Reflection 8 – I guess hard work and patience does pay off...

April 22, 2014

Things don’t seem to slow down for me.  I accepted the fact that I would not have a life until this course finishes, but it still is a little overwhelming.  In any case, I will still try to do the best that I can! 

This week’s topic for my Tuesday’s speaking class was telling time.  As I said before, this class is the most challenging class for me so I need to do a lot of planning, but I’m learning more from this course on how to do it. 

Up until now, I concentrated a lot on content and how I was going to teach it in a way that the students would accept and enjoy.  I tried to mix in games as well, and then I put emphasis in the warm up/preview, and also tried to connect more with the students by making the teacher talk more dialogic.  So basically, I tried to incorporate a lot of what I learned in this course.  For this week, I wanted to study my discourse and tried to use more MIC techniques into my teaching, even if we were playing a game. 

My anticipated problems were: the students not being able to tell time, even in Korean; they would have difficulty understanding instructions, and if they were able to tell time, they would have difficulty telling it English.  My anticipated solution was to ask other students to help each other, and do more MIC techniques (repeat, gesture, visual, rephrase, preview).  For MIC techniques, I would try to correct them and have them repeat, or I could draw on the board more, and I could rephrase my questions differently.  Basically, I would try to consciously put more of my effort into MIC techniques. 

I started out with a basic greeting, where the students were now able to respond a little faster, and give different responses, followed by a short reason.  I was quite pleased because they didn’t answer like that a few weeks ago.  Then for the preview, I first asked them to tell me what the current time was in English, and then I put up a picture of a clock on the WB.  I taped the minute and hour hand and randomly asked students to tell me what the time is.  To help them, I wrote on the WB: ‘What time is it?’  and ‘It is…’.  The students understood what they were supposed to do and they followed the instructions quite well.  Throughout the entire lesson, they referred to the WB to answer their questions. They had difficulty telling the minutes, and then I realized later that they had difficulty counting higher numbers.  So I wrote down 15, 30, and 45, and o’clock to help them.  I got the students to ask the question to each other by asking: “(name), what time is it?”  Generally by this point, I didn’t expect the students to have much interest, and didn’t expect them to really respond.  But they answered and participated better than I thought.

The preview took longer than I had originally planned.  I then gave them a hand out.  It had pictures of clocks that had different times.  I went around and asked each student individually on what the time was.  I asked them: what time is it? and then they responded by saying ‘it is…’.  I tried to use gestures for them to look on the board and answer according to what was written.  They followed pretty quickly and answered quite well. 

Next, I skipped an activity that I planned due to time, and then played a game.  The other side of the handout had different times with a number beside it.  I put them into two teams and I would read out the time or the number, and the students would have to tell me what time or number it was.  It was challenging to some, but generally, it was a suitable for their level.  Again, they had difficulty reading the time and also listening and indicating what the time or number was.  So to help them, I tried to point to the numbers that were written on the board, or said the first letter of the word. 

I then played Time Bingo at the end.  I handed out a time bingo card, where they were to draw the hour hand and write the time for each square.  I would then read out a time and if they got 3 in a row, then they would call out BINGO.  Before I reward them the point, they would have to read the time back to me, which was a little challenging for them. 

The terminal objective for this lesson was for the students to successfully tell time.  The enabling objective was for them to read and answer the question (written on the board), read clocks and tell time, and enjoy and actively participate in the activities.  I felt that the objectives were met.  I felt that the students were getting more comfortable with me and the class style.  I made a conscious effort on warm up every class, with all my classes, and I felt that the students were getting more comfortable with this method.  I also made more of a conscious effort on the MIC techniques, but I hope I can improve on them.  I feel I am getting more comfortable with this class and they are getting more comfortable with me, but I know there is still more to go. 

I wanted to upload the full video of my lesson, but for some reason it stopped recording half way through.  I tried to give more wait-time to the students and I felt it was suitable for the students.  I was shocked when I said “has test” so many times.  I said to help them understand better, but I realize now that talking like that isn’t really necessary.  And I didn’t realize that I said that so many times.  Overall, I liked the way how things were done in this class and it was good to see the students getting more comfortable with each other and with me.