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.