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.