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.