Journal Reflection #3
In this journal I have chosen to reflect on one of the lessons I have recently taught, particularly on the interactive decisions I made during the lesson. This reflection is based on the videotaped record of the lesson, the lesson plan, a journal written afterwards, and my memory of the lesson. This is the account of my comparison of what I had planned to do to what I actually did do. I would like to evaluate the decisions I made to go off the plan as well as my ability to make and follow such a plan.
Watching the video I noticed that I immediately went off the plan. I had intended to start the class with a rapport-building discussion. These rapport-building discussions are basically me allowing the students some time and prompting them to have interpersonal conversations with each other before starting. I find that allowing them to speak to each other builds a certain bond and an informal atmosphere more conducive to participation and risk taking. I still did this as planned but before I got started the students began to ask me questions they had about the review sheet I had given them on Friday.
This sidetracked me for about ten minutes or more. They were good questions and they all wanted to know. I felt that I couldn’t refuse this opportunity for student-centered learning especially one that they had initiated and furthermore, the questions were relevant to the day’s lesson. I do have some concern however that the students are so comfortable that they ask too many questions and get me off of my plan too far. Almost never do you hear a teacher showing concern that the students’ participation in their own learning lay cause a problem, but in my case I must. I recently had two lessons in which I did far too much frontal teaching involving explicit explanations of grammar rules and teaching of lexicon. I don’t want my speaking and listening class to become a class in which I just stand in front of them and answer their questions. I have to learn to be discriminative about this and choose to delay some of the answers until after class.
During the rapport-building discussions the students were talking in groups. I put them into groups of four because I only had eight students. I retrospect I feel that this is too large a group for such an activity and that I must let the students help me solve this problem. This hunch of mine is based on the fact that Ali chose to get my attention and talk to me instead of his group, furthermore Jaime controlled much of the conversation in his group and others got to talk very little. They all need practice controlling too. Another interactive decision I made during these discussions involves my role. I chose not to participate in the discussion in any one group but only moved about engaging in repair when there were communication breakdowns, particularly ones involving pronunciation.
Next I went on to a guesstopedia activity, an activity intended for review of the phrases. Once again I was bombarded with questions, most of which are attempts at confirming or clarifying their hypotheses about the target language in the lesson. As it directly related to the lesson, I chose again to address their questions. This took another ten minutes. I might be wiser to try to find ways of involving the students with a creation of an answer to their questions, particularly explanations and definitions. I have a small class so I can usually afford to keep the class as a whole and still give them all a chance to talk. This would involve some very conscious efforts to manage the interaction for equal participation. Overall, looking at the tape, I am surprised at how sophisticated and valuable their questions are. I am impressed by what they are capable of noticing on their own, but a bit worried about how much time it takes away from the lesson.
After the guesstopedia activity, we took a break, much later than intended due to all of the question answering sessions. After the break though, there came more questions from the students. As soon as they saw the new dialogue I was presenting, they started asking questions about the new items. Once again, I chose to answer them. This had one advantage at least. I wasn’t teaching the items they already knew, and I was getting a clear picture of where they were at. I chose to try to involve the students more with explaining, especially if I could find one that already had some understanding of the item. They all seem to know different things and together can pool their understanding well when orchestrated effectively.
During the warm-up activity that followed, I noticed that the students were not using time signals in their ordering of the events and routines (e.g., first, second, third). I chose to interrupt them in action and model the use while writing them on the board. In the next activity I took greater care to specify the form I desired them to use by modeling it through my own example. They seemed to like it because they like learning more about me. I noticed that they are motivated to listen when I use personalized examples about myself because they are personally interested in learning more about me. This may be another benefit of good class rapport.
Later on I chose to go off plan again, this time very far off and for a long time. I’m a little worried about this because I got too far off track from the lesson. I was concerned about their pronunciation of the ordering numbers (e.g., first, second, third) so I showed them the correct pronunciation of the final "th" sound. This was followed by a discussion of when these are used which led to another discussion about how things are counted in different languages. They were interested to find out that the Chinese and the Koreans have some very elaborate counting systems that are very specific to the things being counted. This gave the Asians some opportunity to talk, but may have been off task. Then I gave them some tongue twisters with "th" and let them have fun with it. I also asked them to show us some tongue twisters from their own language and the students were quite entertained. BUT, was I way off? And was it detrimental to the learning process?
Because I had spent too much time off my plan and I felt that I needed to get to a good stopping point before finishing, I skipped the prediction stage before the dialogue listening. I felt that I could afford to skip this because they seemed to be finding the dialogue too easy anyhow. Maybe this was a good call. The book we are using has gone from being over their heads to being far below them. It would be tedious to continue to cut it up for them and spoon feed. Afterwards I chose to do something different and have them recall the dialogue they had heard. This was a good choice, because it was very good for assessment. They recalled the dialogue nearly word for word. It was incredible. They even recalled some unfamiliar items and began to beg for explanations again. This led me into another microlesson, this time on the use of "get" (e.g., "get dressed" vs. "get home" – one indicating arrival another indicating a change of state but both somewhat similar).
That was the end of class. All in all, my plan was often blown to the wind of the students own learning goals. It is getting harder each day to follow a lesson plan in this class and I need to consider what this means to me.