CREDE standards are the standards usually applied by teachers in order to make their pedagogy more effective. These standards are the rules that were established after a careful research of teaching practices and methods. The rules determined by the researchers are directed at the improvement of educative literature and techniques of teaching.
The standards are designed to help maintain the agreement between the literature and teaching materials and the cultural diversity in the classroom (The CREDE Five Standards for Effective Pedagogy n. d.). The need for standards appeared with the development of globalization in the world and with the occurrence of high level of cultural diversity in the schools of the United States of America.
This diversity required the teachers to demonstrate individual approach in order to improve the productivity and effectiveness of their teaching techniques. The researchers focused on the determination of clear norms that would work and bring positive outcome to any classroom and help any teacher. Another technique directed at helping a teacher and a class was created by Dr. Garcia.
The strategies of Dr. Garcia are called “five R’s and one T”. These strategies recommend the teacher to be Respectful towards the students, another important aspect is the Responsiveness in the classroom, and the teacher must engage the students in conversations and maintain a dialogue between them. The students and the teacher are Responsible for their own active participation in the process of learning.
Resourcefulness is the teacher’s capacity to stimulate the students’ desire to learn. Reasonable teacher will control the amount of work and the level of challenges they employ. Finally, the T is for theory. This means that the theory the lessons are based on must be correct and reliable (Redding 2010).
When I teach I try to apply the five CREDE standards and follow Dr. Garcia’s strategies for better pedagogy. Evaluating my own teaching, I can say that I employ most of the standards and techniques. I try to make lessons collaborative, engage the students into dialogues and discussions that include the use of the thematic vocabulary, share own experiences related to the topic of the lesson, engage the students into group work.
I also use tasks of various complexities to challenge the students, I provide my students with proper and clear feedback about their performance, I guide and direct the interaction between students, stimulate learning through the conversation.
For example, during the class that included reading about environmental protection, I encouraged my students to have dialogues with each other, talking about their own experiences with protection and pollution of the environment, and using the new vocabulary.
I believe that during my work with the students in the classroom I effectively implement joint productive activity, by means of engaging in a conversation and stimulating a discussion with students in order to make them come to conclusions and be productive under my guidance. I also provide language development for the students, because the communication that is done in the class always includes specific vocabulary.
I assist with written and oral tasks; I stimulate purposeful conversation, statements and questioning. I connect the student language with literacy, mixing the students’ familiar experiences and the topics of lessons together. Using new words in speech helps the students memorize them and develop own literacy.
I also implement contextualization when I suggest the students making connections between the materials we study in class and their personal experiences. I challenge the students by offering them tasks of higher level of difficulty. I do this in order to increase my students’ thinking and study skills as well as interactions in the classroom (Reed & Railback 2003).
To my mind, the way of teaching could be more culturally responsive. I think I could bring more contextualization to the learning process of I engaged the family members of my students into the participation in classroom activities. This practice could add more contrast and provide more learning opportunities. Besides, it would increase the connections between the students’ life and the studies.
Community based learning activities could bring the students’ life and the school closer. I also would be interested to try the practice of change of conversational styles, introduce my class to co-narration, call-and-response and choral practices. This strategy is also good for language development and forming of language objectives, which is a very important component of teaching ELLs (Wallace 2004).
This specific adjustment would allow me develop the strategies formulated by Dr. Garcia such as respectfulness towards each other’s cultural backgrounds, better base for being responsive and communicate, creating more resources for learning.
Some of the topics such as family, work or holidays could be easily modified in order to allow me to introduce the students’ families to the class, create communication with the use of thematic vocabularies, contextualize the topic and the lives of the students, create responsiveness and instructional conversation.
The parents could also help m stimulate and challenge the students, organize group activities and stimulate the students create more resources for discussion, learn though dialogue and be respectful and appreciative of each other’s and own backgrounds.
Reference List
Redding, A. (2010). Blogspot. Web.
Reed, B., & Railback, J. (2003). Strategies and Resources for Mainstream Teachers of English Language Learners. Portland, OR: Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory.
The CREDE Five Standards for Effective Pedagogy. (n. d). CREDE. Web.
Wallace, S. (2004). Effective Instructional Strategies for English Language Learners in Mainstream Classrooms. Web.