Category: Teaching Reflections

This week I taught my tenth and final class for my practicum. The class attendance was excellent for a final class as five out of six students were present. My teaching partner and I used this hour as a closure class to wrap up the time we spent working with our students and to wish them well in their futures.

My teaching partner and I borrowed some activities we enjoyed in our TESL classes, with a few modifications, to do with our students for closure activities. We asked them to discuss what they enjoyed in the class, what skills they will take away from the class, what they will miss about the class, and some questions about their plans for the rest of the summer and the next steps in their futures. Some of the students shared some heartfelt comments, saying they enjoyed or appreciated the class. Hearing those comments meant more to me than I thought it would, as I did not know that the students had connected with the class so much. My teaching partner and I also participated in these activities so I was able to express my appreciation for the students as well.

For our final activity we asked the students to write positive comments about each other and about my teaching partner and I. We used the shared notes function of Big Blue Button to allow the students to write comments anonymously. I was pleased to see that the students had many positive things to say about their classmates, and I was touched by the kind words written for me. This was the only activity we did in this lesson that would not directly translate to an in-person classroom. I think if I were to replicate this activity in-person I would either have the students leave the room one at a time while the other students wrote messages on the whiteboard, or I would have a container with each student’s name on it that their peers could drop notes into. I think I prefer this activity as an anonymous activity as the students are likely less shy about giving compliments this way.

At the end of the class, I was touched to see that the students were sad and even a little reluctant to leave. I was sad to see them go as well. I came to look forward to teaching them every week and learning more about them through our discussion activities. I am grateful that I got to teach an oral communication class as this type of course lends itself to a lot of personal expression, so I had the opportunity to learn a lot about each individual student. I will miss working with them every week and seeing their progress. I wish I could see where they all ended up in life.

The ten weeks I spent in this advanced communication class have been incredibly valuable. Before I began my practicum, I was nervous and unsure of myself. I was worried about running out of time, I was worried about forgetting what to say, and I was worried about not knowing what to do if something went wrong in the class. In the beginning I over-prepared for class, writing myself notes of all the things I needed to remember to say and how to say them with level-appropriate tone, pace, pronunciation, and vocabulary. Week by week, I shed my nerves and became more confident in my abilities. I developed the flexibility to go into the class without over-preparation and to act quickly when class activities did not go according to plan. I am amazed at the transformation I have seen in myself in only ten weeks.

I owe a lot of my success in this practicum to my teaching partner. Throughout the practicum we have been a great team in both lesson planning and leading the class activities. After a few weeks of working together we fell into a rhythm that worked for us and for our students and our classes became better and better every time. From the first class we taught together I was really impressed with her teaching, so knowing I had a highly skilled partner gave me a sense of security that allowed me to open up. I am going to miss working with her!

I have also greatly appreciated both my sponsor teacher and my practicum advisor. My sponsor teacher assessed our lessons every week and observed our classes, providing feedback at the end. She gave us many ideas for activities and teaching methods which often became some of our most successful parts of the classes. My practicum advisor observed and provided detailed feedback on our class twice, and having that input was incredibly helpful for reflecting on my strengths and weaknesses as a teacher.

This week I taught my second-last class for my practicum and also had my second and final evaluation. My teaching partner and I planned a lesson for the students to review the discussion language and summarizing language we have been working on during our time together. We used our usual discussion and presentation lesson structure for the majority of the class, but we tried a new warm-up activity.

The new warm-up activity was based on a suggestion from my sponsor teacher last week. We had the students form a virtual discussion circle of sorts, placing their cursors which displayed their names around a circle and taking turns responding to a mini-discussion prompt. The activity was somewhat successful as all of the students participated and demonstrated discussion and summarizing skills, but the activity did not run entirely smoothly as students had to move their cursors to look at the discussion and summarizing phrases located elsewhere on the screen. When they moved their cursors, they lost their place on the circle and I essentially had to make up the order and call on names to speak rather than having smooth transitions between speakers. This issue was an oversight on my part, so I think it would have been better to try this activity in a previous class rather than attempt it for the first time on evaluation day.

During the discussion activity I was impressed with the students’ participation. I have been seeing improvement in participation week after week which has been encouraging for me as a teacher. This week we were able to get most of the students using their cameras in the discussions and presentations which is sometimes a struggle for us. I was particularly pleased that one of my most shy students turned on her camera for both the discussion and presentation for the first time. I think the students felt more pressure to follow the request to use cameras as my practicum advisor who was evaluating us is their regular teacher for this class. This showed me that I likely have not gained as much control over the class as their regular teacher has. My practicum advisor told me I should not be afraid to take control of the class and should not hold back on providing feedback, so I will keep these notes in mind moving forward.

Next week will be my final lesson with my students. My partner and I are going to try to plan something fun to do with them for our last hour together. My practicum experience has really flown by and it feels strange to me that it is already almost over. I have come to look forward to teaching every week and have had a lot of fun getting to know my students.

This week I completed my eighth hour of teaching. In this lesson my teaching partner and I reviewed the skills we have been working on with the class for the past few weeks. We decided to use this lesson as practice for our final evaluation next week, so we did not try anything new, with the exception of our exit activity. This lesson focused primarily on summarizing, with a bit of focus on pronunciation.

At the beginning of the class, my teaching partner and I asked the students to complete a short survey to evaluate our teaching. We asked them about what they have learned in the class, how they have felt about their experience in the class, and how well they have been able to understand our delivery. The response in the survey was quite positive and the students indicated that our lessons have been useful to them and that they found it to be an interesting and relaxed class. It was gratifying to hear this positive feedback and to know that I have actually helped my students over the past two months.

Overall, the class went well this week. We followed roughly the same format as last week, opening with watching and summarizing a video for a warm-up, then moving into discussions, presentations, and listening practice. This week I was once again impressed by the level of participation in the class. I have seen major growth from all of the students in their confidence in speaking English. Last week one of the quietest students volunteered to be the first one to answer in an activity, and this week my other quietest student volunteered to go first. This increase in confidence and participation in the class as a whole has shown me that my students really are improving their English skills.

The one new thing my partner and I tried in this class was a pronunciation-based exit activity. Throughout the class we listened for words each student was mispronouncing, and at the end of the class I assigned them each two words. I had all of the students repeat after me to practice pronouncing all of the words, then I had each student use one of their words in a sentence. This activity was successful and I heard an improvement in everyone’s pronunciation of the words. I was also impressed by the students’ effort in this activity as I only asked them to use one of their words in a sentence but many of them used both.

Next week will be my second-last week of teaching and I will have my second evaluation. I think my partner and I have been feeling good about our teaching and lesson delivery for the past few weeks so we will more or less continue what we have been doing. In the last evaluation my practicum advisor commented that he wished our students turned on their cameras more, which is the element of participation that is still lacking in the class. Next week I will make sure to encourage the students to use their cameras and I am hoping that they have become comfortable enough in our classroom to do so.

This week was another successful class. Five students were present, all from China. This week we returned to practicing summarizing skills and also incorporated a grammar review of the third person singular verb conjugation.

My partner and I tried something new for our lesson opening, which was providing a “hook” to get the class started. Before introducing our goals for the day, we showed a piece of art that represented our topic for this class (health) and asked the students to guess the topic based on the picture. This was successful in engaging the class right from the start and I think we will continue to use this technique moving forward.

I was very happy with the students’ level of engagement this week. Throughout the practicum it has often been a challenge to get the female students to participate as much as the male students. This week I saw great participation from all three female students. My partner and I have been designing our lessons lately to require all of the students to provide a summary of their group discussions. I think this lesson structure has aided the level of participation, but I can also see that the students are just becoming more comfortable and confident. In the past it has been challenging to get the female students to participate when they have been specifically called upon, but now they are sometimes even participating voluntarily. Seeing this progress has boosted my confidence as a teacher as it makes me feel I am doing something right.

Working on the third person singular grammar focus also worked quite well. Our sponsor teacher pointed out last week that most or all of the students were dropping the final ‘s’ on third person singular verbs. She suggested that we could review this point and enforce it throughout the lesson by holding up a card each time a student forgot the ‘s’. The review showed me that all of the students knew that the ‘s’ was supposed to be there, they were simply forgetting to pronounce it. I saw a lot of self-correction when I held up the card, and after being shown the card a few times some of the students started to catch themselves and make the correction without the card.

I have been thinking about how I would foster the same level of engagement and participation that I have in this class in a class with more students. I think doing so would be easier in-person as group discussions can be easily monitored. Online, I think the class would have to be formatted differently. In a bigger class, I think I would do the same discussion activities but assign roles to help keep the discussions on task. For example, a leader, a note taker, and a presenter. Each week I would ensure each student had a different role than the time before. This way, even if there was not time for me to listen to each student speak individually, I would know they were developing skills in the group discussions. They would have to perform their assigned role to ensure the designated presenter would have adequate information to give a presentation.

This week I taught another successful Advanced Communication class. My teaching partner and I decided to progress the students’ skills and introduce some language and strategies for summarizing. This week only four out of six students were present, which actually worked well, as it allowed each student to have more time to speak. Each week I see great improvement in the students’ participation, and with only four students present they all stepped up to the challenge of participating even more than usual. I have been very pleased to see this progress.

My partner and I tried a new warm-up activity this week to introduce summarizing skills. I asked the students to choose a favourite movie and to answer a few questions which combined to create a summary of the movie. The activity was successful—all of the students were able to answer the questions. One student answered the questions in far more detail than I was looking for, and certainly far too much detail for a summary, but in his defense, I had not mentioned that this was a summarizing activity. This student often dominates discussions, however, and his enthusiasm can take up a lot of class time. I am always reluctant to cut him off because I want to encourage him and boost his confidence, but I think my partner and I may need to start limiting his participation to give the other students more opportunity to speak.

After the warm-up I gave some instruction on summarizing. I always have a hard time evaluating how effective my teaching is when giving a lesson as in the virtual setting I have no way of gauging the students’ level of attention or understanding. I tried to make my lesson more interactive than in the past by having the students turn on their microphones and say some phrases. They all did this, so that showed me they were at least somewhat engaged. We also incorporated some assessment into our class’s exit activity as we asked the students to tell us a “do” or “don’t” of summarizing that they remembered from the lesson. All of the students were able to list something, so it was validating to know that they did get something out of the lesson.

After the lesson, the students had a discussion about movies. We changed the post-discussion presentations to have a summarizing focus, and I think the students were somewhat confused by the exercise but if we do it again I think they will know what to do next time. I also heard all of the students try the summarizing language that was introduced in the lesson, and they all used it correctly, so that was nice to see.

In the next class I think we should continue working on summarizing skills to assess the students’ learning from one week to the next. Our sponsor teacher also suggested working on some grammatical points, such as emphasizing the ‘s’ on the end of third person singular verb conjugations. I will be thinking of creative ways to work this grammar point into the next lesson. Our sponsor teacher had some good suggestions for using visual reminders for grammar, so I think I might want to try this strategy.

As of this week I am halfway through my practicum teaching hours. At this midway point, I am feeling good about my progress. This week my teaching was being evaluated, which I thought I might be nervous about, but I felt fine. My lack of nerves made me realize that I am becoming quite confident in my teaching.

Because this week was evaluation week, my partner and I based our lesson on things that worked well for us in the past, and making adjustments to things that have not worked. We focused on the topic of food and began the class by showing pictures of food with statements the students had to agree or disagree with. The students were asked to turn on their cameras, though only two out of five agreed to do so. Other than the lack of camera use, the activity went well, and everyone was participating and everyone answered every question, so I was happy with that. One area for improvement in this activity would be time. I felt like the activity moved a little too slow and took up too much class time. I think it would be easier to do this activity in person as there would be no delay with students having to turn on their microphones to answer questions. I am not sure that in the virtual space I could do anything to speed up the pace of the activity, so in the future I may just have to use fewer questions.

After the warm-up, the students did a discussion on food. Participation in the discussion was great, and I did not have to prompt the students in the group I observed at all. While everyone participated in the discussion, it seems there are some students who are consistently becoming the dominant voices in the groups. Something I might like to try in the future is assigning roles for discussions and asking certain students to be leaders, to take notes, or to argue a certain position on the topic. I think assigning roles could potentially even out the participation even more.

The discussions were followed by presentations. My partner and I recently started giving the students listening questions to answer about other students’ opinions during presentations. In the past, we showed the students the questions after the presentations, but this time we showed them before. I think this was a good strategy as the students were able to answer the questions much easier this time. The students did a good job of presenting as well, and participation was more equal than in the past because I asked the students to take turns presenting their opinions. In the next class I think I would like to introduce some language for giving presentations such as summarizing and paraphrasing language. The students are getting comfortable giving presentations with the language they already have, so I think they are ready to advance their skills.

This week I taught my fourth practicum class. I am almost halfway through my practicum already and am feeling like I am right on track with my progress. With each class I feel a little more confident and I feel like things run more smoothly.

In this class two of our students were absent, so we only had four students in class. This was unfortunate because my teaching partner and I asked the students to complete a survey to assess our teaching and how we deliver the lessons. It would have been nice to hear from all of the students, but the survey was still helpful. The responses were mostly positive, so that was reassuring to see. I just was not too sure how accurate the students’ answers were because there seemed to be some confusion with what the students were supposed to do in the survey. I think my instructions may have been unclear, or some of the students may not have been paying attention because it was the beginning of the class and sometimes some of them walk away from their computers to have a break between their main teacher’s lesson and our lesson. My teaching partner and I stepped away from our computers to let the students fill out the survey without feeling watched, and luckily our sponsor teacher was there to help the students when they were confused, otherwise we would have wasted time.

For the main part of our class, the topic of the day was fashion. This was one of the topics that the students chose when asked about their topic preferences a few weeks ago. I led a warm-up activity that combined the theme of fashion with some practice of the discussion language we have been working on. Students had to express opinions about a series of increasingly strange fashion pictures. Three out of four students agreed to turn on their cameras for this activity, which I thought was a success. All four students actively participated and successfully used the discussion language. Most of the time they even added extra opinions which I did not ask them to do, so it was nice to see such a high level of participation. This activity also made the students practice disagreeing, a skill that is often missing from their group discussions. I thought this activity was very successful and I think I would like to replicate it in the future.

After the warm-up, students were put into pairs to engage in a discussion about fashion. The group I was observing did a nice job of using the discussion language, but they finished their discussion far too early. To fill the time, I jumped in with prompts and probes to get them elaborating on their ideas. If I had not been there, I think the students would have stopped talking when they finished answering the discussion questions and remained silent for half of the allotted discussion time. In this case, I saw the online environment as a benefit to learning. If I were observing discussions in a classroom, I would be hearing all of the groups at once and only catching glimpses of what the students were talking about. It would be hard to tell if they had stopped discussing the assigned questions and had begun chatting about something else. In this environment I could hear their entire discussion and determine exactly when I needed to intervene. To avoid the potential of having dead time in discussions in the future, however, perhaps I will need to include follow-up questions on the list of discussion questions to prompt students to elaborate on their opinions on their own.

In upcoming classes, I think my partner and I should continue working on the students’ presentation skills and listening skills. They have made great improvements in their discussion skills, so I think our focus could shift a little bit. I think we should introduce some language students can use for summarizing, and think of some new ideas for active listening exercises.

Today I taught my third hour in my level four advanced communication class. Today 5 students were present. They are adult students from Japan and China. Today our topic of discussion was pets which was a topic some students expressed interest in last time. We had to begin the class with the presentations on last week’s discussion that we did not have enough time to finish. After that we reviewed discussion language, showed a video about pets, split the students into groups for a group discussion, and finished with a student from each group summarizing their discussion.

There were some nice successes in the class today. All the students agreed to turn on their cameras when giving presentations today which some of them were previously reluctant to do. My teaching partner and I took our sponsor teacher’s advice and implemented a listening activity into the presentations at the beginning of class. We asked the non-presenting students to answer a few questions about the information that was presented. One of the students provided very detailed answers so it was great to see such a strong demonstration of listening skills. In the group discussion I told the students that we would keep track of their usage of the discussion language and I had the phrases displayed during the discussion as a reminder. The group I observed made a great effort to use the language and it was a significant improvement from last week. We ran out of time for the presentations, so we asked one student from each group to volunteer to provide a quick summary. This actually worked quite well as the students provided more concise summaries than I have heard from them in the past.

We also faced several challenges today. I think we spent too much time on the presentation from last week and it ended up taking away from the time designated for this week’s discussion and presentation. This should not be a problem again next time, however, as we still managed to complete this week’s discussion and presentations. Next week we will not have any rollover presentations so we can spend the whole class on a single topic. I was unsure how well my review of the discussion language went as I did not receive any feedback from the students as I delivered it. I had planned to call on students to practice using some of the phrases with me, but I cut this out due to time constraints. Our discussion ended up being much shorter than planned so students did not have enough time to discuss all of the questions. At the end we had barely any time for presenting the discussions, so we had one student from each group volunteer to provide a summary. While they did a great job, the two volunteers were the two students who generally speak the most; the other students, who arguably need the practice more, did not get the opportunity to practice summarizing. We were also unable to provide listening questions like we did in the presentation at the beginning of class.

Next time, I think we should figure out some ways to incorporate vocabulary into our lesson. When asked what they wanted to work on, a lot of the students said they hoped to improve their vocabulary so I would like to help make that happen. I think we could also increase the complexity and depth of our discussions by introducing some slightly more controversial topics that will require more critical thinking. This will hopefully provide students more opportunity to disagree, which is something I want to work on as well. Both last week and this week I did not hear the students disagreeing with each other. I hope to design next week’s class in a way that might make it easier for the students to disagree.

Today I did my second hour of teaching. This class was my first class actually delivering a lesson, as last time was just an introduction. My partner Sally and I worked with the class on discussion skills and recognizing and using discussion phrases for expressing opinions, agreeing, disagreeing, responding, verbal feedback, and confirming meaning. We did a warm-up activity that was a leftover activity from last week, we played jeopardy to review discussion phrases, and we had the students have a discussion about seasons in pairs.

In our warm-up activity, we asked the students to share their strengths in English speaking and what they hope to improve this semester. This was meant to be the closing activity last week, but we ran out of time. We still thought it was important, so we moved it to this week. I am not sure how well this activity went. It seemed not everyone fully understood what we were asking, but it did give us some idea of what the students want to work on. The most common area the students wanted to improve was vocabulary, which may be different to work into our communication lessons, but we will have to try to think of ways to incorporate it.

To go over discussion phrases, we played jeopardy. I led this activity. Students were given a phrase and had to identify what it is used for in discussion. I thought the game was too time-consuming and I did too much talking beforehand. I had to explain how the game is played which took some time, and I had to explain what the questions and answers would be like which also took time. While playing the game, I was not sure if anyone was actually enjoying it or learning from it. Leading the game was challenging because I could not see anyone. I had no idea if the students were really engaged or not. However, they all participated and all seemed to have a grasp on the language of discussion, so that was good to see. The game did help me to assess what the students already know. After the game, I reviewed the phrases that were in the game. I felt like I was talking too much, and I did not know how much I needed to say.

Next, the students were paired up to have discussions. I think the discussions went well overall. It was a good idea by Sally to put the students in pairs. When I have observed this class before, the students did discussions in groups of three or more, and there was almost always someone who did not speak. By putting them in pairs, everyone had to speak because it was a one-on-one conversation. Participation in this discussion was the best I have seen from this class, so that was great to see.

What we were missing from the discussions was the discussion language. Because we wanted the students to use this language, it needed to be displayed during the discussion as a prompt. I had to move between two groups as Sally was acting as another student’s partner. In the first group, I displayed the discussion language. Because I did this, one of the students was really making an effort to use the language which I was very happy to see. Halfway through the discussion time, I moved to the other group. They did not have the discussion language displayed, but I did not want to interrupt their discussion by jumping in, displaying the list, and explaining what I was doing. They were having a good discussion so I let them keep talking. However, the objective of using the discussion language was not met in this group. After the discussions, the students were meant to present each others’ opinions. We ran out of time and only one pair got to present. I was happy with the group that presented, though. They accurately shared what they had discussed and they remembered a lot of details so I was impressed. We told the other students they will have to present next time, but I am not sure they will remember what they talked about.

The main challenge in this lesson was time. We are still working on getting a feel for how long activities take. This time we definitely spent too much time on the game and not enough on the discussion, which was supposed to be the bigger focus in the lesson. Next time, I think we should just prepare one discussion activity and spend more time on it. We should also bring back the discussion phrases and make sure they are displayed during the discussions so the students are more likely to use them.