Final blog post for Thinking about Theory

I have learned so much through this course. Since I teach an Adult EAL class 7.5 hours a week I feel I have a great opportunity; I get to use what I am learning as I am learning it. In Module 7 I was introduced to learning styles; I'd heard of this before but I had never put much thought into it. I discovered my learning style according to VARK; I am a visual, aural and kinesthetic learner. Realizing this I became aware of the strategies I needed to use, first of all to learn from this course and, to be a better teacher. Also I have begun to identify the learning styles of my students. Having limited hours in a week I have not taken a formal assessment of this but I have taken note of what I know and see in the students. Thus I have prepared more diverse activities.
I wrote in my last blog post about how I have been including more task based lessons into my curriculum. Before taking this course I thought I understood task based lessons, but in module 9 I learned a whole lot more about what task based means. I still have a lot to learn. All the information I learned about task based lessons I rolled around in my mind, I told my husband about the material and then I tried a task based series of lessons in my class; based on what I learned in the module (I used all three of my learning styles according to VARK to learn this). The task I used in my class was ordering vegetable seeds from a catalog. They looked through the catalog, read about the seeds, learned new words they needed through dictionaries and asking questions of me, the EA or other students. They gathered the information they needed to complete the task without me having to give it in advance. I helped as needed, they did the task and they loved it. After the task they did pair and group work to talk about what they did in  the task and answer question. They were so into the task though that the time on structure was very short, but I can work on that next week or when the seeds come in. They were so keen on the task they actually ordered seeds for their gardens. I complained last week about the problem with boring tasks, well I feel this lesson gave some insight into that; because this was a topic that was of interest to the students they had no chance to be bored.
In the beginning of this course we learned about methods and approaches; I found this useful. Naturally I have been using my preferred approach in my teaching but now that I learned the many methods and approaches I feel I know why and how the methods I choose to use can be affective. It also made me aware of using methods that work well with different students. It makes sense to be intentionally eclectic in my approach rather than just doing whatever and having it accidentally work.
I plan to keep taking the courses offered through U of W in regards to the TEAL certificate so that I can keep learning and improving my skills as a teacher. I love this profession because I interact with such amazing people everyday.