Week 13: Practicing with Pronunciation

I just spent the morning teaching my fourth graders "How much is this?". We had a good time, and I thought it might be a good idea to get some imediate reflections on it down, even though I didn't record it.

I want to get an output reflection up soon, but all my output lessons will be coming next week. This week is strictly practice - the beginning of new material. But any reflection is better than none, so here we go.

Skip down to "What I Did" for the juicy CI and MIC details!

What We Did (Thoughts on the overall lesson)

We began our lesson with a culture section, where I elicited from students different currencies from the English speaking world. They all got US dollars pretty easily, but it took more work for them to get my native country's British Pounds Sterling. Many of them expected the UK to use Euros (being in Europe), but they now know better!

I did question the value of teaching them about UK currency, as it's not likely they will be needing it any time soon, if ever. However I think I can justify it as adding a personal touch to the classroom, and my students seemed interested to know more about where I'm from. I think we can stick this under a "motivation" label.

We also spent a few minutes talking about where the various symbols need to be written - I've noticed that my fourth graders usually write 8$ rather than $8, and today was no different. We fixed this together and hopefully came away with some cross-cultural knowledge!

The language learning was focused into two main areas. First we did a listening excercise where we looked at numbers (particularly the difference in pronunctiation between, for example, 30 and 13), and a practice speaking excercise where the students tried to guess the price of various items using the target language content "How much is the _____?" and "It's $____".

What I Did (Thoughts on the specifics of my teaching)

I was really happy to get a chance to teach some pronunciation in class today. We focused on how to tell the difference between numbers like 30 and 13 by both overexagerating the stress and writing it on the board: THIR-ty and THIR-TEEN. I modeled both words with a hand gesture (fist pump, anyone?) to emphasize where the stress goes, and encouraged the students to repeat with me. I think they could've done with some more speaking practice, but I skipped over to the listening part first. From the way they completed the listening activity, where they listened to a short dialogue where someone bought an item, the majority managed to identify the words correctly. Great start!

Unfortunately I didn't give them extra time to practice this specific pronunciation issue, but moved onto the practice activity. The first time I explained it I clearly didn't do a good job, as I soon had to stop the activity and explain it again. I believe the difficulty was the word "guess", which was pretty crucial to "guessing" the price. Though I did do comprehension checks and got students to re-explain what to do, I think the problem was that I chose the wrong parts to focus on. They understood, for example, that they had five seconds, but they didn't know what to do during those five seconds. This was clear from how a few groups just sat there without talking!

To clear this up I chose to give them a rough idea of the word "guess" very quickly in Korean - 가격을 마춰봐! This saved some explanation time and allowed us to focus on the target language. I think this was almost a moral choice I had to make on the spot. I wonder now if it was a cop-out on my part or if it was a sensible and useful teaching decision - after all, it allowed me to get the activity started quickly. I guess in this case it was a cop-out, since I had already given the activity a false start, though that's not to say I believe that Korean doesn't have a place in my classroom (as my SLA research presentation on L1 in the classroom displayed). I could've used the wasted time to demonstrate guessing a price - why do I keep forgetting that the best way to explain something is to show it?

One of the better asepcts of today's class was my attempts to get everyone speaking. It may have taken a little time, but I successfully got 16 different students to either ask or answer the target questions to confirm the answers to the listening activity, and during the main practice activity I asked each team to both ask and answer the question. This meant that one team guessed the price of the item, then asked the next team what they thought. Given that there are six teams, it didn't take too long to get around everybody for each item.

That was my ideal, at least. In reality I still find it hard to get everyone involved. I find students turning off and even when I try to motivate them with strategies such as "if everyone in your team doesn't speak you can't win" (not my actual words) they don't like to participate. I guess this must be down to my classroom atmosphere. I need to think of ways to encourage everyone to speak!

A Bonus Problem

One of the other problems I'm struggling to find an answer to recently is a number of students of various ages in different classes who are completely disinteresting in everything I do. I might offer them a game, but they claim it to be boring, or perhaps a song that they don't care about. The other students have a great time, and often if I manage to get these students involved they enjoy it too, but they come to my classes claiming that everything is boring. I don't like to think this is due to my teaching, as we play plenty of games and have lots of fun, there are just these few students... Am I too inconsistent? Did I let them down by not fulfilling my promises? I'm really not sure, but they tend to ruin the atmosphere! What on earth can I do with them?!

Week 11: ICC Reflective Video 2

This is the second of my ICC reflections which are due week 12. The last one, which employed CCDA around some Christmas adverts, can be found here: http://tomsteaching.blogspot.kr/2012/11/week-10-icc-reflective-video-1.html.

Gestures

After giving some thought to what would be most engaging and interesting to my 6^th grade students I eventually settled upon gesture. They know about this and use it a lot when they speak in Korean, but in English class they don’t have a set of gestures to go with what they say; most of the time they’re carrying their books, a card or some such. I was also aware that many of these kids are getting well into puberty and I have to spend copious time stopping them from fighting, resolving minor bullying issues or showing them that swearing is not ok (in the classroom at least).

My idea was to show them that different gestures can mean different things in different countries, and that they should be careful. I also wanted to encourage them to use gesture when they spoke English. The video clip below is from the first fifteen minutes of one of these classes, and focuses on the gestures part of the lesson. This was followed by some more focused language learning about “What would you like to ______?”, with the lesson culminating in a pair-finding activity in which I encouraged the use of gestures alongside the language.

From a methodological point of view I’m afraid this class seems a little teacher fronted. I spent a lot of time talking about what the different gestures meant rather than allowing the students to speak. I could have easily combated this by allowing them to talk in groups about what they thought each gesture meant before sharing with the class.I could also have better used my time by asking them to suggest situations in which we could use each gesture. My own example of this can be seen after 5:18, where I talk about using a certain gesture in France. If I had given them time to think more themselves then they could have personalized the ideas much more and may have come away with more intercultural understanding.

I was also a little worried about the moral content of the lesson – should I be teaching my 6^th graders how to swear in another language?! Before the class I justified this by telling myself that these kids are all swearing with each other anyway, and that there must be some value in being frank about such subjects. When the classes were finished, however, I was somewhat worried I might get a parent calling me and complaining about my teaching, but I got no such phone call.

Despite my worries I think there was enough value in letting them know to be careful how they use their hands in other countries, and they all seemed to leave with a good knowledge about other cultures being different, and this not only being acceptable but great news (perhaps because it allowed them to swear at their teachers without the teachers knowing what was going on…).

I like to think that there will be a few students who later travel to England and think twice about flashing a backwards “V” when they take photos!

Week 11: Teaching Vocabulary

Although the lesson I recorded wasn't specifically designed to show vocabulary teaching, I figured that, as I was planning to blog about it anyway, I might as well take the vocabulary teaching elements that happened to be included and blog about those. It's a shame that I won't be able to talk about the CI and MIC aspects of it, as I really tried to push it as far as I could with this lesson without too much planning - I want to see if these ideas are starting to seep into my subconscious! If you're reading this and have time I'd be interested to know how you think this lesson went. It gets a bit out of hand when the students are producing language at the end, though...

Anyhow, let's lay down the context. My lesson this week was about prepositions, specifically "There is a _______ on/in/under the ______." Most of my students have learnt these before, but quite a while ago. This lesson is designed to be partly review of what they know and more depth into the same subject. I believe last year they learned "Where is the cat? It's in the box." Pretty basic stuff.

This time around, then, we took the same simple prepositions and tried to expand their meaning beyond "on" meaning "on top of" and "in" meaning only "inside". My students have a very narrow view of these very widely used words. So what did I do to teach this vocabulary and how did it work? Have a look at the first ten minutes of this class if you have a moment:

I first began by eliciting the vocabulary by showing the students a situation - beginning with placing a rubber on my head. As well as getting some giggles and funny looks, my students correctly produced the word "on", and proceeded to complete the target sentence for the lesson (recycled from the previous lesson). While I didn't manage it in this video, in other classes I managed to expand the meaning of "on" to include anything that is "stuck" onto something - the clearest example being the location of the clock on our classroom wall, or a mark on someone's face.

In this way I managed to get students to construct and develop their own meaning for the word and show them how to produce it in a sentence. I did the same for "behind" by placing pencils behind my ears, and for "in" by holding the scissors in my hand. My students seem to find this kind of visual demonstration very clear, and in my observations of a similar production activity later I found that they had a thorough understanding of these prepositions in relation to the body.

There were also a couple of vocab items that came up during class which I hadn't predicted my students having a problem with. Each provided a chance to use a different kind of vocabulary explanation.

The first was how the word "scissors" is used in English, and how to place it into our target sentence correctly. My students weren't sure whether scissors are countable or not - thus whether they need to be used with "is" or "are". I tried to explain this quickly by showing them the two blades of the scissors and comparing them to a pair of glasses, a vocabulary item they are more familiar with. I then elicited the correct sentence form from the students, and even made sure they knew how to spell the word by eliciting it from them. It was clear that they weren't sure about the spelling, and I'm not sure if my teaching was effective - I merely wrote the word up as the correct letters were called out. Hopefully this provided the students with a chance to notice the spelling, though I think a chance to produce the spelling themselves would have been helpful.

The last vocabulary item also got the shortest attention, as it came up in the middle of my first presentation activity. As the students were reading the instructions off the interactive board and following them by decorating their human statues (you didn't watch the video? It's fun, go have a look :D) it became clear that not everyone knew the word "shoulders". To keep the activity flowing and to help those who were confused I quickly modeled the sound of the word, showed them the meaning by touching my shoulders and repeated the word in Korean when they had made the connection themselves.

I find these simple vocab items fairly easy to explain, and I feel that I do a good job of them along the lines that Nation suggested. However, if I were to teach harder vocabulary to an older, higher level group, I feel that I would have a lot more trouble. There is so much useful information about each word that I can't get across, and I feel I'd need a lot of preparation time to get it right. I think it would be valuable for me to try a lesson based purely on vocabulary and dictionary use, as at the moment I feel I would find myself flailing and unsure what to do. For now, though, I'll stick to adding in vocabulary items in opportune moments. This seems like the quickest and most useful way for my students' situation!

Week 10: ICC Reflective Video 1

This is the first of my ICC reflections which are due week 12. The second one, in which I try to teach about the intercultural usages of gesture, can be found here: http://tomsteaching.blogspot.kr/2012/11/week-11-icc-reflective-video-2.html.

Note: This post reflects on the CCDA parts of this lesson, which run from 9"32 to 28"57.

I understand what we’re supposed to be doing with Cross Cultural Discourse Analysis. It makes sense, and I can see the value in doing it. But actually trying to make it work in my classroom is a real struggle. Here’s the first attempt I made a couple of weeks ago.

Actually, this isn’t my first attempt at culture in the classroom. In the past I’ve done sections on holidays and customs, and occasionally even taught about table manners. However these were always me showing my students what other cultures are like. It was very much a presentation, with perhaps a couple of students trying things out. I never helped them engage with or think about the material, and I doubt they developed intercultural competence from what I taught.

My aim in this lesson, however, was to let the students work out more about other cultures for themselves with my lead. Let’s talk about how that went (I’ll give you a hint: not well!).

After a look at me showing the students the first video (about Paris Baguette) it was very clear that I was still dragging my students through the material and pointing out interesting things on the way. I asked them rather meaningless questions (Who is in the video? What are they doing?) and proceeded to tell them what this means for each culture. All my questions were very leading, and if the students didn’t give me the answer I was looking for I guided them to it.

The work we did around the second video was a bit better. Because the content was more unfamiliar to the students and the video was more interesting they seemed more engaged. They were genuinely trying to work out what the people in the video were doing. We managed to sort this out and identify who Christmas in the UK seems to be for, and the activity that followed afterwards was good for demonstrating this point. However I seem to have dropped the cultural significance of the video when I began the activity, and simply refocused on only the English. I think this was partly due to a lack of time, and partly because I felt I had pushed the cultural discourse as far as it could go with these students. They were losing focus again!

I can’t work out a way around this. For a start it is evident from the recording that I struggle to keep the class focused; I can get them to pay attention, but when I start asking questions and try to create a dialogue with them a dozen different conversations burst out (many in Korean, too). On top of this many of the students seem to understand my questions, but most of them aren’t really capable or motivated enough to answer them. Or perhaps they can answer, but their answers aren’t as meaningful as they would be in Korean. They say what they know rather than what they need to say to express a real opinion or observation. How can I develop a meaningful discussion of cultural differences in a large class who don’t have the language skill or focus to express anything helpful to the subject?

Perhaps I just chose the wrong type of activity. They’re just not ready for a discussion! But then what else do I do to encourage CCDA? My next idea for a lesson is to do an activity from this week’s reading – Activity H (cross cultural trivia) - but rather than reading them out like a quiz I would demonstrate each one and ask groups of students to assign a meaning to each one. I could then help them to see how different cultures have different forms of non–verbal communication. Might this work better? I’m hoping so, because I don’t want to try to work my way through another class like this one!

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.