Reflection 11 – Successful class...or was it…?

May 27, 2014

It’s been a while since I reflected on my blog, but it doesn’t mean that I have stopped reflecting and thinking on my own about my class and my teaching techniques.  In this blog, I wanted to reflect one of my reading classes.  I recorded several weeks ago, but didn’t have the time to reflect on it.  Because almost half the class was missing, I felt I was able to personalize with the students more.  However, I do feel that this class atmosphere has generally improved and the students seem to be enjoying the class more, and feel more comfortable in speaking and answering questions in English.

The class started with an open discussion about the missing students and they all answered well, naturally.  In this class, we usually go over the vocabulary, do a dictation, then discuss the main story, which includes discussion and doing a worksheet together. 

I started by asking some target vocabulary, which was a review, and most of them raised their hand trying to answer in English.  They don’t respond in Korean unless they ask and I allow them.  I then asked a word from the example sentence for the target vocabulary, followed by questions that referred to the picture in the book.  I felt that the students were comfortable with answering the questions.   I tried to make it more dialogic so I tried asking personalized questions to help students relate to the topic and word.  Because this was a review and they had practice, I felt they were ready to answer the questions.  But the question is if they really learned the word and if they would be able to use them naturally.  However, they generally seemed to understand and had a good time in class.

After reviewing the previous classes’ two target vocabulary, I read the next sentence first so that they could listen to my pronunciation.  The students read together aloud (although there was one student who liked to fool around).  And similar to above, I would ask questions based on the word from the example sentence and the picture. 

I tried to help a student with their pronunciation and I first tried to help him through individual repetition, but I didn’t want to put him on the spot, so I asked the whole class for choral repetition, then I asked other students for individual repetition.  I didn’t want to spend too much time on it, so I just moved on quickly.  I also asked another student right away when they said ‘white’ wrong.  But I simply asked them what they said, and they were able to self-correct the pronunciation.  The students are getting better and they are able to realize on their own if the pronunciation is correct or not.

After I asked personal questions throughout the lesson, I tried to give them more time for them to respond and not let the dominant voices speak for them, and in doing so, they were able to speak more. 

In general for the vocabulary section of the lesson, I feel it went well.  The students reviewed the words, learned two new words, and were able to speak about their own selves from all of the open-ended questions. 

For the dictation section, I was pleased to see that some of the students had memorized the example sentences from the book so they were able to write down the sentences without my help.  It was clear who did not memorize.  Their dictation skills of listening and writing seem to be improving over time.  I noticed that I had to repeat the sentences more and more over time.  Next time, I think I should try asking them to listen to the sentences first, tell them to think about it, and then write it down.  Hopefully, it will help improve their listening skills and I won’t have to repeat so many times. 

For the main story, I asked them review questions on the pages up to where we were supposed to read.  Then, the students read rotationally and afterwards, I asked them comprehension questions.  I tried to ask more dialogic questions, but I think the dialogic discourse was too long.  I noticed that although the students were speaking more, that I may have talked too much.  But I’m not sure how I can reduce my teacher-talk further at the moment.  However, I did try to get the students to ask each other the questions for the worksheet.  In all my classes, I try to get the students read the questions more. 

In general, I feel that this class went better than expected.  Having only four students helped because I was able to focus on them more.  I want to strive for a class like this, where there is more open discussions and personalized questions that allow the students to speak freely more and help raise their confidence ins peaking.  This is not always the case.  However, I think I may have to reduce the length of the open discussion, and try to plan it more so that they use the vocabulary from the story more.  Also, I have also tried to teach pronunciation more, trying to not put the student on the spot.  I tried to use my hand as a mouth and my other hand as a tongue.  This helped them learn more, and it helped me realize how they were pronouncing words by them telling me how they were using their tongues.

This class was recorded several days ago, before they took the unit test.  They all did very well on the test, which I was quite pleased with.  I hope I continue to have more classes like this, where the students continue to learn and enjoy learning English.  I hope the process of them enjoying learning will be productive.  Over time, I want to see if my teaching techniques are good and that my students are really acquiring the language.