Stage 3

In this lesson I looked to develop the ‘focus on learning’ that I made a main aim in stage 0 of this reflection blog. In the first observed lesson I asked the students how they felt about their oral performance during the lesson and gave them some advice on improving their speaking. From reading texts such as William’s Inside the Black Box (2001) my interest in student self-assessment has developed. Therefore this lesson included elements of both peer and self-assessment as part of the structure of the lesson. I will focus this reflection on these elements of the class:

Strong points of the lesson

  -   At the start of the speaking task students wrote down a range of realistic aims for the task they were just about to complete.

  -   Task-repetition ensured that students had several opportunities to experiment using the interactive strategies with different partners. This generally meant that when students reflected on performance they recognised they had developed their interactive strategies during the lesson.

  -   Students felt a clear sense of satisfaction reflecting on success. The task had allowed them to experience success.

  -   The peer observation element allowed students to glimpse the task from an examiners perspective. This was likely to, in Williams’ words give students a better sense of the ‘desired goal’ (2001:7). Students spent significant time discussing and analysing how successfully their peers had met the target.

Issues to consider:

  -  I found that I was slightly pushed for time to introduce vocabulary then organise a task and give time for reflection inside a single lesson.  Therefore the formative assessment cycle probably requires more time for the students to reflect and put into action new language they have met.

  -  Some students wrote quite negative reflections on their speaking performance in their student diaries. This was despite competent or good speaking performance. In other words the students have an overly negative mind set. They need to recognise the positive aspects of their own language production. This will require a better sense of the exam speaking criteria. I believe the peer-reflection  completed as part of the class should help students to do this, but it will take time for students to familiarise themselves with the exam requirements.

  -  The class was focused on interactive strategies for the speaking exam. To some extent it was easy for student to give each other feedback on this area. I need to consider how I can encourage better self and peer reflection on the more opaque aspects of exam criteria such as cohesion or discourse management.  The obvious way to do this would be to provide models of good and bad student performance on each of these criteria and get the learners to analyse this.

In conclusion, this lesson has provided me with a better understanding of the practical advantages and challenges of using assessment for learning with students.   

Stage 4

In this lesson I was aiming to work on areas of my teaching that had arisen in my second observation. In this observation one of the main issues I identified with my lesson was a lack of clear stage aims in the planning of the class. This led to a convoluted lesson where the stages and student output were not sufficiently clear. My mentor had suggested that I should get ‘back to basics’ and ensure that both stage aims and interaction patterns were added to the plan. I feel this has been a useful process that enabled me to identify more clearly the staging and organisation of the class.

The observed class was a task-based lesson where students had to find out from their partners the reason why someone was injured. This required them to retell a story they had been given as a cartoon. A decision I faced practically was the introduction of vocabulary to tell the story. I felt that if the vocabulary had been pre-taught it would have spoilt the story-telling element of the class.

Nevertheless, The major issue I found with the class was that students lacked some key vocabulary items that they needed to retell the story well. These included key verbs such as ‘slipped’ or ‘fell’ and key nouns such as ‘ladder’. Looking back on the lesson I should have definitely provided a stage where students had the opportunity to check and practice this language before setting out on the task. Perhaps this could have been done on the worksheets I gave them by asking them to match the vocabulary to the cartoon images. However, I would still need to focus the student on pronunciation and irregular features in some of the verbs. In other words pre-teaching would have required some teacher led demonstration and practice.

Does this mean that the task-based approach an unsuitable way to get the learners telling stories? Or would a teacher led pre-teaching session have slowed down the natural pace of the lesson.  Reflecting on the lesson I feel that I did try to provide what Willis describes as a ‘facilitating task’ to help students with the vocabulary, but this was not thorough enough.

My mentor commented on the lesson that an issue he noticed in both of the observations was that I tended to add too much to the lesson. This could be confusing to students who didn’t always understand where they were in the lesson and how it contributed to the eventual goal.

As a summative reflection this seems important. During the course we have explored and come across a range of approaches to lesson structures. The danger when using these as outlined above can be adding too many ingredients, leading to oversights on key areas. In this lesson I needed to give clearer lexical support  to students so they could complete the task. In general I need to make sure that I am working through the lesson from the students’ perspective to identify the difficulties they will face with any particular task.

These issues relate back to one of my original comments in my stage 0 blog. I stated there that I wanted to ensure that I focused on the essential knowledge students need as part of preparation for my lessons. One of the main things I learn from this is that, even through I have developed my knowledge of teaching pedagogy through the course, it is vital to stay focused on the essential elements of teaching. Schon suggests that our learning is ‘iterative’, repetition of the same or similar actions gives us a functional understanding of how to teach. Reflection on my observations demonstrates that I am returning to the same key issues again and again, hopefully refining my understanding of my teaching practice.

The strongest point of the observed lesson was that my plan included elements of task-repetition. This meant that students who initially lacked vocabulary, had the opportunity to enquire about key words, understand them in the context of the story, then try to use them on the second repetition. I felt that the material stimulated the students and provided the opportunity to focus on a number of interesting vocabulary items such as ‘he decided to’, ‘she didn’t notice that...’ There is good potential to develop these in the next class.

So in conclusion while I do feel the lesson provided a good environment for students to practice language relating to the aim, I need to make sure that I keep paying attention to the parts of the lesson where students will encounter difficulties.

Stage 2 Reflections

In my stage 0 blog I outlined my main teaching aim;  to develop a more learner-centred approach to teaching. From this basic aim I focused in on a number of projects that would achieve this aim,  such as the learner diary project or using reflection with my students. Overall, I feel that the learner diary project has been hugely successful with the students during the term.  I have written in more detail about how I have used the learner diary in my onestopenglish diary, which I will post here.

However, it can be difficult to accommodate both learner’s aims and coursebook material together in class; this is a conflicting reality of a coursebook-led language course. I felt that my second observed lesson was overburdened with too many ideas and pieces of material. This came as a result of both using the course and trying to integrate learner needs and preferences.

The topic of the lesson from the coursebook was hypothetical possibilities with if. The textbook I was using with the class developed this topic and gave examples from a reading about inter-planetary travel. I found this reading to be a highly artificial way to introduce the topic and decided to use different material. 

This is a typical example of the conflicting pressures of coursebook teaching. Should you always cover the material? Or do it in a different way? Or how about deciding to ‘scrap the book’ altogether, following the dogme approach of Thornbury and Meddings. Obviously all of these options result in further difficulties. The teacher must do a balancing act, attempting to satisfy both the ‘course’ and the students.

Coming out the lesson, I felt the main problems experienced were as follows:

-          I had been unclear on my aim because of the attempt to both use the coursebook and to adapt the lesson for the learners.

-          I had experienced problems with technology which had upset the timing and delivery of the class.

-          My concept questions and presentation of the language needed to be better developed. I felt that I had probably spent too much time attempting to adapt material and create the IWB presentation. This is turn had led to a lack of time to focus on how I was presenting the language.

-          The stages of the lesson needed to be more clearly organised. I agreed with my tutor’s opinion that I should have included stage aims in my lesson plan to ensure clear progression of ideas in the class.

On the bright side, the students had remained attentive and interested throughout the lesson. They discussed the different imaginary dilemmas well and came up with interesting contributions which used the target language.  So, while I was unhappy with the class, the students seemed to be satisfied with the learning.

The main lesson I will take from the observed lesson is to try and simplify my ideas and aims for a class before getting too tangled up in the material. Something that this is easier said than done. 

Reflections on First Observed Lesson

Strengths:

- I feel that I identified an useful area of vocabulary to focus on at a level suitable for the students in the class. Most were familiar with the meaning of the vocabulary, but had not met the particular collocations we explored.

- Overall, the students were able to use the vocabulary to structure the role play interviews with some success.

- I felt the students enjoyed the interview role play, remained focused and were interested in the topic of the class.

- I felt that the matching exercise and the subsequent practice enabled me to identify problems with the vocabulary. I felt the dialogue exercise enabled the students to feel uncertain about pronunciation, which led to greater focus and attention when completing the choral and individual drilling.

- While my plan was slightly over ambitious, I feel that there was enough flexibility built into the activity so I could ensure we had time for reflection at the end of the class. Asking the students to express confidence in the activity on a scale of 1 to 5 allowed me to identify problems and set some remedial homework related to the classwork.

- The activity allowed me to test and identify the definite need for further reinforcement work on the present perfect simple as a means of discussing experience. The students had met this grammar for the first time in class during the week and it was important for me to get some idea if students would be able to use it.

Weaknesses:

- Several times in the lesson I glossed the meanings of words or didn’t give sufficient opportunity or time for students to check meaning or explore the vocab. I feel that this was either because I was rushing to ensure we got through the plan or because I didn’t want to bog the lesson down in too much front led teacher talk. Was there enough context provided by matching exercise? Perhaps, but there were other pieces of vocabulary that could have been better grounded by contextualisation. I need to train my students better in contextualising new language quickly.

- Some of my task setting and task plenary lacked clear instruction. Some of the students did not immediately understand the role play. The feedback on the task was approached differently in the two groups. This resulted in one group feeding back far quicker that the other group. I then rushed the second group who were negotiating an agreement on which candidate was better. This stage could have been better structured with a post interview pro-forma and a reflection.

- Overall I felt the lesson revolved a little too much around me.

Ben Beaumont responded:

You’ve certainly given a useful summary of the strengths and weaknesses of the lesson, David. I think it’s always going to be difficult to get away from being the centre of attention, especially when language is being presented and you’re clarifying it for learners. The key thing is to be aware of it and to try and maximise learner involvement wherever possible.

As well as considering what went wrong, it’s good to see you thinking of solutions to implement to help prevent these problems from happening again, e.g. the post-interview pro-forma. A good strategy to adopt. By continuing to be specific about problems encountered in the lesson and being a little more specific in terms of actions (what strategies do you have for helping your learners contextulise language more quickly?)

This is a good Stage 1 evaluation. Develop your reflection for your Stage 2 by ensuring you make at least one link to theory (ELT or generic) to support your comments, either justifying your techniques (method or approach) or for suggestions about how you will implement something new for your next observation.

Stage 0 Reflections

Today is a normal day. This morning I come into work, quickly cut up a card game resource while thinking about what books I need to grab from the shelves. I photocopy some extra writing for one student, then check the presentation of language in my new course book and consider what homework I should set. After the lesson I scribble down what I’ve covered and make a note of key vocab which needs to be revised before moving on to the next class. Somewhere in the back of my mind I’m thinking my resource manager responsibilities and my studies!

The danger is clear, with all these things to do it’s easy to prioritise the wrong thing. I want use these reflections to ensure that my teaching is as learner-centred as it can be. To do this I would need to ensure:

-          I have clear information about each individual in the class, their needs, abilities, difficulties and motivation.

-          I am able to assess students’ progress with material we cover in class and respond to difficulties that arise.

-          I am able to relate the individual classes to the students’ broader curriculum and progress.

-          I have techniques that are time efficient, ensure that student engagement in work is maximised and students understand the relevance of their studies.

-          That I have time to focus on the key content that I am teaching so I have good knowledge of the subject and can envisage student difficulties.  I tend to find that time spent selecting materials can reduce the time available to familiarise myself with content

-          Students have ways to feedback to me about their developing needs or progress.

One of the largest difficulties that can obstruct a student-centred curriculum is the system of continuous enrolment that is used in most private language schools. To overcome this problem I will need have a materials and techniques to ensure I can obtain information about students’ needs swiftly. Continuous enrolment also necessitates that activities need to be planned to ensure a comfortable learning atmosphere for all learners.

I will be able to measure success in achieving these aims with a number of potential tools. Students already complete questionnaires at the end of their studies at the school. Asking students targeted questions about their learning experience will give qualitative information on how learner-focused classes were. We are also currently piloting a student learner diary in the school. This will give information about how the learners see their progress on an on going basis. I hope this learning diary project will offer new insights into the needs to students in the school. 

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5 months agoBen Beaumont responded:

The problems of a fast-moving language school operating with continuing enrolment do pose a number of difficulties, and as a senior teacher I imagine that you’re always under pressure to support and assist teamers with the great variety of problems they encounter. Because of this, finding time to reflect as you’d hope to must be one of your biggest difficulties.

You’re right about students’ needs; getting information is key. As well as asking targeted questions, you can give new learners a ‘tick box’ handout for homework. This can list areas you’re going to cover in your sessions (or perhaps what’s next in the course book) so you can see what they’re interested in. If you have some ‘none-course-book’ time you could devote it to ‘other’ points mentioned in the tick-box handout.

The learner diary sounds useful, as well as innovative for your context. Reviewing how effective these have been with both teachers and students will be crucial in how you take it forward, if indeed you do.
Considering these points, I’d recommend the following ILP targets (which you should feel free to adapt):

1.Create a 15-minute space each day where you either, a) reflect on the day or b) consider items for the discussion board/course. Do this by identifying a regular slot each day when you can ‘grab back’ 15 minutes and go to a quiet space, e.g. the library. Time scale: by November.

2.Trial a ‘tick-box’ handout for needs analysis of learners’ needs. Do this by identifying main points in your week’s/month’s work and collating this into a handout for new learners or to be given out at the end of the week. Timescale: By December.

3. Review effectiveness of learner diaries. Do this by collecting ideas and points of view from learner and teacher focus groups or other suitable means. Timescale: By end of December.

5 months agoDavid Foster responded:

Three good targets, thanks.