#1 September 26 ESAL 0170/0270
The first thing I noticed about the classroom was that the desks were easily moveable, and at the beginning of class they were placed a bit chaotically around the room, but once we started class and the teacher would put students in groups, the desks were easy to maneuver and great for group discussions. When the lesson actually started, he wrote the objectives on the board for the students to see and understand what the goals for their learning would be. After looking at these, he put them into groups to go over the reading they had been given last class, and had a mix of more advanced student in groups with lower level students, so they could help their fellow students with understanding the text through their discussions. This was his way of checking what the students gathered from their readings, having them discuss in groups then report their ideas to the class. This half of the lesson covered the four skills, having students writing their answers and notes about the assignment, and reading the assignment as groups and trying to find answers, and speaking and listening was covered with the group work, but they also got good listening practice with a video he brought out that taught the student smore idioms related to dogs, which their readings title was based off “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you”, which helped break up the class and give students a break from speaking while they focused on listening and understanding. I thought the group work using the previous homework and having a video to expand on idioms related to the one the story was based on was a good strategy, one that I would use myself.
#2 September 26 ESAL 0170/0270
This was the second half of the lesson with students coming back from their break. The teacher had students come back into focus and go into their textbook and review the “preview” that they looked at last time to reestablish what they had learned last class, a good way to make sure what the students remembered and to help remind them of aspects before moving on to do more. He then had students look at a new passage, but told them not to read the whole passage yet, that they should only read the title and first sentence, then make questions and try and guess the meaning of what they read to try and guess at what the passage will be about. They then worked with a partner to try and answer the previewing questions, and reminded them about WH questions. After doing this, he had students move around to make new groups. During this second half of the class seemed more subdued, and students were not participating as much. I saw this most in the spots where they were supposed to be writing their questions and guesses, and there several students that didn’t write many notes, some just having one thing written. The next part of the activity was to have the students skim through passages and pick out bits of information without taking time to read through the passage in depth. However with the lack on engagement, there was a student who brought up the question about why it was important to practice this, as they didn’t understand what was important about it. The teacher addressed the question, telling them what the purpose of being able to skim through a text is, and related his own story about living in another country and his struggles with learning and wanting to be perfect at the language.
#3 September 28 ESAL 470
This class I cam in after the break because they had a test in the first half. The class was set up in groups of 4 tables, though there weren’t too many students, resulting in just two pairs and a group of 3. She had them start off with a review of the text they had their test on, doing a reread in pairs, asking me to pair with the one student without a partner. After the reading, they though about the details, checking the information in it and what the thesis was. This a good way to get students minds back on what they learned and prepped for the next part they were doing today, and was also good reading and discussion opportunities. There was not a lot of listening and minimal speaking practice, but the following report worksheet was good for getting the students reading and understanding what they read by writing and describing what the points in the text were and how they were being presented to the reader. It was also nice work for getting the students thinking through the information they gather and justifying those choices about what kind of techniques the writer uses. Students seemed to be varying levels of engaged with some students working through the worksheet at a god pace, while others would discuss and help their neighbours with meanings of questions and what the answer might be.
#4 ESAL 0420 September 29th 2022
The class began with the teacher handing out the students quizzes from last class so that they could see how they did and what needs improving. He encouraged them to take notes about their mistakes to help avoid them in the future. The quiz covered 4 tenses, simple, present progressive, present perfect, and present perfect progressive. There were students who were very vocal about the difficulty of the quiz, and so the teacher went over the quiz in detail to try and help the students understanding. He did this by having students go over the dialogue without filling in any blanks, asking what the correct tense is, then the word, so that students understand why that word is in there, so students are just guessing or memorizing placements without understanding why. During this he also wrote a timeline on the board to describe where each tense falls on it, to give students visual reference for the tenses. Some students were not actively following along, just zoning out or on their phones, though some were also voicing their feelings about parts of the test and which parts were harder. I was thinking that given the students speaking out and the general agreement among their classmates this could be good for a discussion amongst the class about what aspects of the class they are having most difficulty with, and things that they would like to see happen that could help with their learning/engagement. Also could be a good indication that a review activity about the tenses would be a good future lesson. The teacher did encourage the students to ask him questions and not ignore the fact they don’t understand something, which is important advice that many students often have trouble with. It seemed like overall the atmosphere was very subdued with students distracting themselves with their phones or each other, but it’s likely this might have been influenced by the class being mostly review making it less engaging than a regular class.
#5 ESAL 150/250 October 5th 2022
The lesson began with the instructor telling students they would be reviewing and continuing what they has worked on last class with conversations. The class looked at the textbook dialogue which was about a man trying to interrupt two woman who were gossiping, which was used to show and get students thinking about ways to interrupt a conversation. When I first saw the dialogue, I was surprised by how old fashioned it, portraying a pair of woman as gossipers and a man trying to get their attention, I would personally probably not use such a dialogue. The instructor played the dialogue for the students to listen to, which I had thought that it might have been better to have students read out the dialogue, perhaps as students taking turns reading a line, then going to the next student, until the dialogue was exhausted, but I understand wanting to give the students a clear and natural sounding example. This moved onto the idea of when you have someone’s attention, how to start a conversation. The instructor listed some ideas for students to be able to use, which I think would have been good for the students to maybe try their hand at what they might think are good ways to start a conversation. After looking at these with the students, he gave each of them a slip of paper with prompts for a conversation starter topic, information to convey after the initial greeting, and then a prompt as to how to exit the conversation. I thought it was a good simple activity to go through the flow of a conversation. After this, he told students about the Language Learning center, and specifically about the conversation club, and how he wanted the students to participate in it at least 5 times before the end of the semester. I was surprised because at the time he didn’t mention anything about how they would keep track of their time there, but it was addressed at a later time.
#6 ESAL 150/250 October 5th 2022
After coming back from their break, the instructor told students about an upcoming dictation quiz, and showed the example of the dialogue they would have to listen to and then write down. It was a brief explanation just to give the students a heads up, but I thought maybe doing a simple practice would have been good, but I’m unsure if the students had already done a dictation quiz before, and didn’t think to ask until I was writing this reflection, so maybe it was unneeded and students already knew what to expect. This was followed by a new topic in the textbook, a dialogue about traffic jams and cars in cities. The instructor put the dialogue up on the projector screen, and asked students to follow along as he read it. It was only listening which I thought was a bit of a waste, I thought it would be good if the students had their own copies of the dialogue, so that they could highlight things they may have questions about, maybe prompting them to highlight words they don’t know, or what they see as key points, or at least prompted students to listen to the dialogue and keep their ears open for words they don’t recognize, and ask about them at the end of the dialogue, maybe asking each student for one word they didn’t understand. After the dialogue was finished, they did the true false questions as a class, which I thought was good because they weren’t one to one answers from the dialogue, but had to be inferred based on the information in the dialogue. The next part was an activity with 4 peoples opinions on the use of cars and why things should change or why using cars is the only option and too difficult to change, and the students thought about who they agreed with the most, and then they were put into groups to discuss their ideas. They then were prompted by the instructor to think about these ideas and apply them to their home towns and Kamloops and if the ideas of how to deal with traffic and overuse of would apply, thinking about how they personally travel and the means they use to get around. I thought this was a great thinking activity and also added a personal element to it that I think helped spur students to think about it more thoroughly.
#7 ESAL 150/250 October 7th 2022
The class started with the students doing a dictation quiz, with the students listening to the instructor read the dialogue three times and attempt to write down as much of it as they could. The teacher was clear with what was expected from their writings, which was good, telling them that the focus was on them getting the sentences mostly correct. So periods were important, but commas less so, and spelling was not a big priority, but if there were massive errors than that would deduct points. After the quiz finished and papers collected, the instructor put the dialogue up on the screen so students could see and reflect on what they might have missed. After this, they reviewed the traffic jam dialogue from last class using the CD for students to listen to the dialogue. After going through the dialogue again, they continued with the activities that they weren’t able to finish the last class, thinking about their commutes and how they get to and from places. After thinking about how they would get around and discussing with the groups, they did small presentations, telling the class about how they get around. When the students started doing their presentations, I noted that the instructor was taking notes from each of their presentations, but he did not tell students that he was going to do that, probably to not make them nervous that he wanted to take in how they did with speaking in front of the group.
#8 ESAL 150/250 October 12th 2022
The class began with the Instructor informing students that weren’t in the last class what they missed, and reminding students to use moodle, and they can also look and find their grades up there now. I think this was the first class I noticed how many students seemed to miss classes, and also heard the instructor mention how little it seemed like the students used the moodle. After requesting that students use moodle, the class moved into a review of conversations, thinking about the activity students did that involved them having short conversations with a conversation starting prompt, reporting some information, and the using and exit prompt. This segued into the topic of the day which was asking for information, thinking about how to ask effective questions, and where to find information. This followed with a prompt from the instructor asking students to give ideas about where to ask for information on campus, which was met with most students giving ideas. With students thinking about where to find information, the instructor played the dialogue for this topic, and asked them to listen carefully and try to determine what is going, to pick out information and understand it. This was followed by a second go through, with the students able to follow along with the text of the dialogue this time. After the second go through, the instructor went through it line by line with the students, analyzing what was in the dialogue, underlining the kinds of questions asked in the dialogue. It was good way to have students figure out the information first on their own, and then share what they learned with the class and instructor. The focus of this lesson was on the yes/no and wh questions and how they were being used in this dialogue. Then he went over and listed the wh questions and yes/no on the board, and moved into the main activity, having students practice yes/no and wh questions through a worksheet, which students put their names on their own copy, but then the worksheets were passed around to their classmates and the teachers, to have them fill in the answers, so that the original owner could have a worksheet filled with answers, and then try to find which person in the room filled out which answer by asking them the appropriate questions. This activity was an interesting twist on the usual interview type activities, in this students have the answers to the questions but need to figure the person who did it.
#9 ESAL 150/250 October 21st 2022
This class the instructor started the students on learning phonics. This was a spur of the moment lesson, because only two students were in the class that day, and decided that it would something good to give the students some extra practice on for when they do go over it the rest of the class. It was nice being able to see the instructor have to bring up something on the fly, and it seemed to go well. The students seemed interested in learning and practicing the pronunciations. And because of how few students there were, he was able to really work with them to practice certain sounds. And he made good use of the space as the room had pronunciation mouth chart up, and while he used that to show the various sounds and the positions the tongue needed to be to make them, he brought it back and had them focus on two specific sounds to practice trying to use those sound positions. After giving the students the pronunciation workbook, the instructor took them through a list of words that shared /iy/ and /I/ sounds, going through and practicing them, and then having them listen to a speaker and attempt to guess the word they are saying from the list by trying to listen to the vowel sound they were making. They started with trying to guess what word the instructor was saying, then the students both took turns attempting to say the words and have us all guess. The students obviously found it difficult trying to pick up the sounds while also trying to remember how to position their mouth when speaking them, but they were actively participating and working at it. For a lesson that was so last minute, it work out very well. It was a good decision to have them focus on just two specific sounds, as to not overwhelm them, and take the time to work with them on it.
#10 ESAL 150/250 November 18th 2022
This lesson was an extension on previous lessons about conversation, focusing on the importance of active listening in a conversation. He asks the students what kind of non-verbal cues they know of, and immediately follows that up by asking what “ways” they know that people show they are listening, a great way to simplify it down for the students. During this moment, there were a few students obviously doing their own thing and looking their own screens, but many of the other students were actively engaging and giving their own ideas for non-verbal cues, giving good feedback on different gestures and body language, and actively listening. It was nice because students were able to share some ideas about what they recognize as non-verbal cues from their home countries, though I would have made that a larger part of the class, asking students to share particular non-verbal cues from their cultures and seeing what ones lined up with each other, calling back on their own lives and giving that connection. Next was the instructor used a CD from the textbook and played through for the students to listen to, asking at the end if they recognized any cues used, like uh-huh or mmm, and plays it again the second time and asked if they understood what the conversation was about. For this he does not get many responses, and I think that it is part that the students may have difficulty keeping up with the CD’s talking speed, and the concepts in it. I think ti would have been good to give the students copies of the script and use that to help them understand more as they listened to the dialogue, or an information gap activity like a fill in the blanks worksheet. I think it also could have helped to do some kind of warm up demonstrating non-verbal cues and having students give some, so they could see and hear each other use them in real life, which may have helped with the CD listening. When he finished with the script, he went into teaching about tag questions, which I felt like was adding too much information, when the class could have just been all about the nonverbal cues. It was related to the dialogue as the dialogue was all about being vague in responses, so it made sense, but I did feel like it would have been better to have this been a separate lesson. After this point, there was less student interaction, with just the same few students who are active participants sharing ideas and answering questions.