How to teach

With the White Cliffs of Dover there I would expect that the English can afford chalk, eh wot?

Ding ding ding ding!!! That is definitely one of the mods I would make. Write some of this down on the board.

I hope the teacher limiting himself to the front of the room is a matter of production budget rather than a recommended practice. Or do we just hope those kids all landed on page 38?

A handout could be useful if this gets too complex. Also, 10 to 20 percent of the students are not present and will have to do this later. Again, the handout.

I could follow the first sets, but not the second sets, 'cos I got bored. Maybe I have atten

I notice he re-ordered the second set to more closely align with the order of the actual process. I do this when ordering a sandwich; first they have to grab the bread, then the contents of the bread. So I say; "I'd like a six-inch Italian-herb & cheese, with Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki. Toasted, please."

I could see the mixed-up, high-speed version being part of some kind of cognitive training, though. More advanced classes where students have to figure out the order of operations. Another option would be to always do it that way, and then be more tolerant of errors. Young kids live in terror of being "wrong"; it's one if the biggest impediments to learning.

Regarding the "math" at the beginning: Obviously the guy (and/or the writer) has no concept of the "order of precedence" when it comes to mathematical operators.

My seventh grade math teacher gave short daily quizzes, all high-speed arithmetic calculation, in the manner of the first that this guy gave, except faster. The quizzes accounted for half the grade. I aced the written tests and failed all the quizzes. Every six weeks I got a C.

Years later, I learned that those who didn't fail the quizzes had cheated: they wrote down the dictation, and then solved the problem. The instructions were to do it all in your head. The winners had heard of the crutch from older siblings. Only cheaters could win.

... the link at the bottom of the vid is for teaching English as a second language (TESL). (I personally prefer TEFL -- foreign language -- since there are many people who are learning English as their third or more language, but that's a side point.)

I think the idea here was that it is really easy for English-speaking teachers to race through commands in English, since it is second-nature to them to understand things (for example, I doubt that many people had problems with his English class instructions the first time around). However, this vid is likely supposed to introduce people to the problems of speeding through instructions in a foreign language (with which most have basic familiarity) by giving them a simple maths problem. (And no, Dan J, he doesn't really use OoP, but that's not the point of the lesson; the point is to place native English speakers in a context in which they understand the words spoken to them, but not necessarily have enough time to comprehend their meaning in context.)

Now, a larger conversation about the role of maths as a "foreign language" to people studying how to teach English as a foreign language might be an interesting one to make, but I think that the teaching method needs to be assessed based on the apparent context of the video, which is teaching English to students to whom it is a foreign language (and apparently of a more elementary level).

Btw, using the chalk board would have been a good choice, too, since written instructions serve to reinforce verbal ones. (However, I wonder if the guy is using a green screen.)

Of course, one could argue the other side of the coin, that giving verbal instructions is a good way of forcing English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) student to learn to listen to instructions in English. This technique is used in many foreign language classes and seem (to me at least) to help with having the students more quickly pick up listening skills.

So... personally I would have used more of the chalk board, but some pedagogical approaches prefer teaching EFL (and other FLs) verbally to enhance aural skills.