Comments on Introduction and chapter 1 of Higgins book

There are many things that called my attention from these two chapters. The first thing was one of the quotes that expressed the feeling of a teacher remembering when he was a student: "I felt then that my brain was a way station for material going in one ear and (after the test) out the other. I could memorize very easily and so became valedictorian, but I was embarrassed even then that I understood much less than some other students who cared less about grades. This quote called my attention because I would never want my students to say this. Luckily I do not only use tests to evaluate my students performance and many of the things we do have a greater impact on them. But whenever I have to work with grammar contents the impression is that you cover the same things year after year and students never seem to get it.

Something else that I found revealing from the Introduction is that the autor talked about the need to focus and work on students' misconceptions. He says: "We need to design lessons and assessments that anticípate, evoke, and overcome the most likely students' misconceptions" What I usually do is that after an evaluation or exercise done in class I collect students' common mistakes and create activities so that students recognize and correct their own mistakes or I do a dictation with commonly mispelled words. But that is not enough according to what Higgins proposes. He talks about the need to forsee students difficulties and that implies a lot of reflection and analysis before planning the units and creating evaluations.

I also liked the idea of teachers as designers, I had never thought of that before, although one of my favorite tasks as a teacher is to create material and rethink units. But Higgins again challenges us because he highlights the need to think on the desired outcome before planning activities and that again means reflection and time to plan everything which can be really difficult throughout the year. Some advantages that I have in the school where I work is that one of our goals is the FCE exam students take at the end of 11th grade because that is a guidance of what we want our students to achieve and it is very precise in terms of the abilities and skills students need to develop. Another advantage is that although we don't follow the national curriculum we have a "marco de evaluación" that sets the goals for every level per semester and that is another guidance we have when planning. Besides, the school gives us the time every year during December to plan for the following year, so I have the time to reflect on what was done and plan for the next year. Then during the year I also have time to make adjustments to the planning. Finally, I work with three other teachers and that lets us collaborate and reflect in a better way than when working on your own.