Reflection 4 - A Sudden Epiphany

March 28, 2014

For this week’s blog, I wanted to talk about planning.  Last week, we read chapter 21 from Harmer’s reading homework.  As I was reading it, it all seemed pretty straight forward and to a certain degree, seemed like it was common knowledge.  However, last week, I was going to use the computer at the hakwon to do some work and the first thing I saw was my co-workers lesson plan.  She is relatively new but she has a lot of teaching experience.  Because we don’t teach the same students, I never really talked to her about teaching.  She started teaching students younger than mine, and I was surprised to see her lesson plan.  It was nothing complex or extraordinary, but it was well planned, and as soon as I saw it, it quickly reminded me of chapter 21. 

I then went home and quickly skimmed the chapter again.  It felt like I just had an epiphany.  It was a weird feeling.  Planning should be common sense for teachers.  I thought I was doing it.  But it got me thinking about my two speaking classes.  I never felt comfortable with those classes and felt they were a challenge for me.  But I realized right then, that what I had to do was more pre-planning and planning. 

I thought about my speaking classes and thought what my goals were for those classes.    The chapter talks about aims, long term goals, and short term goals, so that made me think about what my goals were for these classes.  They are young and they don’t have strong skills, so I don’t expect them to speak well after several months.  But I wanted them to have fun with English and practice speaking it.  I wanted them to build their confidence and have fun while doing it.  My goals were always the same.  However, what I thought of planning, was different. 

Up until now, I was pretty much going off of what the previous teacher taught and I was going by her lesson plans.  But they were very brief.  I had used those brief plans and just basically, went with the flow.  I would have some plans but they were all in my head and they were planned at the last minute.  However, after seeing my co-workers plan, and seeing the example on page 374-375, I re-organized my plan accordingly. 

For my Tuesday’s class, the main topic was sea animals, and the questions that the students had to learn were: ‘what’s that?’, ‘what do you think about it?’, ‘what are those’, and ‘what do you think about them?’.  This time, I did some more planning – thinking about more specific vocabulary (thinking what animals they would think of), how I could teach them, how I can teach those sentences in a more active way, think of a different fun, educational activity, and also think about the interaction between teacher and class.  I never thought about this aspect, but I realized that I had to speak less, and think of ways to get the class to speak more.  Either through repetition or through student-student interactions. 

Thinking more about the interactions for these two classes made me think more about my plan, and made me adjust my plans accordingly.   Because they are lower level, they would take more time reading.  So I decided to do less reading, and organize it so that they could speak to each other more, such as through more or longer activities.  I needed to do more planning, instead of only following textbooks, or old lesson plans.

Unfortunately, I did not record this week.  However, I felt after more planning, the students were able to have a little more fun and I was able to expect that before hand.

Reflection 3 - What Have I Been Doing Till Now?

March 21, 2014

Last week, I recorded and transcribed a lesson from one of my new speaking classes, but this week I decided not to.  I was going by a lesson plan that a co-worker used before and I tried to fit it into my students.  I tried to make it more interactive, but this week I got mixed results.  The previous weeks they seemed to have fun.  This week I decided to try to speak a little more and have them repeat and split them into teams.  They seemed to get more interested and involved when I gave them incentives with points.  But at the end of the class, I heard some comments that they wanted the class to finish and I may have heard that it was boring.  I realized the more monologic I was trying to go towards, they did not respond well to it.  I realized I have to try to be more dialogic and allow them to speak more and with each other.  I also have to think of different, interesting games to get all of them rowdy again. 

This week, I decided to record and transcribe a different class because I feel the first transcription I had done last week did not have enough information to do an analysis on.  I chose one of four of my reading classes to do a new recording.  I felt recording this class and analyzing it may be useful because over the past couple of months, I have received different comments and feedback regarding this one class.  It is a relatively new class and I am still trying to reach a mutual comfort level with the students.  And I feel we are slowly reaching that level.  But I wanted to analyze this classroom more. 

I recorded the last 20 minutes of the class.  They have a test next class, so after reading the text, I asked them comprehension questions on our main story for the unit.  Because this was a comprehension review, I had to ask a lot of display questions and lower cognitive questions.  I knew that some of the students needed more time to understand it more, so I tried to explain it more in different ways so that they understood, which I tried to do by asking modified questions.  

I also used more wait-time.  The students are at different levels and some may understand my questions quicker than others so I wanted to make sure that everyone was given a chance to answer.  I wanted to help everyone get a better understanding of the text so they could do well on the test.  I would wait and not ask a student for the answer until I saw more hands go up because I know giving them more time would allow them to find the answer and they wouldn’t be as stressed trying to answer or feel too competitive to answer.  When more hands went up, I wouldn’t necessarily choose the hands that are up, but sometimes hands that are not up.  If they couldn’t answer, then I would try explaining more so that that student understands more and is able to reply.  I think the type of turn taking that I used was individual nominations and invitations to bid.

I realized that I have been affirming their contributions a lot and have been giving feedback on their responses sometimes by reformulation, elaboration, comment, repetition, complimentary language, backchannelling, and paraphrasing.  I don’t know if I am misunderstanding what all these are, but I at least try to give feedback in this manner.  I have continued to try to give positive feedback so that it motivates them, builds their confidence, and of course, improves their English. 

When I was in class, I tried to ask different questions, tried to motivate them, tried to encourage the quiet speakers to answer, tried to explain more if they didn’t understand, and I realized I may have been asking more closed questions, and have been running a monologic IRF style.  I wonder if I can make this class more dialogic.  In class, I felt I did a good job in carrying out the task.  They didn’t seem too bored and they all seemed to participate actively, and generally seemed pretty eager to answer.  However, looking at the video, I realized that it may not have been the case.  They may have been more stressed as I thought. 

Recording a part of this class and analyzing it was very interesting.  I hated looking at myself but it was interesting to see.  I had many problems with this class and heard different comments over the past couple of months, but I feel things are getting better and I hope I can continue, improving my skills as a teacher.  

Reflection #2 – A Long Way To Go...

March 14, 2014

For my new speaking class this week, I wanted to review what we learned last week – the days of the week and some of the different types of weather.  There were was a lot of repetition and I tried to play games so that they would have fun and get to know me a little bit.  For this week’s class, I wanted to continue with the same idea, with them having fun, but I wanted to try having more student-student interaction.  This week’s lesson was about introduction – what’s your name, how old are you, and nice to meet you.

After a quick review, and doing it in a game format, where they were put into 2 teams, and were rewarded points.  It made them more energetic and seemed to have a good time.  Next, I wrote on the board of what we were going to learn.  I didn’t think that they would know what to say, so I wrote the question of what they were going to say on the board.  At any time if I asked them a question or asked them to repeat, if I felt that they were speaking loud enough, I would ask them to speak louder so that I know they won’t get tired or bored as easily.  Given their age, they liked to yell a lot, but I didn’t mind; I preferred that. 

Because this was just our second class, there was a new student, and all of the students didn’t know each other from the first place, today’s topic of introduction or “it’s nice to meet you” was suitable.  I tried to split them into teams and have them rotate asking each the other teams the different questions.  I tried to reward them points and after when I felt they got used to it, I told them I would take away points if they didn’t remember any names (although everyone remembered everyone’s names).

Overall, I felt the students had fun today, the new students got along well, and there was more student-student interaction, where I felt they were not too familiar with.  However, after reading the different articles and seeing myself in the recording, I realize that there are so much to learn and there are so many different methods of teaching.  I realized that what I’m trying now may not work for long.  Children always need to have some kind of change so that they stay interested. 

When recording, I decided to point it at myself because I didn’t think the students would have been able to concentrate, and also due to the time constraints, it would have been time consuming otherwise.  So I just recorded without the students really noticing.  I realize that some things may be working in this class, but the dynamics of my other classes are a little different.  I notice already that all this reading for the course is making me think of things that I never thought before.  It’s making my feeling of being scared and nervous in teaching this class, to a good nervous, challenging feeling.  After looking at the video, I realize too that what I think and feel, may not be quite be the same as what is actually happening.  There is a long way to go…

Reflection #1 – My First Class...

March 12, 2014

I currently work at a hakwon and I’ve been teaching for about 1.5 years now.  Life as a teacher wasn’t planned.  I came to Korea originally on vacation.  Then what turned into a summer program, turned into a full time job.  I have been teaching mostly reading classes to grade 4-5 students.  I’ve had some writing classes in between but now they have given me speaking classes.  The issue is that these speaking classes are for 9-10 year old children.  They don’t speak English well and I am not allowed to speak Korean.  So I know it will be difficult to communicate with them.  Another issue is that because they are young, they need to have fun in learning something.   I personally have an introvert side as well as an extrovert side, but teaching actively and making it fun is quite of a challenge for me.  If they are not having fun, they could easily move onto a different hakwon.  One of my responsibilities in these speaking classes is for them just to have fun with English.  If they have fun, they will stay motivated and interested in learning from their other classes.

I started a 9-10 year old speaking class last week.  I was very nervous because I know how much effort I had to put into these classes and I had to have fun with them while speaking only in English.  This new class was formed by two other classes, so both classes didn’t know each other. 

WARM UP

For this class, I had to continue teaching from a book that the previous teacher had used.  The topic that I had to teach was the days of the week.  I taught them: a) days of the week b) Question: What day do you like? Answer: I like _______________  c) Weather: stormy, windy, rainy, and sunny – Today is _______.

My plan was to write the days of the week on the board and have them read the days out loud together.  I know if I had asked them individually, they would be more scared and shy of answering.  So I wanted them to read out loud, scream if they wanted to.  Then I would put them into 2 groups.  There are 6 kids so I put 3 in team A and 3 in team B. In teams, they would read the days of the week together.  I would have them read together, and then I would slowly erase some of the words (for example erase Mon in Monday).  They would still repeat the days from Monday to Sunday.  By the end, they would have memorized the days of the week by constant repetition.  To help them stay motivated, I would reward them with points (generously) in any way I can.

Next, I would ask them what day they like. I would ask them individually and then have them ask each other.  By now, I hope they would feel a little more comfortable with my and each other.  Then for the weather, I would show pictures of what stormy, windy, and rainy, and sunny looks like.  I would ask them what today’s weather is like and they would respond by saying “Today is _____________.”  All questions I would write on the board for them to read and guided answers would be written on the board.  I would ask them what each day is and if they like it or not. 

By the end of the class, for content, I hoped that the students learned the days of the week and the different types of weather.  But most importantly, I hoped that the students had fun. 

AFTER LESSON

After completing the lesson, the class went better than I thought.  They had more fun than I thought.  Teachers told me beforehand of what the students were like.  The plan with the days of the week went well.  They were actively participating and liked to scream out the answers.  They also memorized the days of the week well, whereas when we started the class, they had difficulty reading them. 

For the question of what day they liked, they couldn’t answer quickly.  They took a lot of time trying to figure out what day they actually liked.  I wanted to ask them individually and then have them ask each other, but because of the time constraint, I only had time for asking them individually.  They were very active and loud at the beginning, but I noticed that the energy was starting to slow down a little bit.  So then I taught them the different types of weather. 

I showed them the different pictures by posting them onto the board and write below what they are.  After several repetitions, I erased the words, and they were able to slowly memorize the words.  By this point, I was over my class period, so I couldn’t complete my lesson.  I just taught them what they were, had them memorize it, and asked some of them what today’s weather was like and if they liked the different types of weather.  I couldn’t ask them all individually. 

Although I couldn’t complete my lesson, I feel this class was successful because they seemed to have a lot of fun.  That is the most important thing for me with this class.  Next time, my plan is for more individual interaction between each other.