Welcome back. Our last couple of videos highlighted the concept of guided practice and less guided practice. Guided practice is when the teacher orchestrates an activity and guides the students through it. Less guided activities happen when pairs or groups of students work together to put the information learned in a lesson into practice. Both of these help students put modelled information into practice while still having the security of the teacher or classmates present to help. By doing this students become more comfortable with the material and lessons and have time to process and understand the information in a controlled setting. By the time students finished a well-organized guided or a less guided practice, they should be ready for the ultimate challenge. Otherwise known as independent practice. In this video, we'll explain the importance of, as well as discuss the different types of independent practice. Independent practices are quite simple in concept. The idea is that students have been given instruction, have gone through a number of activities, and are now ready to show their understanding. An independent practice may or may not be assessed by a teacher for a final score. Often an independent activity can serve as a precursor to a test, final presentation or project. One of the difficulties for teachers in creating independent activities is that often they take a rather ordinary shape, for example an essay, a test or a speech. While each of these devices can be important techniques to allow students to practice their language production. Independent activities can extend beyond these typical structures. In project based curriculum, researchers ask teachers to think outside the traditional box and think of unusual and fascinating ways to engage learners in language production. Let me give you an outside-of-the-box example. One example of using independent practice activity is having the students perform an extemporaneous or impromptu speech, relating the information that you've discussed, modeled and practiced. It doesn't necessarily have to be graded, but this activity challenges students to both think on their feet as well as use the information they've already learned. For my classes I often either write my expectations on the board or distribute a prompt for the students to follow, then give the students, for example, two minutes to plan what they want to say, and take notes on a piece of paper. Then I'll either ask students to come up and give their presentations in front of the class, or have them share their presentations in small groups. I typically require that students speak for about three minutes. Sometimes, I have the students provide feedback to their classmates by providing a checklist of items, such as speaker uses good pronunciation or speaker's grammar is mostly correct to the students. One thing to keep in mind while facilitating independent practices is that the teacher should be, well, should not be idle. No sitting at your desk, reading a book, or playing on your phone. While students are working in class, you should be walking around circulating throughout the class. Checking on students to ensure that they understand the directions and answer any questions students might have. This also ensures that students stay focused, and don't get distracted. In addition to in-class independent practice, independent practice can be done outside of the classroom, often as homework. Students can be assigned a writing activity, given a worksheet, or even asked to produce a video or recording if such technology is available. Whether students do independent practice in or out of the classroom, teachers should analyze the quality of students' work. Successful completion of independent practice signifies that students have comprehended the lesson and internalized the information. If students have issues with the independent practice, this is a sign that more instruction maybe necessary or perhaps some of the students just weren't paying attention and to focus more. That's it for now. In our next video, we'll take a look as three teachers show us examples of independent practice activities. Thanks for watching. [MUSIC]
