the kind of shit I do for school now...

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.