Teachign reflections::::
Teaching reflection #1 October 12 2022
This first practicum lesson followed the students lesson that used the Traffic Jam dialogue from the textbook, and practicing discussing and sharing ideas, so I wanted this lesson to expand upon that. I was initially very nervous about going in to the classroom and how students would react to me actually taking a teaching role. My goal was to expand upon what they learned with the discussion from last time by having them think about different kinds of jobs there are and then interview each and gather information about their partners previous work experience by using yes/no and Wh questions to interview each other and then share what they learned about their partners. I tried to make the lesson incorporate all four skills, with students writing their questions and notes during the interview, reading the jobs that I had on the board, listening to each other, but most of the time was dedicated to them speaking. I also wanted to try and minimize the amount of time I was talking at them, but I feel like my explanations when we got to a new part were a bit long and wordy, and I did feel like that sometimes I lost some students engagement, which I saw with some students looking at their phones. I was also hoping for a bit more involvement from students when talking about opinions about what makes a job good or bad, mostly having the usual students who speak up voicing their opinions. I was mostly happy with how the lesson turned out, but I did feel that I need to make lessons that mayhaps have easier instructions to follow, or maybe have more of the instructions written down or somewhere for them to read, as it did seem that some students weren’t totally sure what they needed to do when they did the interview portion, some students mistaking that they just needed four Wh or Yes/No questions to ask their partners, and some students were writing about their own job experiences.
Teaching reflection #2 October 21 2022
I made this lesson to build off the lesson I did the week before, to think about and give their own opinions like they did about good and bad aspects of a job, but this time focusing on giving reasoning for their ideas. I was happy with how the warm-up activity went, I was worried that more students would have a hard time filling a minute talking about a random topic, but only two students had to do a retry, and I pleasantly surprised with the level of engagement. I think I should have given more instructions for the main activity with what they should write on their slips of paper for topic ideas, encouraging them to choose more narrowed topics, as many of the students chose larger ideas like food and movies, but I think for the level it was still good, and it definitely generated a lot of conversation in the groups, and students even narrowed themselves getting into talking about specific topics under the umbrella of their topic, such as the group that had spent the majority of the time talking about noodles having gotten the prompt for food. Many students were even still engaged with talking to each other as I brought them back to talk as a classroom, which made me quite happy. There was not much debating amongst themselves about good and bad aspects, but when we talked about the ideas as a class, a lot of the students were engaged and gave their opinions on the topics once they were on the board and encouraged to give their opinions about them, both good and bad. I also talked with students why it was important to practice the skills to give their opinions and reasoning in English, because in many cases, people who live in L1 English speaking countries, being forward with your opinions and why are quite valued. I felt this class went a little better than the first one in terms of how engaged the students were, it seemed students were taking part more in the discussions, some students even having used their phones and computers to look up things they were talking about so they could show them to their partners, like the students talking about noodles, as they described differences between noodles in Japan and China.
Teaching reflection #3 October 26 2022
This lesson did not turn out as I expected, as only two students of the eight were there for class that day, but I wanted to try the lesson out, with the intention of using the lesson again but with potential improvements based on how things went. For this lesson I skipped the warmup talking activity in favour of just talking with the students about their weekend for a few minutes, since the number of students so few it was easy for me to engage with them and prompt them myself. I then started the lesson with asking them about what types of TV programs they know, trying to get them thinking about TV shows and explained about genres. Looking back on it, what I might have done instead is play clips of different kinds of shows, and ask them what kind of genre it is after explaining what genre means, given a visual reference and hopefully it make it easier to understand what I was meaning when talking about kinds of television, and illicit more of a reaction. But what the brainstorming of ideas still went well, students provided more than a few. I definitely found that the students had difficulty keeping up with the dialogue, and based on their reactions, they did not seem to gather much from watching the video. But they were able to figure out some of the body language when I paused at certain points and looked it more closely with them. After watching it a couple of times normally, instead of going with my original plan of asking students to try and figure out and make notes of what they were saying/talking about, I simply discussed with them about what they saw and what they noticed, in terms of what was being said and the body language, and we went through the video slowly together, and explained some of the jokes and what the situation was in the clip. I had definitely underestimated the difficulty of the clip in both the language spoken and the speed.
Teaching reflection #4 October 28 2022
I tried using the same activity as from the last lesson, but however I changed it up. Instead of having students actively taking notes, I gave them groups and a piece of paper with the characters names in the order of speaking, and cut portions of the dialogue. I let them watch a couple of times, and then had them try and put the script together in the correct order. I was pleased by the engagement I saw in the students as they put together the dialogue. There some Spanish speaking students who also got a kick out of one of the jokes like I was hoping, and the student from Mexico helped em explain some of the joke to the rest of the class, and also gave his point of view on how he felt about the character from the show dressing up in the old Mexican garbs. I was quite able to generate as much conversation about cultural appropriation, but I think I could improve that by having more of a discussion at the start about cultural appropriation, and explain it first, then have the students watch for what might be cultural appropriation in the video after.
Teaching reflection #5 November 16 2022
Today’s lesson I wanted to expand on what my instructor had been doing with the students with pronunciation and practice vowel sounds with them. The goal was to get them using and listening to words that use the different sounds vowels can make as they often tend to be one of the more difficult aspects of learning English, and thought this could help them with how to distinguish them when speaking and when they hear them, or at least make them more conscious of it. The warmup I did had students making up a 10 digit phone number, but then with a partner, telling them the number using words that sound similar except for the vowel sounds, such as bit, bet, but, and so on. It sent over well, students took to the activity quickly and seemed to enjoy trying to figure out their partners number, though I think I could have spent more time on the words themselves, but I was unsure if I should spend time telling them how the words make the sounds they do, or just focus on the sounds themselves. Something I will think about when making activities like this in the future. With the main activity I had students playing a ”domino” style game, where they had to match words that have matching vowel sounds. I tried showing a video demonstrating what the original game of dominoes was, but I think I would actually cut that, as I didn’t feel it was a neat idea, but not necessary for teaching the version I used, and I could have sued the time to do more practical demonstrations using the cards the students would be using, and asking them what cards would match where to get them more in the mindset for the game, as a I found the students did have a hard time grasping exactly how the game worked when we started. I think this really made me realize I need to put more into be concise and clear when I am explaining an activity, and find more ways to show how to do the activities so students have an easier time jumping in right away.
Teaching reflection #6 November 18 2022
For this lesson I wanted to work on getting the students to think about how to describe things and the words they use to describe different things. For it, I had students do the conversation starter activity, then for the last turn, I had then think about a fruit they love, and then try to describe to their conversation partner without saying what it is in order to introduce the idea of relying on the description of something in order to convey what something is, and I was pleased with how it bridged the warm-up with the main activity. Then I introduced them to the main activity, which was taboo, and I told them what taboo meant and explained how the game worked. I do wish I had asked the students first what they thought the word taboo meant.The students were really receptive to the activity, and there was a lot of good ideas as the students tried to figure out how to get their teammates to say the correct word. Even when I went from them just trying to avoid saying the target word to having also have to avoid using 4 words that relate closely to it, they did well in trying to think of ideas. Overall I was really happy with how this lesson went. Students were engaged, and seemed to really grasp using descriptions to convey information. I should have given more time for feedback, but I did like how my timing was overall.
Teaching reflection #7 November 25th
Warmed up with taboo from last class, playing as a class with one students standing at the front with all students trying to help get that student to guess the word. Then I hopped right into telling them that they would be thinking about words or phrases in their L1 language that they don’t know a translation for or just do not have one, and then trying to communicate and explain them to group mates. I provided them an example from Japanese that I knew, trying to choose a more obscure one that would leave the Japanese student with plenty of options to think of still. I was worried initially that students were not understanding what the activity was about, as there wasn’t too much response from students as I was explaining, and then it looked as though some students were really struggling to come with ideas, but when they were put into their groups, they were very engaged and I could tell that they were all putting in the effort to explain and understand each others ideas. I have noticed that this class is very good with conversation activities, becoming very active in their talking when given the opportunity, and really seemed to enjoy sharing aspects of their own language and learning about their classmate’s.
Teaching reflection # 8 & 9 November 30th
This class was meant to be a look at Christmas traditions and a sharing of traditions and holidays of students home countries. The first hour was watching a Mr. Bean video and having students do worksheet of multiple choice questions about what happens in the video. I kept it simple because I wanted to have students need to pay attention to the video, as just watching a video can lead to students drifting off or deciding they don’t need to pay attention, and since the questions were not complicated they could take in other thing they see in the video. There were definitely some students who were sometimes doing their own things, but I did see them paying attention to the video and circling answer, and laughing at some of the comedy in the video. I do think I should have found a better version of the video, as the youtube video I chose was very often interrupted by ads, so in the future I would try and locate an offline video to use. After the video was finished, I had students call the answers out as we looked at the answers, and also asked them to speak out about their favourite parts of the video, and what Christmas activities they noted in the video, and what ones they know of that they didn’t see in the video. They didn’t have a lot to say about Christmas things they knew before coming to Canada, but they were able to communicate their favourite parts of the video, though only a couple were able to say why they thought it was funny.
In the second hour, I wanted to have students talk about their own traditions and winter holidays while students decorated their own gingerbread cookies. I had a bit of delay because originally I wanted students to share any music ideas they might want on our playlist, but only a couple students had suggestions, so next time I would definitely just choose a random Christmas playlist, or prepare my own. There was also some good sharing of how the Chinese students don’t celebrate Christmas, how in Japan they do, though not the same as in Canada, and how both countries treat New Years very similarly as an important event. The conversation was good, though I wasn’t able to provoke as much individual sharing as I would have liked, so I thought that the next I did something like this where it is a round-table talk, I should make conversation cards about the topic and have students go around the table drawing one then asking the question of another students at the table (especially when there are more students). I also might have different kinds of cookies, like short bread, for students to snack on, as it seemed some of the students were not fond of gingerbread. Overall, I was able to get the students engaged and sharing things, but I would have liked to have gotten even more active conversations going.
Teaching reflection # 10 December 2nd
This was our final lesson, and I wanted to make it fun while also meaningful, so I started with taboo as everyone enjoyed the game in previous classes. Then after getting warmed up and relaxed, I had the students share how they say good bye in their home countries, how it is said, but also how it looks, and how it changes depending who they are saying goodbye to. I gave an example of when I say good bye to the instructor, I would say something like “Thank you for everything, goodbye”, and perhaps shake his hand. Students seemed a little unsure at first about what I meant, but after a few prompts about specifically their friends and family, a few of the students spoke up and told the class how they would say goodbye to people close to them. In hindsight, I think it would have been better to have some visible examples, or maybe showing a clip of two people saying good bye, and having students guess what their relationship was based on how they said good bye. After getting them thinking about good byes, I gave them a worksheet which listed several countries and goodbyes in different languages, and had them try and choose which good bye was which country. Then as a class we went over the answers. I also realized that this would have been a better opening, bridging from this to then talking to students about how they say goodbye in their home countries and L1 language.
I then asked students to think about situations where people say good bye. I gave them an example, a mother saying goodbye to their daughter going to her first day of school, and asked them what that might look like, which one student brought up their personal experience with saying goodbye to their son going to school, which I thought was nice he was able to connect to his own life. Then I gave them a few more examples, and asked them to come up with their own scenarios of people saying goodbye, and wrote them as they came up with ideas. It took a bit longer than I would have liked to add a variety of ideas to the list, but once some students came up with ideas, the other students actually followed suit with their own, bolstered by the other students suggestions. I was a bit nervous about the next part activity where I wanted students to get in groups and come up with their own role-play based on one of the ideas on the projector, and keep it secret so students can guess which prompt they used. It seemed some students were not too keen about talking that day, but I was pleasantly surprised by how into their role-plays the students were. It made me think I should have tried doing this kind of activity earlier. I will definitely be remembering that in the future to not underestimate how into role-playing a class may be despite how quite in class they might be.