I am going to copy and paste some reflections I wrote on a co-teaching lesson I did the other night...
the basics of the lesson is that it went really well, but we only had 5 students and they were all kick ass. the lesson was on sharing opinions on social media *in english.
I will try to take people's names out... CT = co-teacher, S = student
Mike Reflection on teaching
3/20/14
I feel like Thursday night’s lesson
went really well. Overall the learners met the objectives, had fun and walked
away looking forward to the next lesson.
For this reflection I’d like to
reflect on the questions, and then offer my own critique of the lesson because
despite walking away feeling accomplished I think there were valuable lessons I
learned that I did not get feedback on after the lesson (an addendum critique).
The short version of the learning
objectives were: to define opinion, to
discuss the effects of social media and digital communications, to ask for
opinions, and to agree or challenge opinions. I think from Ct1's first few
questions it seemed likely we were going to meet the objectives. S1 spoke
easily about the difference between opinion and facts, and during the first set
of lead in questions I heard him asking and challenging S2 and S3 on
their opinions of social media and digital communications. I also heard S5 say very early on that she
did not have Facebook and didn’t want to have her children using it
either. So from this recognition that students
were already cruising through the plan, it became evident that success in
meeting the objectives would be based on the degree to which the learners felt
comfortable using the language in a meaningful setting.
The students struggled to use the
target language that CT1, CT2 and I had agreed to use for our lesson, however
they were very apt to use alternatives that expressed the same sentiments. This
meant that throughout the lesson, all of us made attempts to steer them back to
target language phrases, even when they were fully communicating their
ideas. The most repetitive phrasing on
our part was the phrase “yes, but on the other hand…” which the students asked
about during CT1’s highlight of the language.
Another time I heard them using the target language was before
transitioning to CT2, S2 used the phrase “I’m not sure what you mean?”
during the check for learning, and S3 asked “How do you feel about… cell
phones?” if I remember correctly they did so in context, not when prompted,
which shows genuine learning taking place.
During my fluency exercise I got to watch
them really demonstrate the function of the lesson in a meaningful
context. The exercise was designed to
have them share their opinions openly, fully and to push them to challenge or
ask for more information when their opinions were different. What developed was
a meaningful discussion on Facebook and phone privacy, which helped the
learners share their personal experiences, define words and ideas, and share
their opinions in a healthy and respectful manner. A few of the successful parts of the activity
in my opinion were when the group helped collectively define the word “privacy”
to S5 after she asked what it meant (almost using the target language), when S4 eloquently shared some of the reasons she doesn’t use Facebook, and
when S2 was able to relate why using Facebook was important for him to
connect to his social network outside of the US. In all of these cases there was meaningful
dialogue happening that encouraged the learners to use a variety of language
which is the purpose of a fluency activity. It also allowed them to meet the
learning objectives of sharing and challenging opinions in English, but in a
way in which they all seemed to grow in their reflection of the given
subject. This seems like the best kind
of learning experience because it naturally grows their understanding in
multiple meaningful ways.
My peers gave me just a few
suggestions: one suggested stating the objective of including everyone in the
discussion when giving instructions on the activity. She also noted that she
thought the learners perked up when I seemed more high energy. Another noted that the target language could be
modeled more in the lesson and that it might be good to keep the phrases
available for them during the fluency activity. I thought that these
suggestions were very appropriate to this lesson, but may or may not be
appropriate for all lessons, in that inclusion of all students might make some
feel too pressured, but it’s definitely something to consider. Phrases on the board/overhead was something I
neglected in the moment, but had written in my lesson plan. I don’t actually know that it was a mistake to
leave them off, I thought the dialogue that occurred seemed much more natural
than some of the phrases, but as it took place I encouraged them to use full
sentences like “Can you share an example?”
rather than just saying “example?”
or “for example?” which is common enough in English, but could be over
relied on.
I found the Observing Teacher's feedback to be the
most helpful as to what could improve that portion of the lesson and my overall
teaching ability. There were three main
points I heard to reconsider, the first was giving students a moment to think,
which I think I ignored in the moment because I was excited. I remember time to
think being exceedingly important when I learned foreign languages, and I
definitely need to incorporate more into my teaching. Secondly she suggested not jumping out of the
moment to teach about the lesson,
when the students are doing the lesson
(if at all). The example I believe was
when I broke the discussion for a second to explain why I chose the example of
the police spying, which in this case I did to ease student concerns
considering the beginning of the class. I think however that this side-barring is a tendency of mine that may be really
distracting to students when teaching ESL, and along with “tour-guiding” as (another observing teacher) calls it, will be something I need to concentrate on toning down. Lastly, the choice of words was mentioned
specifically when I asked the students “Did you hear good reasons why you shouldn’t use facebook?” This is
one of those sensitivities that will likely take me a while to recognize. I am
sometimes quite unaware of my word choice and the possibility of double or
confusing meanings. I am glad to have someone who is attuned to hearing these
discrepancies to help point them out, but fear I will make many mistakes before
really fine-tuning that portion of my teaching.
I am not sure I met the “specific
phrases” portion of my last goal, so I will likely continue with the same
personal teaching goal of promoting student confidence and use of specific English phrases.
Critique of the lesson
I am writing this critique for
personal reflection on the development and execution of lesson planning, it is
not meant to criticize the observers or my co-teachers. I am also going to write this in my normal personal
reflection writing style (which includes a lot of ellipses… and parentheses*wink).
One of the areas that I am
increasingly motivated to explore is what makes a cohesive and successful ESL
lesson. The practicum thus far has allowed me to take all the different portions
of several types of lessons, but overall I feel like the objectives are met
most successfully when the lesson is cohesive and builds upon itself. Despite the encouragement from observers, I
think this lesson might have seemed successful because it wasn’t challenging
enough.
To begin with, the learning objectives
were not specific enough to assess accurately to what degree learning was
happening. This might be the key point (despite my annoyance with the idea of
lesson objectives), because it left our lesson with no specific target to hit.
This meant CT1 and CT2’s activities were in my opinion mis-ordered, and too
simple. In many regards the “lead
in/context” questions met the learning objectives, ordinarily that would mean
the teacher must adapt the lesson to be more challenging (which is tricky when
co-teaching in this style). CT1
proceeded with the target phrases, many of which he had chosen (with our
editing and approval) because they would be easily in reach of the learners
(perhaps too easy, or not appropriately taught in a meaningful context). There were only a few that the students
struggled with, but there was very little instruction focused on modeling or
explaining the phrases, this oversight is something that I see a lot in my own
preparation in teaching, I know I need to work more explicitly on modeling new
language as well as instructions.
I think the larger piece in this though is,
when sharing phrases and questions that are meant to provoke abstract language
like opinions, how do we help the learners recognize that adding these phrases
to their repertoire is helpful or important?
Not to mention, with no prior assessment (likely an informal
assessment), how do you choose which phrases would be helpful? It seemed that only S3was having real
difficulty sharing his opinions in a meaningful way. All of the other students were all able to effectively share their ideas with any sympathetic
listener. If the goal is effective communication then they were there… the goal
needed to be something more specific, like emphasizing formality or accuracy,
or exploring specific tenses.
CT1’s first accuracy activity (which
was in the check learning category) was helpful for drawing out and practicing
the phrases. It worked really well especially when the students got hung up on
the word “cyberbullying” –that might have been a good place to have a short
reading or video or something. That
could have been a place to seek answers if they could not figure them out by
talking to each other -a place to build on the social media content of the
lesson and some reading or listening skills. Questions 2 and 3 have these
straightforward answers (given the phrases), but seemed inappropriate when the
students have already demonstrated abilities to address these situations. This
gets back to the idea of accuracy when sharing abstract ideas. Fill in the
blank and short answer questions have to be really carefully worded or they can
be ineffective. Not to say these ones
didn’t help practice the language, they did, but only because the students knew
they were supposed to practice, not because they needed to.
CT2’s scripted dialogue activity
seemed way too basic given their ability level but I am really interested in
how to use these effectively so I was glad to see it in action. I think if the
students had been struggling with the phrases this might have been effective,
but I am not sure the words he intentionally had them fill in were the words
they needed to focus on. I am working on being conscientious about modeling and
giving instructions for activities, and I am really impressed with how well CT2 does at that. I think it is his
willingness to be direct in instructions, but I’ve also noticed when he is modeling
he explicitly goes over each part- and that seems quite helpful for the
learners. Yet even recognizing how helpful that can be in my head there is this
very stern warning not to be condescending, and I am still questioning where
that line is. The second part of the activity “organizing language functions
into categories” seemed really helpful as far as categorizing when to use the
phrases… but because it was paired with the simple scripted dialogues I wasn’t
sure if it was getting the point across the best way possible… I think this
type of exercise helps me when I am trying to learn new information, but I
think you have to be careful with when you use it, it seems like you could
easily confuse students as much as help them if they start making inaccurate
categories. In this particular lesson
though, I remember S4 and S5 started sharing opinions and making arguments for why one category works even
though it wasn’t designed that way… I personally love when students share
insights that prove they’re learning (or at least sharing their prior
knowledge) beyond the lesson’s intended scope. I was really glad CT2 validated
them rather than “correcting” them.
CT2 started the transition to the
fluency exercise in the most natural way and the students leapt at the
opportunity to really engage. I don’t
remember which student it was but she started asking about whether children
should have tablets/smart phones, and everyone had an opinion. This was a
little scary for me because the exact idea they began to discuss was the one I
was about to use, so I was instantly aware that I didn’t have enough prompts
for my discussion without going over some familiar ground from CT2 and CT1’s
lessons… I decided on my way up that the students seemed to be able to share
openly, but had a hard time challenging each other. It was this whim that made
me share about the idea of a “devil’s advocate” a term that probably isn’t
culturally appropriate and that I certainly wasn’t well prepared to teach
about, but still seemed relevant to share.
I think my activity went really well, but the observers gave some
helpful suggestions about putting phrases on the board or within reach, asking
that everyone be included, and to keep a relative distance so as not to
distract the discussion. I especially liked and forgot to mention the observing teacher's
suggestion to take notes and potentially keep my head down so that learners
don’t look to me for feedback (I forgot to mention this in the other
reflection). I have used these
techniques in teaching other content and the whole thing seemed really familiar
and really natural to me. I love discussions like this and it was really
encouraging to me to hear how fluently the participants shared opinions,
experiences, asked questions, defined terms etc. It felt like a real discussion (not one just
for the sake of practice), and I liked that I could relate that to real
situations that I hope the students will not shy away from (public forums). I realized through this lesson just how
important contextualizing and empowering students is to me as an overall goal
and hopefully as a lingering presence in my lesson plans. –this is a really tricky thing for me when
teaching ESL, which is the last thing I would like to comment on.
I need to be really aware in this
field that I need to work on English as the primary objective and tool of empowerment rather than
focusing on some other learning objectives that I am quite used to. What I mean is… I walked away thinking “holy
shit, I am such a social studies teacher…”
because even when the lesson went well, I wanted to keep prepping for
the next stage of social studies style critical thinking development (namely
rather than focusing on accuracy of language, or effectively communicating, or
pronunciation or any of the other things we have recognized as a focus area of English… my thoughts were about how to challenge them to have conversation
about social gray areas… complexity of ideas, etc) In Social studies that is fine, in English
teaching that is tolerable, if the other objectives are being met. I really need to work at re-training my brain
to focus on looking for successes and areas to improve on in English! That being
said, the enthusiasm with which the students responded on Thursday made me
aware that my social studies background could be an asset if applied
appropriately.
In conclusion… what a great learning
experience.
