and daily planning
I’ve been experimenting with this for the last couple of months, and it’s pretty powerful stuff. Especially like the medium-term planning. - meditate every day
I want to start meditating. Everyone says it is incredibly beneficial, so I am going to try to do 5 minutes every morning. - strength training
I am back on the Stronglifts 5×5 program, but this time I’m only going to the gym twice a week instead of three times. It’s working much better for me: better recovery and less time pressure. - improve Japanese language skills
I am going to continue doing anki every day and try to read at least one book a month in Japanese. This has always evaded me so far so I hope 2014 will be the year when I can actually make this into a habit. - intermittent fasting
I did this for most of 2013, and it suits me very well so I plan to continue. Basically you don’t eat until the afternoon, so you effectively fast for 16 hours a day and only eat during an 8-hour window. More info here.
The focus on habits is due to realizing that habits are the base of all our behaviour: good habits, good lifestyle. The list above should be achievable, as I am already good at a couple of them. Trying to create too many new habits means you will probably fail.
The other thing I really need to work on is not wasting time online, but seeing how it is basically my kryptonite, I am not too hopeful 🙂
How about you? Any resolutions or goals for next year?