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.