Category: Teaching Reflections

Students learn in many ways. Among them are the following:

• Concentrating.
• Practicing.
• Relating new information to information they already know.
• Observation and imitation.
• By making mistakes (the hard way).
• Sudden revelation.

To facilitate such learning, I have considered the following options:

• Give students engaging activities that require them to learn.
• Demonstrate/model the skill for students so they can imitate it.
• Ask students to reflect on their challenges and successes so they can improve on it next time.
• Put students “in charge” in a limited capacity, so they feel the pressure of performing for their peers rather than just the instructor.

The following are a few goals that come to mind upon considering the expectations I have for myself as a teacher in the classroom:

• Students achieve course objectives.
• Students improve English skills in the manner outlined in the course objectives.
• Students learn to speak and write better.
• Students improve grammar.
• Students become comfortable using more advanced English than they were comfortable using prior to the course. 
• Students have opportunities to practice their skills in “real world” scenarios.

When I reflect upon the ways that keep class interesting, the following comes to mind:

• I use activities because feedback I have received from students suggests that activities, for example online vocabulary games, increase class engagement.
• I believe giving students tasks that demand language skills rather than using simple worksheets encourages more learning by imposing social pressures of performing within a group.
• I use vocabulary games, such as Pictionary (wherein students draws vocabulary words while others compete to guess the correct answer), matching exercises (wherein students match vocabulary words to their correct definitions) and cloze exercises (wherein students are shown excerpts from class readings and asked to fill in the missing vocabulary words), as a fun warm-up that also reinforces vocabulary from previous lessons. These activities are also useful because they provide an opportunity to informally assess student comprehension.

Some students will meet every goal, but others will not; however, most students will make progress toward most them. I will continue to research teaching techniques and enroll in courses relevant to my English-teaching career. I will compare student outcomes with the objectives of the course and use experimentation as well as academic literature to develop my approach.

Like all our lessons, my teaching partner and I delivered this lesson online using the video-conferencing service called Big Blue Button. For our first activity, we decided to use the whiteboard function to facilitate a game of Pictionary with the students. We directly messaged students with a vocabulary words related to the short stories we had previously examined; then students used the multi-user whiteboard to draw a picture of that item or concept while other students competed to guess the correct answer first. Students enjoyed drawing on the multi-user whiteboard, and I believe students enjoyed watching their classmates draw as well.

Next my partner and I read a new short story to the students. When we read through this story, we didn’t linger for too long or take breaks to discuss passages. We thought that this might make the narrative feel smoother and more cohesive, but we ended up finishing ahead of schedule and sent students for an early break.

The second “half” of the lesson began early as well; however, my partner and I found that the rest of our exercises still filled the time well. We decided that we should postpone the break until after the next activity if we find ourselves ahead of schedule again. This would give students a predictable schedule that they can easily plan activities around.

After the break students performed another matching exercise and then went to breakout rooms to answer questions from a worksheet provided by our practicum sponsor prior to the lesson. This time, we instructed students to choose a leader to speak on behalf of their group, this worked well as the leader of each group felt accountable and thus ensured that productive discussion took place.

This was the second lesson that my partner and I prepared for our class. In this class we revisited the same short story that we read to the students in our first lesson. We had the class play Never Have I Ever, a game wherein players try to identify things they have not done which others have, as a warmup activity. Never Have I Ever worked well because it was familiar to most students and gave students a chance to reflect on and share their unique experiences.

Our next activity was a vocabulary matching exercise. We used vocabulary words that students flagged for us in our previous lesson, for it was our belief that a second encounter with those words would strengthen their comprehension of them. Furthermore, because students had previously identified as difficult those particular words, it was the belief of my partner and me that those words would be the most relevant ones to review. We used the “multi-user whiteboard” feature that is available through Big Blue Button, the online video calling service we used for teaching, and instructed students to draw lines from each vocabulary word to the correct definition. It has been my experience (from the perspective of both the student and the teacher) that students enjoy using the interactive whiteboard, and that was the case this time as well.

Next, we split students into groups to work in breakout rooms and scan the short story for answers to questions that we displayed on screen. My partner and I each entered a room to facilitate discussion, and it was noted that in the future it would make more sense to leave students mostly by themselves while in breakout groups to encourage student-centered learning. Our practicum sponsor suggested after the class that we instruct groups of students to choose a leader to facilitate discussion both to give students the opportunity to build their leadership skills and to ensure that group discussions are productive.

The next activity was a fill-in-the-blanks or “cloze” exercise. My partner and I used quotes containing the same vocabulary words that we used in the matching exercise. We did this because we thought further repetition would solidify the students’ comprehension further. Students displayed their comprehension by accurately filling in the blanks.

Next was another breakout session. This time, students worked in groups to answer questions on a worksheet (provided to us prior to the lesson) regarding their understanding of the story. Upon returning to the main room, students shared their answers and with the rest of the class, which allowed other groups to benefit from the insights of their peers and challenged students to speak semi-publicly.

This was the second lesson that my partner and I delivered to our group of students. Our class consisted of a warm-up activity, a reading, a discussion, and an “exit ticket” activity. We used an exercise known as a word ladder as our warmup activity. For the word ladder, we put students into groups and gave each group a starting word and an ending word; then we asked them to change the starting word repeatedly, replacing one letter at a time while ensuring the new word created was a real word, until they reached the ending word. We then asked students to tell the class which words they created while working toward the ending word. Students seemed moderately engaged by the activity, and I enjoyed it as well.

Next my partner and I read a short story aloud to the class, switching back and forth between paragraph breaks. We also used this time to ask students if they had questions about any unknown vocabulary words, of which we took note for later classes, and discussed aspects of the characterization and plot as they emerged during the reading

After completing the story, my teaching partner and I led a class discussion surrounding characterization within the story. Students participated in the discussion, and it was noted that putting students into breakout rooms may have encouraged more student-led discussion.

This was the first lesson that my partner and I taught, and our only objective was to have the class do some activities that encouraged discussion. This lesson began with a warmup: a game called Two Truths and a Lie. Students took turns stating two truths and one lie, and other students guessed which statement was a lie. This game was fun for two reasons. Firstly, it is challenging to come up with convincing lies about oneself. Secondly, it is challenging to identify truths about oneself that seem worth sharing. Furthermore, this activity gave students a chance to bond while sharing interesting details of their lives.

In the next portion of our lesson my partner and I displayed six quotes and asked students to choose the quote which resonated with them most. We included quotes from Abe Lincoln, C.S. Lewis, Gandhi, Lao Tzu, Margaret Fuller, and a Chinese proverb. When students had finished choosing their preferred quote, we asked them to explain what about that quote resonated with them, which worked well to give students an opportunity to speak but ended up being teacher-centered in that students would address my partner and I when answering questions rather than the rest of the class. In the future I would like to encourage students to “pass the microphone” to the next student rather than acting as the sole facilitators of the discussion.

Our next exercise was a classic: the old “what three items would you bring to a deserted island?” dilemma. For this exercise, we split students into breakout rooms and asked them to deliberate until they all agreed on three items. Upon returning to the main room, we asked each group to share the items they agreed on as well as to explain the rationale behind their decisions.

Next were a listening exercise, wherein students listened to audio recordings and answered corresponding comprehension questions on esl-lab.com. Then we reviewed the answers as a group.

As a final “exit ticket” we asked students to state something they learned about a classmate during the lesson. This gave them an opportunity to practice speaking as well as to display their knew knowledge about their peers.