Category: Teaching Reflections

Our last class was bittersweet. Due to the last few weeks of assignments and exams, we only had two students who were able to come in, which was unfortunate as the tasks were tailor-made for a group of 5-6 students. We made it work, nonetheless, with the fewer options in front of us, and giving up wasn’t one of them.

We prepared a sort of Olympic game for our class where students had to compete against each other in order to win titles at the award ceremony. We’ve included various games while keeping the focus on the vocabulary covered in the last two and a half months. We had “genres misspelling”, the classic “Hangman”, a game of “synonym/antonym”, a crossword puzzle with a mystery word, and last, but not least, charades. What I’ve witnessed that day was far more surprising than the other classes. First, one of our students came back after 2-3 weeks! It was nice to be able to see them one last time. Second, our students were helping each other in the given tasks! The lesson was meant to be very competitive, but it was camaraderie that won that day. I thought that was incredibly sweet.

We had a lot of fun with the activities we programmed, even with the limitations of Big Blue Button. The last ten weeks have been quite the roller coaster ride with a few ups and downs, but what a great ride it has been. Those ten classes were a great experience I will treasure forever. I’m incredibly saddened that it’s almost over, but good things have an end. It seems that great things end faster.

Thank you.

We’re almost at the finish line! Woo!

Our ninth class went smoother than butter, the energy was there, the students were participating, interacting, and were fully engaged in our lesson. What a complete contrast to our eighth hour. We ended up using all of our filler activities for the first time ever, which helped in keeping a nice upbeat tempo. Here’s the thing that needs to be addressed if I want these reflections to be completely transparent: our level 2 student wasn’t in class that day. Ken and I had built a lesson plan that would cater to the needs of our higher-level students as well as our lower-level student. We were all set to create a breakout room where I would help our level 2 with the activities, but since they didn’t come to class, the comprehension and assimilation speed increased unexpectedly. It took us by surprise, and we even finished right on time.

We taught our students about reading strategies: skimming and scanning. For our warm-up, Ken had the idea of discussing how the students already used them in their L1 and that the objective of the class was to practice it in English. We started off by explaining the strategies and recognizing which one is used in which contexts. We assessed their comprehension with a quick activity, which they all passed seamlessly. We then moved on to an easy classroom exercise where the students had to use the strategies in a quick manner, and finished our main activities by increasing the difficulty with a race where they had to skim and scan through a 3-page newspaper article (implementing Krashen’s i+1 theory). We were doing so well with time that we had to include our filler activity: a word-search with keywords related to our teaching. We finished the class with a feedback survey that they had to complete before leaving and the result was actually very short and sweet! I felt incredibly proud of the relationship I’ve developed with them in only nine classes.

Having smaller groups has its pros and cons, they’re easier to assess and manage, but developing the skills necessary for group work is very limited to impossible. If we had a group of 20 students for this lesson plan, we’d need to implement group work, come up with unbiased ways to select the groups and mould the questions for group discussions, we’d also rely on peer correction and pair up the students.

It was a shame that our level 2 student wasn’t there, I think it would have been beneficial for them to have learned about the reading strategies.

We thought this class would be a bit of a review given the fact that we’ve been teaching them for two months. We had a quick recap about:

• Genres
• Parts of Speech
• Guessing meaning
• Topic & Main Idea

I had everything planned to an absolute T, calculated all the possible outcomes, and of course the one outcome I didn’t expect happened… It was my idea to break everyone in their own breakout room, have them reflect individually, and come back with their thoughts after some critical thinking. I wanted to cater to our level 2 student alone, but it was a challenge to only point them toward “shared notes”… We attempted doing individual work with the students, and even prepared a set of activities for them around a “news in levels” article (we have a level 2, two level 3s, and a level 4 in class). It backfired on us.

First, they were not given enough time to complete the activities.

Second, I lost almost all their work when the breakout rooms expired (I managed to copy and paste ⅔ on my computer).

Third, our level 2 student didn’t make it past the first question, which opened my eyes to the kind of care they actually needed.

As no one made it to the last activity, I proposed we would do it together in class. It was the topic and main idea exercise, so I worked on it based on the model we were given in the level 3 textbook. Our level 4 student remarked that something wasn’t right with the text and it wasn’t what they had learned in their level 4 writing class (introduction, supporting detail #1, #2, #3, conclusion). As classroom management is still new to me, I tried to ask what was wrong about it, but they couldn’t really explain. Our sponsor teacher jumped in to rescue us and explained that they were not wrong to think that, but in this case, it is different. I couldn’t have possibly said that the reading was catered to lower-level students too… I felt overwhelmed, the wide range of mixed abilities makes it almost impossible to cater to each individual’s needs. At that moment, I felt defeated and the self-deprecating voice in me said, “You’ve let your teammate down, you’ve lost your students’ trust, you couldn’t help the level 2 student, you couldn’t help yourself when the level 4 student questioned the material.”

I voiced out my thoughts to our sponsor teacher, and she was fantastic in lifting my spirits up, so did Ken. She mentioned that being sensitive is a great quality for a teacher, and it’s ok to feel what I feel. I made a few mistakes that day, but I have to make them in order to learn, and brace myself for more curveballs.

The following Friday, in practicum, we discussed in our groups about how we felt about our classes, and I was relieved to find out that I wasn’t alone.

This week has been intense. The load of assignments and work have increased, and I let it get to me in class.

After a bit of self-reflection, I identified that I informed without truly engaging my students. During my part of the lesson, I rushed through the vocab, I did my listen and repeat as per the lesson plan, but I didn’t ask for questions, I didn’t ask if they wanted to practice again. I forgot… I was so focused on doing my part from A to Z that I neglected the learning aspect of it. I had the chance to review the students’ comprehension of the words before our last activity.

Here are a few highlights of our 7th hour:

• During our individual classwork, I messaged our lower-level student to find out whether he needed help, as he usually messages me, he politely declined. (great!)
• Students had fun with our last activity: Skribbl.
• Ken was calm and collected as usual and did a great job of informing students of the different ways they can ask us questions, which was aimed at students who tend to avoid risks.
• Students were more vocal than usual for the exit ticket.

Today we taught our students about Topic and Main Idea.

I was in class early, and one of our students was too, so we engaged in conversation. He was having some issues understanding me, I tried to use simpler words and often resorted to typing for him. He turned his camera on, and I think he may have been copying and pasting what I typed in a translator. I wasn’t aware of his methods, but now that I am, it may change my way of teaching.

Class begins and we show a funny image of a giant panda. To everyone’s surprise, Ken shows up wearing a rice field hat! Some laughed and questioned the image, which built enough curiosity for what followed next. We thought it’d be good to talk mainly about topic and introduce main idea later on. We began with a game where students had to logically guess which topic belonged to which series of objects or things. They guessed accurately which showed promise. Ken talked about the vocabulary and pronunciation of words to prepare the students for reading aloud later on (listen and repeat).

I think Ken covered the topic of topics extensively, which may have taken a bit of time, but was essential especially given my pre-class conversation. He did an excellent job of providing accurate tips and examples. We then moved on to main ideas. I was a little skeptical about the timing of everything at this point that I may have involuntarily rushed through my explanation. The students seem to be ok with it, as they didn’t ask questions. Fortunately, we squeezed just about enough time to do our group activity. It was crucial to do, it was our only way of assessing the students. Ken and I had our respective groups to find the topic and main idea of a paragraph, I had one advanced student and one of the lower-level students. To my surprise, the lower level student did an amazing job at the task. I felt validated as a teacher right then and there. The small victories make the difference.

I think we’ve successfully covered our objectives for this class, and the students demonstrated our effective teaching through the group work. We then moved on to our closing activity, the exit ticket. Students told us what they’ve learned from the readings or the lesson in general.

If I could change one thing about this lesson, it’s always the timing of everything. I wonder if we cover too much material and fill the time with unnecessary topics. Perhaps we take for granted the students’ ability to comprehend the lesson. We still refining our radar when it comes to whether they’ve captured the intended information well or not.

I am beyond proud of us for this class. It was our best class yet! Such a contrast from our 4th hour of teaching.

It took us 5 weeks to get our students this comfortable around us, and I’m so happy to bear the fruits of our labour. This class was extra special, as I wrote the reading for this class (granted it was inspired from a story, but completely re-imagined).
Here are a few highlights of this week’s teaching:

• Students were more engaging than before.
• Ken’s acting during our reading was fantastic! I would not have done it better!
• The energy in the class was phenomenal.
• I partnered up with our level 2 student for Kahoot! and helped them win (they sent me a private ‘thank you’ after, which I thought was incredibly sweet). For once he shone among all the level 3’s.
• Students used their critical thinking to guess the killer of the story.

It seems that we followed the nativist theory for this class. We depended on the ‘optimal input’ to help our students’ language acquisition, i.e. through reading and listening. I believe they were able to perceive the bigger picture of the story even if they had not understood 100% of the words. The fact that the story was compelling and interesting enough helped stimulate their brain, and activate their cognitive process through critical thinking. They were forgetting that they were learning, probably even forgot that this was an English class. Our comprehension included numerous subjective questions and classic comprehension questions, which pressured them to guess, and trust their opinion.

Unfortunately, we were unable to cover the pronunciation section fully. We’re still learning to manage our time, but I’m sure that the students left class that day satisfied.

Yes, I’ve beaten myself up over that last class. What I dreaded the most to happen has, and I am slowly processing it. Hashing it over in my head in order to understand the why, what, where and how I’ve managed to deliver only half of the lesson plan in class. Our sponsor teacher did remind us that not every class will be perfect, and sometimes some activities can run longer than anticipated.

If I am being completely honest, my mind keeps going to the idea that mixed classes are challenging, BUT, like we’ve learned in practicum, I can keep pointing my finger at anything, and it won’t change the situation. The only thing I can change is myself, and believe in my abilities to make this work. I’ve asked my mother for some advice, as she works with mixed classes of over 30 high school students. She suggested that we prepare some extra materials for the level 3 students to work on while the teachers focus on helping the level 2. That’s definitely something that I will keep in mind.

Our sponsor teacher suggested that we carry over the other half of the lesson plan into our next class, so that’s possibly what we will do. She has been of great help in giving us tips, and telling us our strengths.

On the plus side, they turned on their cameras (except for one person) to participate in our warm-up activity!!! That’s a point in my book. All is not lost. It’s a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

Last class had its ups and downs overall, but we learn from the obstacles on our road, don’t we?

The biggest challenge is still student participation, the way we are left wandering in a desert realm, after asking a question, is all but re-assuring. I’m often left wondering whether my students are a reflection of me. How so? It’s a little bit of the pygmalion effect + a dash of self-deprecation. The way I carry myself in class, my actions and my beliefs, affect my students’ very own actions and beliefs, which is why they become a reflection of me, turning this experience into a vicious cycle… I’m not entirely sure how to get out of it, but I hope I do in due time.

I do believe; however, that Ken and I are inching our way into making the students feel more comfortable with every class. Last Tuesday, we had a word-search race activity, and that’s when I was pleasantly surprised; the students love competition. They were active, interested and engaged!! It’s always the small victories that mean the most.

This week, we were assigned with an exercise about genres for our reading lab, so we cleverly used this topic to our advantage. We created a slide with different genres of writing, turned on the multi-user function, and found out what our students loved to read (in their L1 or other languages).

What have I learned? I’ve learned that I should include myself more in the lessons. For example, when I ask Ss how their weekend went, I’m so focused on students replying to my questions that I forget to describe my own weekend. I forget that this interaction should be a conversation, not an interrogation. I think what I also lack is the ability to involve everyone when I call on students to volunteer. I don’t do it voluntarily, but in the midst of everything, I hate to admit that I do do it.

I had the chance to watch myself give a class, thanks to our micro-teaching assignment, and I noticed how fast I spoke. It made me cringe. I wanted to get into my screen, and scream at myself, “Slow down! You’re not on fire! You’re scaring the students.”

Another thing that I need to work on would be to cast away this idea that all students have the same weaknesses. In my mind, there is a plane and everyone is equally on that plane, which deters me from catering to students who may feel behind or left out. I forget about their own personal issues, and I don’t question the kind of mindset they’re in when they click that “join session” button…

What I will continue to do is keep trying. I will keep trying to find ways to help students find their safe space in my class, to help them engage more, to feel that it’s ok to make mistakes, as mistakes are the boundaries to language acquisition.

Update**
Something happened the next day. Ken and I were having our meeting with our sponsor teacher when our students started coming into the virtual class. I thought to myself, “Is it yesterday?”

After a little bit of explanation, our meeting turned into a casual conversation. Everyone put up their cameras, talked about their hobbies (I have an artist in my class. haha), what they thought of the online classroom and many more other topics. It was such a great outcome to our meeting.

Time is not our friend… yet!

Ken and I went a little over the allotted time of this week’s class too, but we managed to finish our tutoring that day.
I think we did a good job. My take-away from this week’s teaching is that we are making great progress at helping the students feel more comfortable to participate.

It wasn’t my intention to use the multi-user function during class, but it was a lifesaver in multiple ways:
– Shy ss don’t have to talk, or turn on their cameras, and still participate.
– Peer tutoring, a student can learn from the interaction/action/reaction of their peers.
– Ss have a sense of freedom.

If I could do anything differently:
– I would take more time explaining things, I felt rushed because we were approaching the end of the class (one hour is so short a time…)
– I would improve the balance between the skills I want to work on in class (I may have focused too much on grammar).

To be continued

Wow… That first hour of teaching was incredibly insightful to me. Let’s talk about the process.

Every project that I throw myself at needs to be perfect to a T, and that could be the perfectionist in me talking. Lady Perfection has taken me down with her many a time for trying to be too well prepared, believe it or not there were times when I was over rehearsed. If that wasn’t enough already to poison my ability to create a 50 mins lesson plan, here comes Mr. Overthinker. He, on the other hand, enjoys bringing doubt in my mind with pointless questions, “are you sure this will take 5 mins? I bet you it will take 10.”, “do you really believe this is an interesting activity?”, “comprehension questions? the 1950’s called, they want their ideas back!”

Therefore, I prepared filler activities, just in case we find ourselves short on time and revised my presentation at least a 1000 times and paid attention to the layout, graphics and colours. Basically everything! Even the choice of font. I thought my material was foolproof. I had a script to take me exactly from point A to point B to point C!

Let’s talk about the execution.

I went into that class and started talking and I came to the sudden realization that these students were looking up to me to teach them something. For a second, I forgot everything I had planned and I started to wing it. Forget the script! We’re completely straying and landing on point D, point G, point Z right now. Boy! I thought I was fully prepared.

However, it was the best thing that could have happened. Ken and I were quick on our feet to talk through the awkward, silent moments and kept a nice flow between activities and lessons. I was up and ready to engage conversation (I remembered Jack’s metaphor of the tennis game) and I learned so much about all the different energies and personalities that were present in that classroom.

At the warm-up, people were a bit shy to come forward by themselves and talk so we had to select them, however, they started to loosen up and talk about a lot of things. Our sponsor teacher even praised us for succeeding in making one particular student open up and talk about themselves.

During our little comprehension passage, I asked if my group had any questions for me and they did not. Everything was clear. This brought me to the conclusion that:
maybe my text was too easy?
maybe they’re too shy to admit if something wasn’t completely clear?

Nonetheless, we had 8 mins left before going back to the main classroom and my students were done with their exercise. I wouldn’t have known that unless I had asked. I felt my feet get cold and my heart racing. Oh no. I suppressed my mini panic and engaged in conversation about words in the passage, fun facts, and answering in complete sentences, which were well received.

The most daunting side of this experience is probably the dead silence after I ask a question to the class. Absolutely no one volunteers to answer (that’s a lie, one did participate very eagerly) and due to the online setting, it’s practically impossible to detect confusion (only depending on the tone of voice).

The next activity took longer than we expected and that’s what we will be working on more from now on. Ken and I finished 4 mins after the class was supposed to end, which isn’t a lot, but good to keep in mind.

This first hour was a good test for us. We dipped our toes in the pool and hope that next time, it will all be smooth sailing from there on out.