A Case Analysis Of Heterogeneous Class Boy Missing, Police Puzzled

The study is concerned with a case analysis of heterogeneous class of senior English, in which three teachers’ classes of the reading part, Boy missing, police puzzled, Unit one Tales of the unexplained, Module 2 in Senior 1 were described and analyzed specifically. Facing the same reading text, the three teachers put different teaching designs into practice. The theoretical bases of heterogeneous class are scaffolding theory, Krashen’s input hypothesis, Swain’s output hypothesis and schema theory. The significance of this case study lies in three aspects:helping teachers see the different possibilities in teaching designs and encourage them to innovate in teaching; helping teachers learn from each other and optimize their teaching; promoting teachers’ professional development and permeating the concept of post-method.The procedures of heterogeneous class include selecting a subject, making teaching designs, observing classes, analyzing and discussing the classroom teaching, proposing advice and summarizing how to complete a better class. This study describes the process of three periods of heterogeneous classes at length and analyzes the cases one by one. In the first case, the teacher adopted the PWP reading teaching model. In the pre-reading part, making full use of the title Boy missing, police puzzled, the teacher required students to summarize the features of the news titles based on their real reading experience and guided students to predict the content of the news article; in the while-reading part, the teacher assisted students in clarifying the structure of the news article by relevant exercise and activities; in the post-reading part, the teacher inspired students to write an ending to the news story with their imagination. In the second case, the teacher adopted the scaffolding instruction and designed the same teaching materials into a reading-to-writing class creatively. The teacher guided students to transform from input to output in the process of accumulating words and phrases, clarifying the structure of the text, increasing reading input, and imitating or creating a new story by a series of scaffolds. In the third case, the teacher adopted a mixed teaching approach. Firstly, the teacher required students to complete the learning sheet individually before the class and developed a competition among groups in class to reflect their learning efficiency. Secondly, the teacher took advantage of competitions to motivate students’interest and initiative. The teacher helped students master the reading strategies, the main ideas and structure of the text by making full use of mind maps and enlightening activities. Finally, the teacher designed a situation for students to imagine. Students were encouraged to express their opinions about whether the aliens exist and gave their reason freely and boldly. Then students were organized in groups to discuss if the aliens exist, what would happen on earth.Based on the concrete analysis of the three cases above, the study yields major findings as follows:The three teachers all have high responsibility and independent consciousness. In general, all the three teachers had the clear teaching thought and completed the teaching aims they made. Specifically, the advantages of the first teacher lie in the fact that the teacher knew her students well and made the suitable learning aims for them. The students she taught were on average level so she made her teaching aims as helping students get the main ideas and the structure of the text and master the strategies of reading news. She encouraged students to write an ending to the news story with their creativity, which provides space for students’creativity under the premise of respecting students’subjectivity in learning. The second teacher craftily changed the single reading class into the reading-to-writing class and helped students transform from input to output by providing a series of scaffolds. The third teacher combined the individual learning with group learning and linked the competitions with cooperation among students. In these two combinations the teacher tried to fully motivate students’initiative and interest. In terms of disadvantages, the exercise and activities in the first class were monotonous and the atmosphere seemed a little dull. In the second class, after giving the standard of evaluating one’s writing, the teacher didn’t give the process of how to evaluate a composition as an example to help students get the point. In the third class, although the atmosphere was very active, problems also existed that the roles the group members played were not that clear. That meant students’passion and initiative in learning were not fully motivated.There are three limitations in this study. The first one is that only three teachers participated in this research so the number of the classes observed are relatively small. The second one is that the descriptions of the classroom teaching may not be 100% accurate and objective. The last is that all the teachers and students participated in this research had psychological readiness for the classes. So it may not reflect the real situations of everyday teaching.