Category: Reflections

This reflection is for the second hour of the class from observation #10.

In this hour, half of the class shared presentations they had prepared in pairs about logical fallacies. The other half of the students were to present in the next class. The teacher spent most of this hour listening to the presentations, but he did make a point of encouraging the students in the “audience” to listen carefully and learn from the presentations. He told the students they all needed to know all of the logical fallacies, and he asked them to make note of any questions that arose for them during the presentations. This hopefully gave the students an incentive to practice active listening as they were told they would need to remember the material in the presentations. The teacher also stepped in to ask questions to the presenters about the fallacies they presented to get them to clarify points in the presentation that may have been unclear and show that they understood their material.

Since the presentations were prepared by the students ahead of time, I assume that the teacher was doing a formal assessment of the presentations and that the students will be graded. He probably did an informal assessment of the listeners, assessing their ability to engage with the material by asking questions.

I would say the main barrier to learning in this class was the invisibility of the “audience.” Only the presenters had their cameras on, and neither they nor the teacher could see the other students. The presenters thus did not gain true presentation or public speaking experience as they could not see who they were talking to. It may also have been discouraging for them to have no concept of how the audience was responding to their presentation. The invisible audience would also be an issue for the teacher as he would not be able to tell whether or not they were listening.

Something I think I would consider if I were to have students do virtual presentations is whether I could have the audience doing something. Perhaps the audience could be asked to take notes or be given a set of questions to answer about each presentation, which they would then submit to the teacher. This could be used as an evaluation of participation, comprehension, and active listening.

This observation was once again of the two-hour level 4 advanced communications class (taught virtually). This entry pertains to the first hour. 11 adult students of mixed cultural backgrounds were present. For this hour, the lesson was focused on discussion and comprehension related to a dialogue the students had previously listened to.

The teacher used a warm-up activity to get the students to activate their discussion skills and begin to think about the content in the dialogue. The teacher wanted the students to rank a list of items that contribute to children’s happiness in order of importance. He did not to much talking, and simply displayed the list of items for the students, put them in discussion groups, and let them work together for 10 minutes. Doing this ranking exercise in groups allowed the students to practice the discussion skills of agreeing and disagreeing, as the whole group had to produce a single list. The teacher also had the students practice presentation skills by asking them to present their ranking list to the class and explain their choices.

I believe the majority of the assessment in this class happened in the comprehension exercise. The teacher presented a list of questions about the dialogue the students had listened to asked them to volunteer to answer. The teacher could informally assess how well the students had understood the dialogue and how well they could articulate their responses. I assume some informal assessment also took place in the warm-up activity. The teacher could have been assessing how well the students explained their choices and how prepared they were to share the results of their discussion. There was another opportunity for the teacher to assess the students’ ability to articulate opinions later on, when he presented a poll as a follow-up to the dialogue exercise and asked some students to justify their response.

The ongoing issue of reluctance to participate seemed to be present in this class once again. The teacher asked the students to turn on their cameras when they presented the results of their warm-up discussion, and several students declined. I think there is some important learning being lost every time the students opt out of using their cameras, as they are not practicing the physical aspects of communication, or at least not in a way that the teacher can see and assess. I also noticed in the comprehension exercise that some students took a long time to speak when called on, and only spoke when they had been asked by the teacher multiple times. I wondered if this was a result of reluctance to participate, and they were trying to ignore the teacher by remaining silent, or if they really needed that much time to think of their answer. I am not sure how a teacher would go about finding this out, either.

I liked the warm-up activity in this class very much. I thought it was a great way to lead into the comprehension exercise as well as to practice discussion skills and making compromises in a group. The dialogue the students had listened to involved a discussion about things that are important to a child’s development, and the warm-up activity gave the students an opportunity to consider and share their own opinions about the same topic. This ranking exercise is something I can definitely see myself using.

I observed a 17-minute Grade 6 EFL class lesson in China. I am unsure of exactly how many students were in the class but I would guess around 30. The lesson seemed to be a review lesson. The topic of the lesson was vacations, and the students practiced vocabulary related to vacations and practiced applying the vocabulary to a dialogue.

In this lesson the teacher did minimal speaking and gave the students space to practice their vocabulary, spelling, and speaking. She showed many pictures and prompted the students to name and sometimes spell what was depicted. The class seemed to have a strong grasp on the lesson’s vocabulary and spelling as they quickly and eagerly provided answers. Only one or two new words or phrases were introduced. It seemed this class was not designed for language acquisition but rather to increase fluency. The speed at which the students responded to the teacher’s prompts showed that they were effectively practicing their fluency. At the end of the lesson, the teacher had the students apply the target vocabulary by engaging in a dialogue in partners, which also seemed to be a fluency exercise.

The teacher was likely assessing the students’ fluency throughout the lesson, paying attention to how quickly and confidently they responded to her prompts. She did not seem to be particularly concerned with accuracy in this lesson as she rarely corrected pronunciation. For the most part she had the class speak all at once, which would not allow her to listen to each individual’s pronunciation. She did a brief individual pronunciation assessment by having the students take turns saying a phrase from a list. The teacher also walked around the room a little bit during the dialogue activity to be able to hear and assess some of the conversations the students were having.

If I were teaching this class I would have found the environment very distracting. There was a lot of background noise. It sounded like there may have been another noisy class nearby, and I heard a few honking cars. I was wondering if it also distracted this teacher and the students or if they were accustomed to the noise. I do not expect that anything could be done to solve this problem, but I could see it affecting the quality of both the teaching and learning in this class.

Another issue I saw in this class was a lack of focus in the dialogue activity. Students started chatting in larger groups instead of in their pairs, and it sounded like a lot of students were speaking Mandarin and not doing the task. There were a lot of voices in the room and they became increasingly louder and more excited. It did not seem as though all of the students were doing the task given by the teacher. I thought the teacher should have listened more carefully as she was moving around the room to make sure everyone was speaking English and doing the exercise. I saw the teacher walk right past a group that I was quite sure was speaking Mandarin and she did not seem to notice and did not redirect them.

Something I liked about this teacher was her use of visuals and body language. She used a lot of gestures to communicate meaning to the students when they did not have the vocabulary to understand. She was able to teach the students a new word, “skyscraper,” through the use of her gestures. She also used gestures as prompts to guide the students to produce certain words or phrases in the cases when they did have the vocabulary to do so. Her slideshow presentation was very visual with many pictures that supplemented her lesson nicely.

For this observation I watched a video of a high intermediate communication class of approximately fifteen students from mixed cultural backgrounds. The video was a four hour lesson condensed into twenty minutes. The lesson focused on job-related vocabulary and comprehension, leisure time vocabulary and comprehension, and forming theses and communicating opinions.

Near the beginning of the video the teacher worked on vocabulary. She asked the students to define the word “retired.” Rather than explicitly providing the students with a definition, she first allowed them to try to figure it out for themselves. The teacher let the students guess and gave them hints to help them along. I thought this was an effective strategy for teaching vocabulary in a higher level class. I think it is a beneficial exercise for students to use what they already know about English and apply that knowledge to deduce the meanings of new words.

Later in the lesson when the class was working on discussion skills, the teacher let the students learn by practicing. It was a fluency exercise as the students were discussing in groups with the teacher only hearing bits of the discussion as she moved around the room. It was apparent that the exercise was an opportunity for the students to become more confident speakers, which does not necessarily require accuracy. I think the teacher took the correct approach to this exercise, as if she was constantly checking the students for accuracy and making corrections, it may negatively affect their confidence and fluency.

Assessment in the class seemed to be informal. The teacher’s method of teaching vocabulary by having students try to define the words on their own allowed her to assess the class’s level of vocabulary. Later, the teacher tested their comprehension of new vocabulary. She handed out a worksheet with three words with which the students had to make simple sentences. She asked some students to say their sentences, and in doing so, she was able to assess their understanding of the vocabulary words based on the accuracy of the sentence. After the work on vocabulary, the teacher assessed the students’ comprehension and note-taking skills. She played a video and told the students to take notes, then she asked them questions about the video to see how well they understood and how extensively they took notes. I liked this exercise as it assessed a general academic skill as well as a language skill.

There seemed to be some barriers to learning in this class. The students often lost focus and started chatting with each other. Some students were texting during class. At one point I saw a student using her laptop to hide her phone as she texted while the teacher was talking. I think the way the space was arranged encouraged the chatting. The students were sitting across from each other in close proximity, so they were arranged in a way that allowed them to close off from the teacher. The teacher also did not position herself in a way that allowed her to see everyone. She sat on one of the tables that the students were working at and she could not see every student due to the way the rest of the desks were arranged.

What I liked about this teacher’s teaching style was how well she connected with the students. I got the impression that the students liked her a lot, as she made them laugh a lot, and they were honest when at one point when they were caught chatting. In this situation I thought the teacher demonstrated some strong teaching skills. The students were laughing so she called them out and got in on their joke to bring the class’s attention back to her. As a teacher I want to be able to find the balance between having a good relationship with my students and being their friend to the point that I lose the influence to manage the class. I think this teacher had accomplished this. I think it was the way the space was arranged that made the class somewhat disorderly, rather than her relationship with the students.

This reflection is a continuation of Classroom Reflection #6. In this reflection I will discuss the second hour of the same class.

The teacher presented materials to spark discussion among the students. He showed a video arguing that modern art is not real art, followed by some other examples of modern art. He asked the students to form an opinion which they would express in their discussions. I saw this exercise as a method of promoting critical thinking skills and using effective language to show that thinking. I think developing the ability to verbally express critical thinking in English will make these students sound more articulate in English and help them be successful. To encourage use of varied language, the teacher assigned a “devil’s advocate” in each discussion group. In doing so, the teacher was attempting to force the students to use language not only to agree in discussions, but also to disagree.

Assessment in this part of the class, I assume, was informal. The teacher went into each virtual discussion room to assess student participation. He checked if students had their cameras on and if everyone was engaged in discussion. I believe the majority of the discussion groups did not use cameras and the teacher expressed disappointment that the students were neglecting this key aspect of participation. One student from each discussion group was assigned the role of presenter, and they were to summarize their group’s discussion for the class. The teacher could assess clarity of speech and communication as well as preparedness. The teacher indicated that preparedness was an element lacking in the presentations and asked that the students be more prepared in the future.

Once again I think the nature of the virtual classroom got in the way of learning, particularly in the group discussions. In the group I observed, the students did not turn on their cameras which allowed one of them to hide. One person, who was assigned the role of presenter, did not engage in the discussion at all. The other two group members were having a good discussion, but I think they would have understood each other better if they could see each other. The student assigned the presenter role ended up attempting to summarize a discussion they were not involved in, and the report was inaccurate. It was hard for the teacher to know what was going on without being able to see the students and know what is happening in the study rooms. In an in-person class, the groups would just be spread out around the room and the teacher could see them all the whole time they were discussing. He would know who was participating and who he needed to encourage to be more involved.

I will soon be teaching online classes and I need to remember the challenges with using the virtual space that I have observed. I will be teaching with a partner, and the two of us will only have around five students to teach together. I hope that the more even teacher-to-student ratio will allow us supervise the class in a way that is more similar to in-person classes. The numbers will allow us to have two discussion groups, each with one teacher supervising. I want to attempt this supervision strategy in my teaching in hopes of increasing student participation. I am hoping that having a teacher present will prompt the students who have been hiding to participate more. It may not work, but I think it is something worth trying.

I observed another two hours of the Level 4 Advanced Communication class from classroom reflections 2 and 3. About 12 adult students of mixed cultural backgrounds were present. The first hour of the class mainly consisted of student presentations about their ideal vacation. Afterward, the students learned about logical fallacies and how to express critical ideas about them in English.

For most of this hour, the teacher was listening more than teaching. Students were giving presentations, so the hour was more about language production rather than language acquisition. However, the teacher still used subtle strategies to facilitate learning during the presentations. He helped the students articulate their ideas when their use of language was unclear. He asked questions to help guide them to accurate use of language. By asking questions, along with expressing interest in the students’ presentation, the teacher prompted the students to speak more than they would have on their own. He engaged in a discussion with the students, which in turn taught the students English discussion skills.

When teaching the students about logical fallacies, the teacher encouraged critical thinking, expressing opinions, and disagreeing with others. He told the students that having strong opinions will help their English. I found this statement interesting, and upon consideration I thought it was very true. I think if the students have strong opinions and ideas they want to express, they will be motivated to be more articulate in English in order to get their point across.

I believe assessment in this hour of the class was informal. I do not think the teacher was grading the presentations. However, informal assessment was certainly occurring. The teacher was assessing the students’ level of preparation, and expressed that he expected the students to have more information prepared to present. By hearing students speak individually, the teacher could assess the speaking and communication skills of each student during their presentations.

The online environment, like last time I observed this class, was a barrier to learning. I do think the students were better adjusted this time, however. Students agreed to turn their cameras on for the presentation this time which I think forced them to participate and speak more. I think using the camera makes students more accountable, as they are being watched. It gives the element of surveillance (for lack of a better word) that exists in a physical classroom.

I appreciated how the teacher engaged with the students during their presentations. He expressed genuine interest in the information they shared. For the students, I think speaking to someone who is interested in what they are saying will encourage them to speak more. I also liked how he encouraged the students to have opinions and to disagree. I think celebrating everyone’s opinions is a great way to build confidence in speaking. If the students know their opinions are welcome, they are probably more likely to voice them and practice their English communication skills in the process. Using discussion as a way to teach English is a strategy I would like to adopt in my teaching as well.

This Tuesday I observed a mixed level reading lab class with around 10 students of levels 1 to 3. The students were of mixed cultural backgrounds. This was a complicated class as there were multiple courses being taught within one class to accommodate the different levels. It was taught virtually. The students first met in their virtual “homeroom” where the teacher could speak to everyone, then they broke out into individual “classrooms” based on the different courses and levels to work on their assignments. The teacher moved throughout each room to spend time working with each group.

The teacher worked with the students on pre-reading exercises. In one group, she worked with the students on prediction and previewing. She was teaching the students to look over a text before reading it intensively to develop an idea of what information is important. I think this is an effective strategy as it gives students the ability to go into an intensive reading with expectations of what it will be about, thus priming their brains and helping them understand the text better as they read it. Previewing gives the reader direction. In another group, the teacher worked on asking questions before reading a text. She provided the students with newspaper headlines and had them ask questions about what they hoped to learn in the text. I thought this was an important skill to teach as, like previewing, asking questions gives direction to reading. I would say it also helps pique the reader’s interest and motivate them to read, and fosters critical thinking skills.

Assessment in this class was informal. I think the teacher had planned to do more assessment, but unfortunately the students did not have access to the reading prior to class and could not prepare. The teacher adapted her approach to assessment and made it more spontaneous. In one group, she provided a piece of a text and asked the students to identify what genre of text it was and how they knew. When students successfully identified that it was an email and explained why, she moved to another room. In the room in which she was teaching students to ask questions, she assessed their ability to do so. She was looking for appropriate use of “who, what, when, where, why, how” questions. Without prompting the students to use these question words, they intuitively did so. The teacher seemed to consider this a success.

There were several challenges to learning in this class. The mixed levels made it a difficult class to teach, as the students had to be split in different “rooms” and the teacher only had a limited amount of time to work with each group. Students also were not discussing their work among themselves when the teacher was not in the room, though I am unsure if they were supposed to be. I think the virtual classroom setting provided a barrier to communication. The teacher and her students were communicating without any visual cues, and I think visual cues are extremely helpful for beginner English speakers. Learning was also stunted in this class as most students did not yet have their books, and the teacher had forgotten to upload the scanned reading onto Moodle before class. She was apologetic and said she was very overwhelmed, so it was just an unfortunate situation, and understandable given the new online format of teaching.

The main thing I would take away from this class is to extensively practice using the technology required for teaching an online class before teaching the class. If this teacher had had more time to practice—which I am sure she did not given the abrupt switch to online classes due to COVID-19—I think the class would have run much smoother and all of the materials would have been available. I would also be interested to see if the class would operate more effectively with more visuals. In this class, neither the teacher nor the students used their webcams, and the teacher did not use a PowerPoint or other material to present. Perhaps the students would be more engaged in learning and more accountable to participation if they could see others and be seen themselves.

I do not often take the time to reflect on what I like about myself. I think in our society we are taught to strive to become what we are not rather than love and accept what we are. We are taught to be modest as well, that we are unlikable if we are too self-assured. I think it is important to look inward and appreciate what we see inside ourselves. So here goes nothing.

I feel one of my biggest strengths as a person is my authenticity. I never try to be someone I am not. I am comfortable with who I am, even when I find myself in social situations where I struggle to fit in. I am secure enough to accept that it is impossible to be liked by everyone, so there is no sense in compromising my identity to try. I tend to present myself with a “take it or leave it” attitude which, interestingly enough, I think makes me liked by more people than if I changed myself to fit in. I think people appreciate that I am genuine.

Another one of my best qualities is my sense of humour. I love to laugh and to make light of any situation I can. I find humour in my mistakes and in life’s inconveniences, all the little things that others might get mad at. My humour makes me a more pleasant person, and fun to be around. It is my way of making friends. I think it also makes me a peaceful and impartial person. My lighthearted spirit prevents me from getting caught up in pettiness, so not only does my humour help me make friends, it also helps me keep them.

If I had to choose what I like most about myself, I think I would say my determination and perseverance. I pursue what I want and I pick myself up when obstacles knock me down. This year I made myself proud by completing my Bachelor’s degree despite a fair share of hardships. Ever since I sustained a mild traumatic brain injury in my late teens, I have had recurring mental and emotional challenges as a residual effect. This year I had to take a full course load in order to finish, and partway through first semester my brain started to shut down. I pushed through, but by the end of the semester I was at my rock bottom. I truly thought I could not go on, but in the end, my determination to finish outweighed my struggles. I finished the semester and had winter break to recharge, but when second semester began I sunk back to rock bottom. I could not see myself finding the mental strength to continue, but I could not bring myself to accept quitting as an option. I did not think I could live with myself if I walked away. I picked myself back up, and in my final semester of my degree, I thrived. I got A+’s is every class, and even achieved 100 percent in my qualitative research class which I had been dreading the most. That said, I think intelligence is another strength of mine.

This observation was of a sixth grade English Program in Korea (EPIK) class. There were approximately 30 students in class, all Korean. The class was taught by a male teacher from the United States and a female teacher from Korea. The English taught in the class was beginner level.

I do not think a lot of learning occurred in this class. The teachers did not introduce any new material, they just had the students practice what they had learned in previous classes or for homework. The teachers guided the students through dialogue activities, reciting dialogue from videos the students had already watched. The teachers mainly facilitated learning by prompting students to practice speaking and by modelling the target language themselves. However, as I said, the target language was all review, so the teachers were mainly facilitating the students to consolidate the use of the target language rather than learn new language. The teachers also got the students to play a game to practice speaking, but they only used simple words they already knew. I do think the transition from the structured dialogue practice to the game was an effective way to move from controlled to more free speaking practice. Additionally, wile it was a strange activity, I thought the students would have learned the most from the singing activity. When the teachers had the students sing a dialogue, it seemed like a useful exercise to practice the flow of speaking.

I think the teachers were using this class as a time to assess the progress of the class. They had pairs of students recite dialogue to hear each student speak individually. The teachers were likely assessing accuracy and pronunciation, but they provided very little feedback so I can only assume. In the game, the teachers could assess the students’ ability to think of English words quickly and form simple sentences with them. I thought it was a poor assessment, however, as it was an assessment with no feedback. Neither of the teachers corrected the grammatical errors of the students.

This class was not an optimal learning environment in my opinion. The students were not interested enough to engage fully in the class. During the dialogue practice, the students were focussed because it was controlled practice. In the game, however, the students did not focus at all. I thought the teachers lacked control over the class during the game. When students were asked to brainstorm answers before each round began, they would quickly write down the words they knew, then they spent the rest of the time chatting in their native language. The class became very noisy and the teachers struggled to get the students to re-focus when it was time for the game to begin. The game took up more than half of the class and it seemed like a lot of wasted time to me. I think the problem was that the students were not challenged. The female teacher even invited the students to choose the easiest words they could think of to use as their answers. As I mentioned, the teachers did not correct the students’ grammatical errors. Almost all of the students were omitting the articles in their sentences, saying things like “I bought car.” The lack of feedback allowed the students to be complacent, and I do not think they learned anything at all from playing the game.

Something I did like about the way this class was taught was the efficiency. I do not necessarily agree that the dialogue activities should have moved so quickly, but I had to admire how quickly the teachers were able to transition from one thing to the next and how quickly and efficiently they delivered instructions. They clearly knew their material and had a thought-out lesson plan.

As I mentioned, I did not think the class challenged the students enough to engage them fully, and I think the teachers should have given much more feedback. A few times, the female teacher corrected a student’s speaking but did not give the student a chance to try again, which I thought was a mistake. I also thought the teachers, particularly the male teacher, lacked connection with the students. The male teacher sounded very rehearsed when he spoke to the class and I did not get the feeling that the students were connecting with him. I think he would have had better control over the class if he had been more engaging and presented himself as more personable.

This hour was the second half of the class from Reflection #2. Again, it was a Level 4 Advanced Oral Communication class with 11 students from mixed backgrounds. This half of the class focussed on vocabulary used in political discussions and news articles as well as engaging in debates.

The instructor was constantly adapting his role as learning facilitator in this half of the class. In the vocabulary exercises, it seemed the instructor had planned for the students figure out the answers themselves and share when asked, and he would be providing support, feedback, and clarification. However, the students struggled with the vocabulary, so the instructor switched to more of an instructor role. He had the students guess at the answers, but he mostly had to teach the students all the vocabulary words. He acknowledged that he knew the words would be hard, and I thought that was important for him to say as a motivator to prevent the class from becoming discouraged or giving up on trying. After the vocabulary exercise, the students engaged in small group discussions which were to be shared with the class, but again they were reluctant to participate. Like in the first half, the instructor stepped in to prompt discussion and it seemed helpful to the students to have him modelling what a discussion should sound like.

The instructor assessed the students’ knowledge of vocabulary by asking them to provide answers for the two vocabulary exercises. He gave them a few minutes to look at the exercise so they had time to think and prepare and they would not be put on the spot. I think he planned to ask students one by one to provide answers and get an idea of each student’s ability, but everyone was struggling to provide the correct answers so he had to step in to guide them. He assessed the student’s oral discussion abilities by having them present a discussion to the class that they had prepared in small groups. He was able to assess each student’s speaking ability and their ability to choose appropriate language to communicate an opinion.

I think the online format of the class continued to get in the way of learning in this half of the class. It seemed that the students were hiding behind the technology a little bit and holding back when it was time to participate. The vocabulary exercises were less of a problem as they did not involve discussion with other students, but in the small group discussions there was very little discussion going on. I thought maybe the minimal participation was due to lack of familiarity with the skills being practiced, but I still think they hindered their own learning by not making more effort to participate. I think the instructor did everything he could to encourage participation, but at a certain point it is just up to the students.

One part of the lesson I liked and found interesting was the vocabulary exercise on language used in newspaper headlines. It never occurred to me that there is language specific to newspaper headlines, but when the instructor pointed it out, it was obvious. It was eye-opening to see how, even though the language in headlines looks simple, the students did not understand it in the way it was used. As I start teaching and making lesson plans I will have to consider what other places we use unique language like this.

Something I appreciated about the instructor’s teaching in this class was his ability to adapt. Whenever students were not participating in the ways he had planned, he was always able to modify his method of teaching to keep the class moving forward. When students were struggling with the vocabulary, he started explaining the vocabulary instead of having the students provide answers on their own. When they struggled to have in-depth discussions on their own, he stepped into the conversation to help. It seemed he ended up being more actively involved in the class than he had planned, but he did what he saw was necessary to help the students achieve the learning outcomes. That quick-thinking adaptability is a skill I hope to acquire as I become a teacher.