Peer Observation #1: Observed – Listening Strategies

For this lesson, I was observed by my former CELTA trainer and Senior Teacher/Teacher Trainer at my institute. It was part of an annual “Graded Teacher Observation” system at my institution where every teacher is assessed at least once a year with the intention to check where each teacher is at that current moment in their teaching career and to encourage further teacher development.

The Lesson

I choose to do a lesson on Listening Strategies. I had been researching Listening Strategies for my assessed presentation in TE719: Methodology and I felt that as I was in the midst of learning about this topic, it might be a good opportunity to put what I had been reading into practice. My first Assessed Observation by Gary Hicks was the previous day – that lesson had been built on a listening which didn’t work in the classroom due to technology failure. I decided to use that same listening as the basis of this Listening Strategies lesson as I had set up some context around the listening the day before and the students seemed keen to know what the listening was going to be about.

So, I took the original listening from the previous lesson (a song, Bang Bang by Nancy Sinatra, written by Sonny Bono 1966) and adapted the tasks to make a more comprehensive listening lesson. I also created a brand-new worksheet tor raise awareness and generate discussion of Listening Strategies.

The basic out-line of the lesson was:

  • A live micro-listening to focus students attention on different ways we can listen for different information (Adapted from Stephen Brown’s Teaching Listening 2006)
  • A discussion of different strategies students already use or can adopt using examples from John Field’s Listening in the Language Classroom 200?)
  • Listening using strategies discussed previously (first a listening for key information and then hypothesising, and secondly a more targeted listening for specific information).
  • A third listening with the script and a few exercises designed to allow them.
  • Throughout this section, they are encouraged to revise their answers as more information comes in rather than being told outright what is correct and what is incorrect. My intent here was to encourage them to deploy their strategies and not feel that it was a listening “test”.
  • A final discussion of listening strategies and how the students feel about them.
  • Optional further micro-listenings were planned in case certain issues arose – for example, I predicted students may mishear “wore” for “was”, so I had an optional minimal pairs dictation planned to focus attention on the difference between those vowel sounds.

How do I feel the lesson went?

There were elements of this lesson that I was pleased about, and some elements that didn’t work so well. The number one issue was that I had planned too much to get done in a single 50 minute lesson. This is a problem that I often have with observed lessons: I usually plan what I am going to do by the week, not the minute. Because of this, the third listening with the script was set for homework and the remainder of the lesson was picked up the following morning. From my perspective (and, I think, the class in general), this is not an issue – everything was achieved well, just not in the timeframe of that specific lesson. Whilst this is not a problem for me or the students, it is a problem when it comes to obsevations (more on this later.)

There were some further technical issues during the lesson that also meant that the listening section of the lesson wasn’t as smooth as I had hoped (and was another fundamental reason why I abandoned the third listening). Basically, many songs in the 60s when recorded in stereo were recorded with the vocal on one channel (left) and all the music on the other (right). In this lesson, the left speaker was cutting in and out meaning the music of the song was really loud, but the vocal (and the essential part for the lesson) was very difficult to hear.

The students seemed to be very engaged with the lesson and in particular the discussion revolving around Strategies went really well. This lesson was a bit of a shot in the dark for me, so I found it encouraging that the students reacted so well to it.

In hindsight, a more conventional listening may have been a better text and perhaps I could have more explicitly done a series of listenings to focus on different skills and strategies. In the “targeted listening”, there was a mix of Listening for Detail and also Listening for Inferring – perhaps those should have been separated and made clear to the students that, for example, questions 1-3 they will definitely hear the answer and in 4-6 they need to speculate.

Overall, at the end of the lesson, I felt moderately positive as I had taken a gamble on something new and implemented my reading from the the Methodology module and, although it did take until the following morning to complete all the activities I had planned, the students seemed to find it really beneficial (I overheard one of my students say to her partner during a group discussion, “I really like this activity… really interesting, useful…” – which always makes the teacher feel good!).

Feedback

So, how did my former CELTA tutor feel about it? Well, during the feedback session I had with her it emerged that she didn’t feel exactly the same.

One of the first things she mentioned was that this lesson was a bit “outside the box” for her and she didn’t initially know what to think about it. The explicit teaching (or awareness-raising) of strategies and the use of a song struck her as somewhat unusual. It was somewhat “outside the box” for me too! However, her view was that the listening strategies discussion went really well and engaged the students.

However, it soon became clear that “outside the box” is not necessairly a good thing when it comes to assessed lesson observations, as she had a series of boxes that needed to be ticked.

The first issue she had was regarding my written plan. As I reflected in my assessed observation with Gary, the writing of the plan is something I’ve noticed I really struggle with – especially when it comes to Aims and Evidence. It’s something I had already noticed and I hope to change in the future by doing some reading around the topic and perhaps working with some peers on how to better write my Aims and Evidence.

The problem with this lesson, is that early on in the design of the lesson, I had planned a Listening for Gist task. However, in deciding to implement strategies I changed that task to focus on listening for key items and then hypothesising about the gist. However, I had forgotten to change the wording from “gist” in the plan. As a result, I failed to complete Lesson Aims and I also failed to design tasks to implement that Aim – two crucial boxes on her assessment form that couldn’t be ticked.

Another failure in the lesson came from the Feedback element. As the lesson was intended to allow students to revise their answers as they developed more understanding of the text, during the feedback of one task, the definitive answer “correct or incorrect” wasn’t established or clarified by me – as they still had another task to do to revise their answers. The final clarified answers to those questions were established – but the following lesson the next day – too late for the tutor. This is a difficult one for me to think about, as my former tutor is right: I didn’t clarify the answers to that particular task in the lesson. But that was my intention, that was deliberate at that stage of the lesson.

Ironically, I do think that how I give feedback needs to be addressed – I saw some elements I wasn’t so happy about in my assessed observation with Gary Hicks – but the points my tutor rose here are not something I feel I need to think about – I can give clarified feedback and I always do – when that is my intention.

In seeing the assessment sheet completed with all those boxes that needed to be ticked, I found it very disheartening. It’s clear that my tutor didn’t see very much of value in my lesson and in the feedback session I had with her there seemed to be no recognition of trying something new, no encouragement for development, just boxes that needed to be ticked.

What Have I Learnt? Where Do I Go From Here?

I think I have learnt something very practical in terms of my career: Tick The Box. Or maybe: Stay Inside The Box.

I felt previously that a lesson observation was something to help your teacher development – to try new things out and discuss what worked and what didn’t. In this instance of the Graded Teacher Observations, that seems to distinctly not be the case. As I previously mentioned, there was no recognition of the fact that this lesson came out of academic reading I had done on the Diploma or that it was a step into the unknown for me.

I realise now that I had been approaching the observation completely incorrectly: It was actually a test. Something to pass or fail. My very inability to recognise it as such ensured I failed. Next time I have an institutional observation, I will make sure I do a lesson I have previously done a hundred times before and do it exactly by the letter. Fulfill the CELTA criteria. I feel fairly sure had I done that, I would have got a much better score. I think I went into that observation with too much optimism – when really, cynicism was needed.

In terms of my Teacher Development, that is something that is a passion for me. I want to try new things out and broaden my horizons, but it’s clear that is something that is valuable for me – not for my institution. Future in-house observations, I will study the boxes that need to be ticked and tick them.

In future, I know I need to do a lot of work on how I write my plans – but I think I had already identified this thanks to my Assessed Observation for the Diploma. This peer observation has clarified that that is something I do need to work on, but I think the main point I’ve taken away from this observation is….

Tick The Box.

Lesson Plan & Feedback

 

Note: This observation and the feedback has stirred up a lot of feelings within in me regarding my role and my institution’s role – I think this may well develop into a Critical Incident. If so, I will edit this post to provide a link to that Critical Incident.

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