Week 10: Mircoteaching Reflection

NOTE: Due to human error about 5 minutes of this wasn’t recorded. This was an honest mistake and can’t be helped, so we’ll have to do our best based on the video we do have available and our memories. This should still allow for some positive self- and peer-reflection!

So, just how did my Presentation stage go this week? Take a journey into the lesson with me by watching the video before reading what I think went on.

Pre-video impressions

I felt very positive about my microteaching this time around. Not overjoyed or ecstatic, more of a “I think I’m on the right track” kind of feeling. It helped that I wasn’t too nervous, having tried this class out four times the previous day with my students. I think I kept my T-talk to a minimum (though I may have spoken a little fast) and I allowed my students plenty of time to speak or think through their answers. I think the atmosphere seemed fairly relaxed (I certainly felt relaxed), and while Ss were not entirely forthcoming with their answers, it didn’t seem to be down to the atmosphere. The biggest interruption I spotted was the lack of connection between the speaking and reading activities – it was quite sudden, and may have thrown some Ss off. But overall? I was quite pleased with this assignment.

Post-video reflection:

In comparing this video with my previous microteaching I can spot a few improvements in style. Firstly, I am much more relaxed. I walked around the room and interacted physically a lot better than before (I wasn’t stuck to the podium this time), and my verbal interactions were much less evaluative; I was able to hold more of a conversation with the students. This could also be seen in how I monitored the pair work activity, where before I spent my time waiting for the activity to end by reviewing my lesson plan.

Despite these extra expressions of interest in what my students have to say, it was very interesting to see that when wrapping up the main activity I looked rather uninterested and even impatient. In my mind I was listening carefully and working out what to do, but it clearly didn’t come across this way. I’m really curious to see if I can do this part of an activity without giving this impression. It’d probably be a good start to stop folding my arms and moving around the room restlessly. However, this doesn’t come naturally to me and is hard to spot without a recording. Lots of recording to be done, then. And maybe some time spent in front of the mirror in the mornings.

That said, overall the atmosphere seemed very positive. Ss made good points, and we had fun interacting and coming up with gift ideas (though this may have had something to do with cows!). One point for concern in this area is that I seemed to be cutting off my student’s voices during interaction. While my feedback was largely communicative, I noticed that I occasionally went to one student for an answer, and another would jump in. Rather than giving the first time to complete their answer or to interact with the other student, I jumped on the new interaction and changed the focus to the next student. My intention was to help the first student answer, but I didn’t move back to them to help them produce the answer. I was too keen to move on instead of allowing the S their voice.

In terms of MIC, my whiteboard work seemed excellent. I did exactly what I had planned, and managed to use it as a tool to reduce T-talk, scaffold answers with Ss and even elicit new sentences. I also used the WB to correct errors, helping Ss to identify where the problem was and letting them fix it themselves. I also did this verbally a number of times - only ever helping the S to identify the problems and fix them themselves.

A lot of my other MIC techniques were on the positive side, too. This could be seen well when I explained the reading activity, where I used plenty of gesture and clear speech. Though I got the impression my Ss understood me, I could have made sure of this by getting them to rephrase the instructions or explain what they had to do. Also, to make things really clear I could have shuffled the actual paper rather than using a gesture. Using real examples is usually simpler to understand!

My last worry is that I didn’t give enough time for all of my Ss to interact. They all had a chance to talk during the pair work, but I find that getting one student to speak takes so long that I both forget who has spoken and run out of time to get everyone to speak before the class. I wonder if there is a solution to this or if I will have to use choral repetition to make sure that everyone gets to speak rather than spending the majority of their time listening and watching.

Conclusions

I was very pleased with my microteaching, but have identified areas that need some work. I need to look more engaged and interested in class, and need to make sure I give every student time to use their voice. While I’m using the whiteboard and MIC techniques pretty well, I am still speaking too fast when not using the TLC. These aren’t problems that can’t be fixed, though; I’m confident that I will be able to do something about these and the future issues I spot thanks to this tool of self-reflection. To a brighter future and better reflection!

Week 9: Wrapping Up Activities

One of the great advantages of trying to teach communicative lessons is that it opens up so many more opportunities to just have fun in class. My attempts to give non-corrective feedback are getting much better, and though my students aren't there yet they're getting the idea of our classroom time being a conversation rather than a monologue.

But we want specifics, right? Let's start on the positive side.

My favourite moment from this lesson was my explanation of the first part of the reading activity (from 7:30). I really thought about this and tried to get both the actions and the language as clear as possible, and I think I pulled it off. I told them that:

there is a conversation on the paper (wave of paper),
but that it was mixed up (rolling hands as though mixing).
They had to put it in order (mixing hands now go down in ordered steps)in pairs (two fingers together).
To make sure they understood I gave them another way to understand in telling them:
what the first (one hand at top)and last (other hand at bottom) sentences should be.

I only wish that I have made it a little more communicative by getting the students to either repeat what I was saying or to work out what we had to do. I didn't quite check the comprehension enough, and this showed when I had to go and help a couple of pairs understand what to do after the activity started.

Continuing with the more critical air, I'm feeling the need to work out a better way to wrap up activities. This is something I felt about my micro-teaching assignments so far, too. I find that I can begin and run an activity pretty well, but when everyone comes back together my analysis, guidance, and language focus seem vague and unhelpful. It doesn't help that I can't seem to get my classes to re-focus after communicative activities.

(See 11:45) My first mistake in this class was to choose a couple of boys who probably represent the lowest level English speakers in the class. My aim was to get them involved (because I knew they had the right answer), but they struggled to read it and I was distracted by other students not listening. In order to solve both problems of these I let another pair continue the dialogue. I hadn't, however, considered that they might have different dialogues, and we soon got confused about who was wrong and right. Rather than let the students sort this out I told them outright that one team was wrong, and moved on to one I knew was right.

To avoid this situation I think I needed to get one pair to read their entire dialogue and then get other teams to agree or disagree about the order. This would avoid confusion and allow some more productive dialogue.

I really need to work out how to keep my students engaged when an activity is over, partly through my classroom management but more importantly through being confident and useful when giving my students feedback.

Week 8.1: Setting Up Pair Work

I didn't get far through my video before I found plenty to talk about. The following reflection covers the section of the following video from 0:28 to 3:24.

Before I get into MIC though, I want to make three personal notes. Skip over the bullets if you want pure MIC!

• I didn't realize how much I over-act during my classes. I intend this to show enthusiasm and keep the kids interested, but perhaps it doesn't seem genuine… Perhaps just strange? When I do it to this extent at least.  Maybe I’m just over-reacting to try to make up for lack of control of the class?
• How can I get this class to stop speaking Korean?! And so loudly! Actually, I feel like it’s more important to get them listening first, and I really struggle with this. I can get them quiet and focused for a writing or listening activity, but any time they’re encouraged to speak, the classroom explodes with noise! Anyhow, I need to work on this.
• I found that I spent a lot of time trying to elicit answers from my students. This wasn't helped with phrases designed to elicit answers such as “How can I answer?”, though at least now this is made more clear through my use of the white board (I wrote the start of the answer and pointed to it to provide a scaffold). I feel like I shouldn’t be spending this much time only eliciting answers for a simple greeting (as seen from 0:50-2:08), although it was a part of the TLC for this lesson. Should I just tell them more of the answers to get through it faster? Was it just that I use too many examples? My main worry is that taking this much time will cause my students to lose whatever attention they have left.

Moving on to MIC, then.

The first and most obvious problem with my MIC for this lesson came when trying to get the students to ask each other “How was your weekend?” in pairs. It went wrong from the moment I started suggesting pair work. I remember making an effort to speak slowly, make gestures and paraphrase to make it really clear. Watching the video I’m not sure if I managed this.

First of all, I only used one gesture that even suggested pair work! The rest were me flailing my arms about in very fluid, but completely incomprehensible, gestures. I guess it’s good that I’m moving, but I need to consider ways I can better convey the idea of pair work through gesture. At least doing the same gesture more than once might be a start!

I also made sure to paraphrase my explanation of pair work, too. Unfortunately it was using language my students probably didn’t know, and didn’t come with any other MIC techniques. This is where my extra (helpful) gesturing should have been. Also, I could have perhaps asked one pair to demonstrate what to do.

Another problem with my explanation was that I only implied that the students should start the pair work through my language. Most of them need a clearer starting moment. This meant that the students with better English spoke, but much of the rest of the class looked like lost sheep who gathered they had to do something, but not what. Though it’s not a good idea to interrupt an activity, I felt it necessary to get everyone on track and so continued to give instructions. This gave me a chance to use some much better gesturing, including pointing my hands at two students, then pointing my hands together. My language was still unhelpful though and didn’t point much towards pair work: “together, the girls, the boys…” (my intention being for the two boys and two girls to make pairs in one team).

The most spectacular part of my teacher talk demonstrated to my students just how much I knew what I was doing, and how much I cared about what was going on. At around 2:37 I threw down my hands before me and threw out an offhand comment: “Just talk please”. My attitude in this brief moment demonstrates my frustration with struggling to explain something simple and trying to get the whole class to follow (and listen to) me for once. However I can see how it could have displayed to my students a sense of annoyance or lack of care for the class. Such moments must be detrimental to the classroom atmosphere, and will work against me much more than my over-acted upbeat performance will work for it.

I mustn't let this happen! Classroom atmosphere is everything!

But I really have my work cut out for me with this class. I guess I’ll have to reconsider my approach to teaching them.

Week 8: Focusing on What's Important (CIs and MIC)

I spent the last couple of weeks not recording my lessons with the argument that I don’t have time to prepare a lesson well enough to justify recording them. Sure, I’ve been thinking about CIs and MIC but not enough to make a good, watchable video. Turns out I was missing the point.

This week I subscribed to an alternate philosophy and just record my damn lessons, whatever my level of preparation. That means that when I turned up to work this morning with no lesson plan I recorded the lesson anyway. I had about twenty minutes to think up a lesson about the past tense and the language I’d use to help my students out as much as possible. And so here we have an example of a teacher on the back foot, and a real glimpse at how I teach these days:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUHKNJFjm0A&feature=g-upl

The biggest shock I had after considering my lessons today (I did the same one four times) was the amount of language I assumed my students would remember. At one point I had a list of eight letters on the whiteboard which were supposed to give the students a clue about the past tense verbs we used last Monday. Even though I got them to discuss the answers in groups before I called on students most of them found this activity really hard; I hadn’t made the input comprehensible! I duly changed this in later lessons by giving them an example along with the full present tense verb which they had to change to the past tense.

Must make... input... comprehensible...

Following this, I think I am generally doing a better job of making input comprehensible. I noticed that I’m consciously trying to slow the heck down. I’m using much more gesture, though still not enough. I’m also using the whiteboard much more effectively.

For example, not so long ago I would open the class with the same greeting and answering sequence in the hope that the repetition would allow students to get the hang of it. But at no point had I made it clear how they could answer or what we were saying; I just assumed they would get it. Some of them, it would seem, hadn’t got it. So today I wrote up an introductory question on the board, took them through it (with some choral repetition and comprehension checks here and there to help them out) and then got them to ask each other in pairs before calling on them individually and getting them to ask each other questions in front of the class. They seemed to get it more easily.

Hopefully these techniques will mean there’s more chance the language will stick this time around!