Author: Sonja Wootton

Critical reflection lesson

Since attending this lesson I’ve been thinking about what a teacher’s role in implementing change that goes beyond the classroom is, and the impact this could have on society. This idea is known as Critical reflection. Critical reflection is reflection beyond practice, whereby a teacher looks beyond the classroom and the school.  According to Farrell (2018, p95) critical reflection “entails exploring and examining the moral, political and social issues that impact a teacher’s practice both inside and outside the classroom”. Therefore as teachers, we should be analysing and questioning established assumptions about ourselves, the school we work at and the social and political implications of schooling. Lui (2015) as discussed in Nancy’s talk, adds a more social justice perspective to Farrell’s idea of critical reflection. Lui advocates the idea of implementing changes to work towards a better experience for students, a better school and a better society overall.

As part of my preparation for this lesson I read a study by Goulah (2017) about Climate Change and TESOL.The study looks at the field of TESOL needing to respond to the growing problems of climate change. The study involved looking at religious adolescent English language learners curricular engagement with climate change to understand how it affects their language acquisition and literacies development.  It also looked beyond these ideas, and included the affects on epistemological development and religious expression. Even though religion and spirituality are acknowledged in education, there is still an uneasiness about how to deal with moral and spiritual values and incorporating controversial issues into the classroom. The adolescents in this study did not believe in the theory of climate change because it wasn’t in the Bible and they felt it could not be proved. The teacher was able to use a number of different strategies and incorporate both religion and climate change into the classroom. He gave the students the space and time to explore possible connections between religion and climate change. This led to some students being able to express links between their faith and climate change. They were able to see the personal benefits of a greener society as well as the contribution they could make to society and the planet overall.

As a teacher I feel it’s important to be open minded and look at a students point of view as well as our colleagues and our own. This can be difficult to do at times if I don’t agree with something that occurs within the classroom or the school. Some of the critical incidents I might be involved in are when my beliefs are not inline with a student’s ideas or their own cultural norms. I have been in a position where an Arabic male refused to work with an Arabic woman during class. When I asked him why, he said it was against his culture. Within that class I could facilitate this and organise a different pair, but I didn’t feel happy about it. When I discussed it with my colleagues there seemed to be different perspectives on this. Some agreed with me that even though we didn’t like it, if I was able to facilitate within the classroom then I should. Others felt that because the student was learning at a school in Britain they should fall in line with the way we do things here. There didn’t seem to be a clear cut answer, including from management, so I kept with my initial decision of them not working together, but I honestly wasn’t sure if I was doing the right thing or not.

Critical reflection calls for teachers to be critical of theorists and authority.  Questioning managers, theorists and those that write the course books and be able to have judgements of our own. I agree with this in theory, however, I think this could be very difficult to carry out in practise. I can feel powerless to question for a number of reasons, sometimes just being on a zero hours contract might makes me not want to ‘rock the boat’. I feel this puts me in a moral predicament.

Further reflection

  1. The third critical incident I have written about ties in with the difficulties I have about questioning my manager. Even though I did find the courage to discuss my concerns I felt very uncomfortable and anxious about doing so.
  2. During  the pandemic I have felt lucky still have a job. So many language teachers haven’t been as fortunate. Questioning authority figures has felt even more difficult and I have felt in a much more vulnerable position. The focus has been much more on ‘getting through’ teaching in these very different times and finding ways to this as best we possibly can. Voicing my opinion that I really don’t think hybrid teaching works doesn’t feel like something I can raise. What would be the alternative? Personally I would rather have mixed level classes and teach a whole class all online or/and a whole class in the physical classroom. In fairness, it was recently acknowledged by the DOS that he feels the students don’t get a great lesson with hybrid teaching. However, it was agreed with the principle that we should still do this to allow all students access to lessons until they can be present in the physical classroom. Unfortunately, I still haven’t felt able to voice my true feelings. Although I think this is more to do with my own confidence.

References

Farrell, T (2017) Beyond Practice. In T. Farrell Research on Reflective Practice. [e-book] New York: Routledge.

Goulah, J. (2017) Climate Change and TESOL: Language, Literacies, and the Creation of Eco-Ethical Consciousness. TESOL Quarterly. 51: 1, 90-114

Peer observed lessons

 

Lesson 1

My first peer observed lesson was recorded due to COVID-19 restrictions, and then watched by 2 peers. One is doing the TESOL diploma course and the other an MA in TESOL. I sent them part of the lesson and the materials used prior to a session whereby we got together online to discuss the clip.

I chose a 13 minute clip from a lesson delivered during a topic week about food. The idea was that students learn or recap on food related vocabulary as well as cultural attitudes towards food. At the end of the week, learners would produce a TV advert relating to food. The clip I chose to be observed looked at food related adjectives.

The class consisted of 12 Swedish students, all on site, ranging from B1+ to C2 level. One student was on the autistic spectrum, one had ADD and 2 students had anxiety. All learners knew each other from the school, although they wouldn’t have had lessons together in a mixed ability class. I normally taught 8 of the students in my General English class and had met the other 4 students when covering lessons.

The areas I wanted to focus on were giving students more time to answer questions and teacher echo. I was also aware of being inclusive in a mixed level ability class with some SEN students.

Whilst watching the video together my first concern was that I tried to over compensate for a student making a mistake. I was looking for ‘bitter’ coffee and they offered ‘smokey’ coffee. However, the feedback from my peers was that they liked how I dealt with this situation. Instead of saying “a more correct word would be……” I said “a more typical word would be…….”. They commented that by not saying she was wrong, I was showing support for students and valuing their contributions. I hadn’t thought about this before.

My peers liked that I had accepted a student’s answer of “meh” when they were describing bland food. I’d had concerns that after I’d acknowledged the student saying “meh” I’d moved her on too quickly. It was in the back of my mind during the lesson that she can sometimes dominate  with talking a lot, and she is unaware of this due to being on the autistic spectrum. It was helpful to me to see on the video that she was smiling after her contribution. My peers fed back that I had given her enough time and that she had come to a natural end and it was time to move on. The video shows at a later point that students start talking amongst themselves when this student is contributing. We discussed how this seemed to be a habit the other students had got into, with one peer commenting that this seemed quite rude. However, if they were used to this student talking a lot they almost ‘switched off’ when she spoke. It’s a difficult one to manage and, as teachers, one we have discussed together and tried to get the right balance of giving the student space to speak, whilst acknowledging that other learners may become bored or lose concentration. One of the peers observing my lesson also came up with an interesting comment that this student was also a C2 level and would probably naturally feel more confident contributing to class discussions than lower level students.  She felt I had managed a mixed level class incredibly well and we discussed that it was a difficult balance not to discourage higher level students who have a lot to say with not wanting lower level students to feel they can’t contribute. My peers fed back that I used nominating students well and that this was especially important in a mixed level class. They also commented on the nice way I had concept checked with lower level students, quietly and not in front of the whole class.

Part way through the video clip I wanted to discuss my concerns about giving students space to discuss emergent language and topics versus lesson timings.  For example, two of the students were sharing how they had experienced smoky cheese in a restaurant. This is great to hear and I want to encourage these opportunities but feel the pressure of time. My peers felt that it was a great example of personalisation and that it offered an opportunity to explore it even more that I had done. They felt I could have brought other learners in to generate more of a discussion. It’s a decision to make at the time and can be especially difficult in an observed lesson when you are very much aware of timings and the lesson plan. However, as raised by one of my peers, isn’t the whole point of a lesson to explore emergent situations? If I had made more of this and brought other students in to the discussion they might have used some of the vocabulary we had been learning.

One of my peers made a good point about the flow of one activity to the next. she felt that I could have linked one of the activities better. We specifically discussed when I went from teaching adjectives such as ‘bland’ and spicy’ onto looking at pleasant and unpleasant tastes using positive and negative adjectives. It would have been an opportunity to get students opinions of what they found pleasant or unpleasant, especially as the majority of students were so willing to speak. Looking back this is a clear missed opportunity for me and I agree it would have enhanced the lesson to do this. It’s certainly something I can take forward when planning a lesson and will give students the space and time to explore the language more, which is what I want to do. As Nancy fed back to me when she observed my other lesson, ‘less is more’.

The lesson was a vocabulary lesson one of the peers asked about my thoughts on drilling as I did very little of this. I explained that I tend to do more drilling with lower level students. I did error correct one pronunciation error but I made a decision not to correct words that are spoken with a typical Swedish pronunciation and chose to focus on the meaning instead.

On and off throughout the lesson students were required to use their laptops or phones to complete activities and this generated a discussion about monitoring students use of equipment. It is difficult to monitor who might be using ‘WhatsApp’ or texting, for example. This particular lesson was all held within the physical classroom, however, I always plan for hybrid teaching now as things can change from lesson to lesson. I agree that this does create difficulties of knowing if students are using their phones or laptops appropriately. It is even more difficult to monitor at the moment when social distancing is required.

On the whole my peers felt it was a good part of the lesson and that I clearly had a good relationship and good rapport with the students. They felt that students listened to me and got on with tasks when I asked them to. I was happy with the lesson overall and felt my peers raised some good points to take forward.

My actions are to work on my teacher echo which I continue to struggle with. I think it can be beneficial sometimes with a large class but maybe I could reformulate the sentence without parroting it back. Sometimes I do this, but not consistently. I also continue to work on making sure I support lower level students in a multi level class. Lastly, I want to focus on giving students time and space in class to explore language or topics that arise. This is something that came up in my observed lesson with Nancy. I think I need to incorporate more time when planning my lessons but also have some fillers or extra activities ready if required.

I found this session so beneficial. I think the combination of watching myself back on film and having peer feedback is helpful in identifying both positive aspects and areas to explore or improve on. I thought I would absolutely hate this and was really nervous about it, but so far it has been one of the most beneficial parts of my diploma.

Further Reflection

I was preparing a lesson about food recently and remembered that I had written a post about it, so went back and re-read it. I was so glad I did, because it reminded me of a few things I needed to change. I was able to think about how I could better link some of the activities together and give students the space and time to discuss their own personal experiences. I made some notes before the lesson and put some reminders to myself in a different colour. Whilst there were no earth shattering changes, these small tweaks seemed to facilitate a more natural flow to the lesson. As one student bought up her experiences of ‘bad’ coffee I was able to encourage using the vocabulary from the lesson and elicit more words from other students. 

 

Lesson 2

 

The link below is to the discussion on Teams between Sian, Anna and myself. My lesson is the second lesson we observed and discussed.

https://web.microsoftstream.com/video/e9607a24-64b4-41f9-8ee9-457c3ee7dfff

 

My second peer observed lesson was recorded for Sian and Anna (2 of my diploma/Masters peers) to observe. As before, the lesson needed to be recorded, observed and discussed on Teams due the COVID pandemic. The lesson was taught in the physical classroom with students socially distanced. The class consisted of 5 students of which 1 was Italian and 4 were Swedish. They ranged from B1+ to C1. These levels would not normally be mixed in a General English class, but due to the fact that many students had gone home early as there were concerns about rising numbers of COVID cases, the class had been split into one online class and one class in the physical classroom. I had taught these students for about 3 months so  I knew them pretty well. One of the students had ADD.

I chose to record a pronunciation lesson, specifically an introduction to connected speech. I find pronunciation particularly challenging to teach and I definitely lack confidence in this area. A recent presentation I did for the Exploring English Language module highlighted some of the areas of teaching pronunciation that can be a challenge.  I find it difficult to know how and when I should teach it. For example, should it be a separate course or lesson, or should it be integrated into general teaching?  Lessons need to be meaningful for learners and I’m not always sure which parts of pronunciation will be useful. There seems to be very little training for teaching pronunciation, however, there may be a number of CPD sessions that I am unaware of. I think I need to be more proactive in finding out about this. My current DOS really enjoys teaching pronunciation and I need to ‘tap’ into his expertise a bit more in this area and ask for some support.

We had decided to use SETT as an observation tool for this lesson. I have discussed SETT in the Peer Observations – general thoughts and SETT section of this blog which can be referred to. During my first watch of the recording I thought I went into a number of different modes: skills and systems, managerial and classroom context. However, on reflection and a second watch, I think I’m predominantly in skills and systems mode. Towards the end of the clip I switch to managerial mode when I set up the listening activity for the next part of the lesson.

The clip begins with a piece of material by Mark Hancock to demonstrate connected speech, which I display on the whiteboard. Below is a similar version of what is displayed.

The first instruction I give is “have a look at this”. I give extended wait time so that the students have time to read and then ask “what do you think it says”, which is an example of a display question. One student answers “a lot of injuries”. I ask the student for an example to get some clarification of her understanding. Sian noticed some echo when I repeat ‘a lot of injuries’. Sometimes this is for clarification or to make sure students have heard and sometimes it is just habit. In this instance I think it is the latter.

One student pronounces rise with a /s/ sound instead of a /z/ sound.  I offer direct repair here as we covered the differences in sounds between ‘rise’ and ‘rice’ during yesterdays lesson. The student offers sunrise using the /z/ sound to show that she has understood the difference.

Another example of a display question is when I ask if the students notice any difference when reading the material aloud as opposed to in their heads. This gives an opportunity for a student to speak so that I can hear their pronunciation. I wasn’t sure which feature of teacher talk this would come under in SETT. Sian felt it was a form of scaffolding but that it was also a focus on form because I’m focusing on the pronunciation, especially with ‘rice’ and ‘rise’. I chose to read out the material to model correct pronunciation, which seemed to help one student in particular who was able to show she now understood the meaning. I then go on to clarify the differences between what we say and what we actually mean and start to break down some of the phrases such as ‘two theik’ and model the differences. This produces some extended teacher turn which I was concerned was unnecessary. Sian and Anna felt that this was a necessary part of this lesson because the students needed the phrases to be modelled and then to try them out themselves, which they then went on to do and began to contribute more. Anna fed back that I had given one of the students a good amount of extended wait time which had resulted in him being able to answer the question.

The next part of the clip showed students talking through some of the pronunciation. At this point I was nodding, giving a thumbs up, pointing to parts of the board and parts of my body without speaking. Sian fed back that she really liked this and I must admit, watching it back again, I felt it worked well. I have to work hard at this, and being able to see the result is really positive and encouraging.

I then moved onto the next part of the lesson. I asked students if they had ever had the experience of listening to a song and not got the right lyrics. Then when they sing it with their friends they are singing different lyrics. I think this is an example of a referential question as it is asking about student experience. One student gives an example of their experience and we observed extended student turn, where I don’t speak at all and just nod and listen which seems to work well. At this point I share an anecdote with the class about my son, which produces extended teacher turn. The aim of sharing this was to illustrate the difficulties people have when listening to songs and trying to understand the words. This can be to do with language and more specifically homophones and homographs which we had looked at in a recent previous lesson. My concern when watching this back for the first time was that I was talking for far too long and a fear of  being too indulgent? I was keen for feedback from Anna and Sian about this and if they thought the anecdote was relevant or not. The positive side was that the students were engaged in what I was saying and had found it funny (which I had intended). It had produced some singing in the class, which also showed  that they felt relaxed and confident. Perhaps I missed an opportunity to ask a referential question and ask students to share any of their own experiences.

Overall I felt reassured with the feedback from Anna and Sian. There were some similarities between Sians and my lesson in terms of not really using referential questions or content feedback. However, this came in the next part of the lesson. I have to remind myself that this is just a snap shot of the lesson and the idea is to see if my aims are being achieved for that point in time, not just the overall lesson. I think on the whole my aims were achieved. I am really pleased with parts where I don’t talk as much, as it is an area I’ve worked hard on recently. My extended wait time for students has also really improved. Areas to improve on are still teacher echo and extended teacher talk. Whilst there were points in this clip (the anecdote) where I think it worked well, there were definitely times when I didn’t need to talk as much. Another valuable lesson learned from watching the video is picking up on missed opportunities. The lesson itself was fine, however, it could have been better if I had seized some more opportunities for students to share their experiences. Perhaps it is something I could incorporate in a lesson plan to see if it helps as a reminder.

Further Reflection

I’m still wrestling with teaching pronunciation as a separate course. I feel it works much better as part of a General English class. It feels far more natural and less contrived. I’ve since watched some helpful YouTube videos to gain some ideas and one of my peers at school ran a short CPD session on pronunciation. I’ve had lots of helpful hints and tips, however, my preference is still to incorporate these into a general lesson as things naturally arise. 

 

Lesson 3

My final peer observed lesson took place at Loxdale with a teacher observing me within the classroom and filming me. This is different to what I have experienced before as it felt like I was being observed in two different ways. In addition to this it was my DOS observing me. Ordinarily another teacher would have been the observer. However, due to a number of reasons, this was not currently possible. The DOS had been recently teaching again himself so was definitely not out of the teaching loop in this current climate, so I asked if he would mind observing me as a peer. Whilst I agree that the dynamic is different from being observed by another teacher, the experience still proved really useful.

This lesson was carried out during COVID restrictions so social distancing was required in the classroom and students could not change desks or chairs during the lesson. Therefore group work was fairly limited but still possible. The class consisted of 9 Swedish students at C2 level. I had been teaching them for about 6 weeks at this point. A number of students within the class suffered from depression and anxiety and one student had ADD. The lesson was essentially a culture and  vocabulary lesson about emotions, with a focus on student personal development. Students would watch a Ted Talk by Tiffany Watt that challenges the simple view of emotional language. She looks across different languages and cultures to show the complexity and diversity of the words used to describe how we are feeling. Also suggesting that the very existence of these words may allow us to feel things that people in other cultures don’t. She exposes a thought-provoking idea that words can shape how we feel.

The part of the lesson I have chosen to look at is very near the beginning. This is for 2 main reasons. Firstly, I wanted to work on my scaffolding with higher level students. It is something that Barbara and I had discussed in my fourth observed lesson. I acknowledge the fact that I assume high level students will not need so much scaffolding. However, I have found that this is not necessarily the case. So I wanted to see if I spent more time scaffolding at the beginning of the lesson it would benefit students learning and task understanding of later activities. Secondly, my last peer observed lesson showed a number of display questions and I wanted to view a part of the lesson where I was concentrating more on referential questions.

Before the clip I had asked students to tell me what words come into mind when they think about happiness and then about anger. Student contributions were on the whiteboard. The clip begins with me asking students to take 5 seconds to check in with themselves to see if they can identify how they are feeling at this moment in time. The aim is to see if they can articulate how they are feeling or if it is difficult at times. I ask if anyone feels they would like to share their feelings. One student answered “anxious” and I was able to ask what other words students associated with anxiety. When  watching the clip back I wasn’t sure if this was an example of a referential or a display question. When discussing it, we felt it could fit into both categories because whilst I didn’t know what students were going to say, I had a pretty good idea of the words they would associated with anxiety. So maybe it is more display than referential.

I then asked students “how do you think I might be feeling right now?”. The aim of this was to engage students with the fact that we often display different emotions than the ones we are actually feeling. I also wanted to personalise the lesson and show that I was also willing to share my feelings with them. I gave extended wait time here to give an opportunity for students to think about it. One student answered that I looked happy, which I echoed back for some reason. Maybe because I was feeling anxious which is exactly what another student picked up on and was able to articulate that this was probably because I was being observed. At this point I was able to scaffold and extend the students contribution when explaining that I was teaching, being observed by my manager and being filmed. I then went on to model the example  that although I was coming across as happy, there was a lot more going on for me and that it can be difficult to find the words to express this. I use some extended teacher turn here and am a bit repetitive. I could definitely have made this more concise. I think it would have been better to say less and write the word ‘discombobulated’ on the board sooner. I had chosen the word ‘discombobulated’ to explain how I’d been feeling before the class today. I ask a display question to find out if anyone has heard of it. A student is able to tell me part of the answer and I extend their contribution. During our feedback session my manager asked if it might have been better to elicit this word rather than just give it to the Students, which I agree would have been more effective.

The next part of the lesson involved me asking a display question of ‘what other emotions can you think of’? The aim of this part is to see if students come up with the basic emotions that are identified later in the Ted Talk. This part feels a little slow and perhaps wasn’t needed. One or two students engaged but it felt a little flat. I echo both students answers too. One occasion is seeking clarification from a student, but the other was probably habit. On reflection I wish I had asked them to come up with what they thought were the 6 or 7 basic emotions in groups. I put students into groups for the next activity which definitely felt like a bit of relief. I ask them to discuss a referential question ‘“if you think you are good at talking about how you feel and do you think words can really describe how we feel?” I ask the questions verbally and then write them on the board and echo what I have just said. This echo wasn’t necessary. Then I go on to reformulate the last question which was totally unnecessary. There wasn’t much space left on the board either and it felt a little awkward.  After a discussion with my manager he suggested that I’d pre-prepared the questions on the class shared google doc. This would have avoided teacher echo and trying to squash the sentences onto the board. The good part about this was my timing. I said they had about 3 minutes to discuss and that is what I gave them. In the past I’ve given a time but lost track and given students longer.  I also let students know when they have 1 minute left.

The next section is involves student feedback from the last task. I felt much happier with this part. My manager felt that I had nominated well and given extended student turn each of the three nominated students. I had listened without speaking much, simply nodding. After one students answers, I start to reformulate what she has said in order to seek clarification, she interrupts me to clarify. But it felt like a natural flow of dialogue. This section ended with a brief class discussion about the difficulties of putting emotions into words. I hadn’t planned for this, but it felt spontaneous and natural. It was also relevant and related to the Ted talk.

After a general discussion about this clip, my manager fed back that he had originally thought the lesson was too slow in pace. However, after watching the video he felt that it was probably pitched at the correct pace for the students. They needed time to to get into discussing different emotions and identifying them. Whilst there were some areas that could have been quicker, on the whole, it felt ok. I was pleased with my use of referential questions and, as expected, these are probably used more at the beginning and end of a lesson. We discussed the language level, as for a C2 class it seemed low. However, it worked well in terms of a build up to and scaffolding ready for the Ted Talk. The more challenging vocabulary work comes after this.

Further Reflection

I did this same lesson with my other C2 class the following day. I tweaked some parts of the lesson and had to be quicker. This class likes to work at a much faster pace. It seemed to work well though and the students all engaged. This lesson is in 2 parts and I recorded the second part for my final observation with Paul. I wanted to see if the 2 lessons linked well together and were challenging enough for a proficiency class. For my reflections about this, please read lesson 5 under the Tutor Observed section of this blog.

 

 

 

 

 

Observing my peers

Lesson 1

The observed teacher is currently studying for her MA TESOL and we have some  modules that cross over and are both on the Reflective teacher development module. Therefore it seemed useful to observe each other’s lessons. Due to the current COVID-19  pandemic, the lesson was recorded by the teacher who then chose the part of the lesson (about 10 minutes) that she wanted to focus on. Myself and another peer then watched that part of the lesson, in a session on Microsoft teams, with the teacher. Before the session, the teacher sent the clip of the lesson to be observed and relevant information about the lesson.

The lesson was delivered to two of the teachers former students on zoom. She had been their teacher about a year ago in the UK and had kept in touch with them both. The students had started school in the UK at pre-intermediate level and had left at upper-intermediate level. However, they both admitted that they hadn’t used their English and it seemed, from watching the video, that they were currently around lower intermediate level. Both students were female, one was Korean and the other Turkish.

The lesson observed was a speaking lesson as both students had expressed to their teacher that this was an area they would like to focus on. This shows a student centred teaching approach by the teacher. The section I have been invited to observe is after the students have watched part of an animated video about a father and son called ‘Alike’.

The teacher wanted to focus on eliciting as much as possible, teacher talk time and instructions.

Eliciting

I observed the teacher eliciting a lot throughout the 10 minute clip and she asked a number of open ended questions that required the students to give more than just one word answers. Both students were given opportunities to to elaborate on their points and include more information. This gave the teacher a chance to assess the students level of understanding and see where the difficulties may be in how they are able to express themselves in English. The teacher was able to demonstrate her knowledge of the students as during the session she talked about the Turkish student’s understanding of a question, knowing what she wanted to say in Turkish, but being unable to articulate the answer in English. However, this led to the teacher giving the student the answer instead of eliciting some more or asking the other student in the class to help. The teacher was able to see this herself when watching the video back. A good example of how eliciting worked was when the Turkish student was able to demonstrate her understanding of a colour she had initially got wrong. She was able to say the correct colour and then pointed out a picture on her wall to demonstrate her understanding of the colour grey.

It was a shame that towards the end of the session, when both students and the teacher had worked hard to explore what the message of the video was, the teacher gave them the overall answer. It was interesting to explore this further with the teacher and the other peer observing  wondered if this could have been reflection in action. The observed teacher said that she felt the students were starting to struggle a little and felt the need for the lesson to move on. This led to a discussion about giving students time to explain and explore their answers more. The teacher felt she was under time constraint using the free version of zoom that cuts out after 40 minutes and then you have to start another session. This is something I can relate to myself. The warning that the session is coming to an end flashes up on the screen for the host to see and it can impact on the session. The teacher explained about wanting that part of the lesson to end there in order to start a new part of the lesson when restarting the zoom session. I have been in that position myself and it can make you feel pressured and rushed. Perhaps this comes down to the initial planning of the lesson and making sure there is time for students to explore the topic more. I have also found myself that speaking lessons take longer online than offline due to the fact that conversational flow is constrained.

Teacher talk time

One of the first things I noticed when I observed this lesson was the teacher’s calm voice and how she gave students the space and time to think. Within the first few minutes she gave a thumbs up to a student’s answer, which the student instantly reflected back and broke into a huge smile. Further into the lesson the teacher used gestures to describe piles of work on the fathers desk in the video to reduce her talking time. This was reflected back by both students when they answered the question, showing and understanding of what was being asked of them, without the teacher having to use words to explain. The teacher created an environment where students seemed to feel they were part of everything. For example, I saw one student nodding along with the teacher as the other student gave a correct answer. This happened on a number of occasions. We discussed the differences of teacher talk between teaching in a physical or virtual classroom. We all agreed it was easier not to talk when teaching online. You can turn off your video or use break out rooms. Turning off the video can be especially useful when teaching 1:1 or 1:2 lessons as it can feel quite intense at times.  This option may have been beneficial during this lesson after students had watched the video. A peer discussion may have drawn out more thoughts and ideas and enhanced the discussion that followed with the teacher present.

Whilst one of the students was answering a question the teacher interrupted her to make a correction. Unfortunately the student didn’t hear her properly, another difficulty of online teaching, this led to the student losing her flow. The teacher felt that she should have waited until the student had finished and then used the white board to explain the error. I can identify with the teachers difficulties here. Knowing if or when to error correct is a difficult decision to make and this is exacerbated when teaching online.

Instructions 

I felt the teacher was very clear about what she wanted from the students. She would ask a question and at times put the question another way to help make it clearer. I also witnessed good scaffolding. One consideration might be that the teachers expectations of the students. she had watched the video a few times to work out what she wanted from students. However, the students had only seen the video once (the first 4 minutes up until that point) and perhaps weren’t as clear about what the messages of the video were. That said, both students were able to answer questions and seemed relaxed in doing so.

Summary

I thought the part of the lesson I saw was relaxed and engaging. The students seemed to understand what was required and were able to answer the questions being asked.

Having the lesson recorded seems to be a really useful to tool to use for reflection. It gave opportunities to discuss areas and think about different ways of executing parts of the lesson. It also gave an opportunity to see things you might have missed during the lesson. In this case, watching the students mirroring the teachers actions may not have been picked up on. This could create an opportunity that the teacher may want to explore further in the future.

 

Lesson 2

The observed teacher is currently studying for her diploma in TESOL. Due to COVID-19 restrictions I was unable to observe physically in the classroom but she was able to record her lesson and has chosen a 10 minute clip for myself and another peer to watch and reflect on with her. This was sent to us with the relevant information before the session. The lesson involved a Brazilian male who she had taught in Brighton a couple of years ago. He is of C1 level and a very smart, motivated student (which was clearly evident from the video clip). The student had identified problems with phrasal verbs and prepositions, so the teacher was creating a sequence of lessons to address these needs. This was the first lesson, and a bit of a needs analysis to determine what the student knew and understood about certain phrasal verbs.

The teacher had reflected on what she wanted to do in the lesson before teaching it, and what aspects of teaching she had wanted to focus on. She wanted her observers to consider eliciting and scaffolding, teacher talk and interruptions, student thinking time and delayed or no error corrections. Before watching the video together the teacher told us that she felt she came across as ‘wired’ during the this lesson and others she has recorded, and she is consciously trying to calm down. She felt she talks more online and especially when teaching 1:1 and finds the silence difficult to deal with, feeling the need to fill the time. Even though there are times with extended teacher talk time it seemed that, for the most part, she was keeping the conversation going and not necessarily talking too much. It was obvious that the teacher and student had a good relationship and rapport.

Teacher talk and student thinking time

During the first part of the clip I observed how relaxed the student was and seemed to be naturally learning English through having a conversation. As he was listening to the teacher he was reminded of something he wanted to share and he asked her for help with a noun to be able to come up with the phrase ‘playing to his fans’ when talking about Donald Trump. This led into the phrasal verb ‘showing off’ which the teacher picked up on and explored with the student. It flowed really well and felt natural. Whilst I agree there was a lot of Teacher talk time during this first phase, the student is clearly listening and interested and formulating responses. The teacher was concerned that she shared her own experiences but this is not necessarily a bad thing as we want students to share their experiences with us. I think it is about finding the right balance.

During one part of the lesson there is extended student talk time where the teacher just lets him speak. The teacher felt she was reflecting on his learning and understanding of the language at this point. I felt the teacher deserved credit for giving the student the space and opportunity to explore the language. He was able to make the link during this time about phrasal verbs and flexibility and how they can change meaning.

Eliciting and student thinking time

The observed teaching used elicitation to try and get the student to see the differences between literal and metaphorical meanings of phrasal verbs. At one stage the teacher felt she had confused the student by asking for a synonymous verb for ‘get out’. The student was coming up with a number of words but not the one the teacher wanted. I must admit, when I was watching the video I wasn’t able to identify what word she wanted either for a while. As the teacher tried to give more examples it got slightly confusing as to what she wanted. We discussed how long you should go on with examples. I have been in this situation myself before and it can be difficult to know when to just give students the word or if you should continue eliciting until they get there. In this case there was a positive pay off because the student finally got the word ‘escape’. We then discussed that with advanced students it was important  to go beyond the first answer, to probe and go a bit deeper in order to support them to explore the language and make more connections. The teacher was able to reflect after watching the video back that instead of keeping on eliciting  it would have been better to give the student some space and time to think. I expect the reason the teacher kept talking was she was worrying he wasn’t getting the word and trying to help him. A further example of this was when the teacher was trying to elicit the verb ‘remove’ using the phrasal verb ‘take away’. She gave many examples that the student wasn’t able to get. However, using reflection in action and realising the ideas weren’t working, she decided to show the verb using a visual  representation which worked straight away. The student fed back to the teacher that visuals help him to learn, so this is something the teacher can plan for in future lessons.

Scaffolding

I felt the teacher used good scaffolding techniques throughout, building on the students knowledge of phrasal verbs. She was able to use the initial discussion they had about what was going on in the world where the student was using some phrasal verbs. This was followed by asking what phrasal verbs the student knew and trying to elicit different meanings so he had more than one way to use the vocabulary.

Error correction

The teacher had decided not to verbally correct errors at the time they are made, but to type them as notes for herself and come back to them so as not to stop the flow of interaction. There was a slight consequence of this in that you could see her eyes were not on the student at the time of typing the correction and the sound of typing is evident. The teacher said that she had informed the student at the beginning of the lesson and explained she was doing it this way so as not to interrupt his fluency, but she still worried they were aware she was writing the errors down. There was no evidence from the video that the student was bothered by this, but if the teacher was worried she could try using pen and paper instead of typing.

We discussed error correction further and agreed that making a note of an error to feedback later seemed better than interrupting a student mid flow. Another possibility could be to use a recording of a lesson to highlight errors, but as a consequence the feedback would be more delayed. Alternatively the teacher could note down previous errors when students are doing a different activity so that it isn’t so obvious, although does it matter that it is obvious? Maybe if the teacher said at the beginning of a lesson they would be making notes on a variety of different things including errors, that would take the emphasis off. It seems difficult to me know if error correction is beneficial or not. Some students have been very clear with me that they want to be corrected. On the other hand, if during a speaking lesson (as the observed lesson was) the student is making themselves understood, do we need to error correct? I think it can depend on the students being taught and the type of lesson. As a general rule, we agreed during our discussion that if errors were relevant to the target language of the lesson then they should be addressed.

Summary

I felt the part of the lesson I saw was good and delivered well by the teacher. The relationship they have is clearly relaxed and respectful giving plenty of opportunities for learning.

Going forward the teacher will be able to incorporate more visual learning techniques to help with eliciting and cut down on teacher talk time. Again, this shows how valuable recording lessons are. It gives opportunities to watch, reflect and make some actions for the next time you teach. It may also be worth trying to record a lesson and use this to give delayed error feedback to see if it is useful or not.

Further Reflection

When observing this lesson I had been quite taken with Sian’s materials and how she had adjusted them to deliver an online lesson. They were simple, yet really effective. Sian kindly shared these materials and the source she had taken them from. I was able to use them in a subsequent lesson after making some adjustments to make it more relevant to the students I was teaching. Seeing the materials used by Sian in an actual lesson was so helpful and had inspired me to use a varied version. 

Lesson Three

The link below is to the discussion on Teams between Sian, Anna and myself. Sian’s is the first lesson we observed and discussed.

https://web.microsoftstream.com/video/e9607a24-64b4-41f9-8ee9-457c3ee7dfff

This is the second time I have observed Sian, who is currently studying for her TESOL diploma.  The lesson was recorded, observed and discussed on Teams with Sian, Anna (who is currently studying for her Masters in TESOL) and myself present.  We had decided to observe this lesson using the SETT principles, as discussed in my post titled Peer observations – General thoughts and SETT. Sian chose a clip from an online lesson with a Spanish student at around B1 level. This was their first online lesson together, although Sian had taught her face to face previously.  The student had requested to do certain phrasal verbs. The lesson focused on vocabulary which meant that Sian was in skills and systems mode according to the SETT framework. When Sian had watched this section of the lesson back herself, she felt there were lots of display questions and no personalisation. However, the personalisation part had come later in the lesson.

Sian uses pictures and asks what is this person is doing (a  display question). For example, using a picture of someone ‘getting off’ the bus. The student answered “they out….they off….they take away”. Sian replies saying “she is .um um. off the bus” and then writes this on the white board, displaying scaffolding. The student replies saying she is thinking of ‘go’ or ‘take’. Sian explains how we would use ‘take’ metaphorically, so the student opts for “she is going off the bus”. Sian acknowledges that this could be used but a better way of saying it would be to use the phrasal verb “getting off”. This shows a use of form focused feedback. After answering Sians display question “what is the man doing?”, the student then goes on to say the differences when we talk about ‘getting into’ and ‘getting out’ the car. Sian offers direct repair here saying “getting out of the car”. What was great was seeing the student feeling comfortable to show her knowledge of the different uses of phrasal verbs with different forms of transport and asking for some clarification about trains.

Throughout this discourse Sian displayed teacher extended wait time on three occasions, one of 3 seconds, one of 6 seconds and one of 8 seconds. We discussed the pros and cons of teacher extended wait time and the possibilities of some students feeling uncomfortable. It can be difficult to make a decision about this. Some students, as Sian identified, seem to be quite happy to be given time to wait. Others may feel put under pressure. I also think that it can be intense during a 1:1 class. If you have more students in a class, often one of them will usually come up with an answer. What was interesting was Sians thoughts about the difference between possible extended wait times depending on whether the teacher is using display questions or referential questions. When using a display question the teacher is looking for a certain answer, and the student may genuinely not know this how ever long you give them. However, when using referential questions, when you’re looking for a students thoughts or experiences of something, extended wait time may be appropriate. Since teaching Swedish students at Loxdale I have had to work very hard on giving teacher extended wait time. Many Swedish students are very comfortable with silence and taking time to answer questions, therefore it is just me feeling uncomfortable and not the students. Although I have to be extremely careful if one of the students is suffering from some anxiety.

One of the pictures shown is a remote control and a TV. The student says “turn it off” and “turn it on” and then says I think it is transitive? Sian echoes ‘transitive?’ back  using intonation to make it a a question and asks if there is an object. Sian is seeking clarification from the student here. The student seemed a little confused about the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs. Sian offers a brief explanation but chose not to go into much detail as this wasn’t the focus of the lesson and the student seemed to be getting confused. I think this was a good decision to make in the moment. It is an area that could be picked up again in the future, however, it wouldn’t really be helpful to the student being able to use these particular phrasal verbs being taught now. Sian then asked another display question “what about the volume”? Sian gives the student some extended wait time and you can hear her formulating her answer. The answer she gave needed some reformulation from Sian and it was great to hear the student repeat the correct answer and take her own initiative to write this down.

Sian picked up that on several occasions she interrupts the student to say “yeah” as confirmation of what was being said. Sian acknowledged that she would like to work on giving non verbal affirmative feedback and this is an area she finds particularly difficult. My personal feeling is that this can be harder to do online rather than face to face. Students can only see your head and shoulders on zoom or teams which can make body language harder to identify.

We discussed an area of the lesson where Sian felt there was extended teacher talk and identified four sentences that she says. However, during this time, Sian is reformulating the students answer by using the phrasal verb ‘take out’ in a sentence and then models the use of the verb. This student is of B1 level so even though there is quite a lot of repetition from Sian of the sentence and the phrase, she is using it to clarify. For example, explaining that taking out some books is the same as borrowing some books. This also offers some reassurance to the student as she is often unsure of herself.

Overall we were able to identify display questions, scaffolding, extended wait time, extended teacher time. There is no content feedback, however, the focus was on vocabulary. There was no extending student time. A lot of this section of Sians lesson uses display questions and the student does answer. There could be the possibility in the future of asking some personalised (referential) questions in order for the student to have more extended talk time. But Sian has more discussion based questions during the second part of the lesson.

I think it was a useful process using  SETT as it gives a framework to use during a short space of time. Sometimes when I watch a whole lesson back there seems so much that I don’t know what to focus on. At least this way, we are able to see if we are achieving our aims of the lesson at that point in time and then can focus on improvements in specific areas.

Lesson Four

The link below is to the discussion on Teams between Sian, Anna and myself. Anna’s is the final lesson we observed and discussed.

https://web.microsoftstream.com/video/e9607a24-64b4-41f9-8ee9-457c3ee7dfff

Although we were only required to observe three lessons for this course, we had the opportunity to observe four lessons within our group. As with the Sians lesson, discussed above, we used the SETT principles as framework to give feedback on Anna’s lesson. The lesson had been recorded and the clip chosen was watched and discussed via Teams with Anna, Sian and myself present. The class consisted of twelve A2 students in the physical classroom being taught the grammar points ‘too much, too many, enough, and not enough’. Anna had adapted the lesson from English File. Anna admitted that she finds countable and uncountable a grey area that seems to be taught in a black and white fashion. There are so many variables when teaching this, that it can be confusing for students. Before the lesson had started, Anna had overheard a student talking about having 4 or 5 coffees a day, which is using coffee as a countable noun. However, Anna would be teaching coffee as uncountable. There is a section in the video that I will discuss further down in the post, where some of these areas are considered. Anna admitted to being extremely nervous about sharing this clip from her lesson as she was unhappy with the way the lesson had gone. However, she felt that this would be the best platform to share it and get some feedback.

Before the clip shown, Anna had been eliciting sentences using pictures, which was all done verbally.  The video clip begins with Anna nominating students to concept check.  She was asking ‘is this countable?’, and then writing the form on the white board.  During this part of the lesson Anna used display questions, she scaffolds using reformulation, and gives form focused feedback. Sian identified that Anna seemed to be going through this part of the lesson very fast. Anna felt that this was because she felt they were ‘re-hashing’ what had already been done verbally and the students already knew it. She also worried that this part of the lesson was taking too long. I could understand Anna’s position here because, as a teacher, you want to check that the students have understood the grammar point. However, if feels repetitive. It’s a difficult situation because some of the students in the class were about to go up to a B1 level and clearly had a good grasp of the subject in comparison to students who hadn’t covered this before. We discussed whether the concept checking could have been done when each sentence was elicited. For example, could Anna have elicited that coffee was uncountable, followed this with a concept checking question and then wrote the form on the board. This way, Anna may have felt that she wasn’t being repetitive and that it wasn’t taking up too much lesson time.

There is a lot of teacher talk from Anna as she continues through this section. I felt that some of this was justifiable as Anna was using display questions and then scaffolding by reformulating answers to give further examples. Anna felt that she could have asked for students suggestions more. For example, the answer the student gave about water was using water as uncountable. Anna could have then asked the class, using a display question, “can water be countable” and ask for an example. Anna felt she was rushing through in order to get to the next stage of the lesson. This meant that instead of enabling students to come up with answers, she gave them the answers.

Anna admitted that at this point of the lesson she remembered she should have been modelling and drilling the sentences as they’d been going along. This had been part of her written plan but something she had forgotten to include when teaching the lesson. In the moment she decided to drill all the sentences with the class. Was this the right decision or not? I think that because Anna had already felt this section had gone on too long then maybe it would have been better to miss it out on this occasion. However, whilst I couldn’t see the students, from what I heard they all seemed to be engaging with whatever Anna asked.

Anna is clearly very good at monitoring. This has been evident in both lessons I have watched. She is also very good at noticing if a student seems a little anxious when being asked a question. This was evident when she asked a socially anxious student a display question and Anna could see she looked very uncomfortable. Anna chose to move onto another student instead of giving extended wait time which could have increased the students anxiety. Whilst the next student Anna asked was one of the weakest students and couldn’t answer the question, Anna was quick to identify this and opened up the question to the whole class. I think she managed this really well.

During the lesson Anna had taught chocolate as being uncountable. She had overheard some students discussing ‘chocolates’ and brilliantly revisited this. She asked the students what they had been discussing and asked them to identify the difference between ‘chocolate’ and ‘chocolates’, which they were able to do. This is a great example of students identifying some exceptions or differences to what is being taught. Anna had noticed this and given them the time and space to explore it together.

As a group we discussed the difficulties of teaching a class during COVID times when social distancing is in place. Anna had a class where some students clearly understood the grammar and had a good grasp to it. However, other students needed more support. In ‘normal’ times, Anna would have spent more time supporting them at their desk but this is not possible at the moment.

Anna shared that this was the first lesson she had filmed for a long time and after watching it back had wanted to work more on extended wait time. She has since done this and was able to incorporate it into an observed zoom lesson. To me, this shows how valuable recording a lesson can be. Using the SETT framework she was able to identify an area that she specifically wanted to work on and then put it into practice. Brilliant!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Critical Incidents

Critical Incident 1

The incident happened at the beginning of  term in September 2020. The new students had been taught online for 2 weeks prior to this. The online teaching was set up to accommodate students entering the UK who had to quarantine for 14 days in line with the COVID-19 pandemic rules, and so that students who had chosen to stay in their own country could still have lessons. The next step was for students in Brighton to be able to attend lessons at the school. Other students who had stayed in their country or who may have exhibited symptoms of the corona virus would remain online. Originally I thought the plan was for students to be separated into online and off line groups. However, this was not the case. Things had changed due to a smaller amount of students who wanted to physically attend school and also trying to scale down on the amount of teachers this term as the school had taken a financial hit during the summer. All perfectly understandable during such strange and challenging times.

The decision was taken that teachers would teach on and offline at the same time, a way of teaching that I have since been told is known as ‘hybrid teaching’. I had concerns about this, as did the other teachers. We’d made the switch earlier in the year from the physical classroom to the virtual classroom, that was tricky enough at first. But this was a whole new ball game. However, once I’d got my head around it and planned for the lesson accordingly, I started to feel a little more positive but still apprehensive. That day I arrived at school an hour before my lesson to make sure everything was ready. The physical classroom had already been set up for social distancing so I just needed to concentrate on making sure I was positioned in a place where I could be seen and heard by students on and offline. I tested the zoom link and speakers and everything was working fine. So, time to take a breath and check my notes. I had taught a couple of the students online before, but not all of them, so I would be meeting some of them for the first time.

I went back to the dining hall (the area I was teaching in due to social distancing rules) 5 minutes before the lesson to activate the zoom link and greet my new class. The students were sat at their desks but not really talking to each other, even though most of them knew each other. That was ok though, I had some good ice breakers planned for the lesson. So I clicked on the zoom link ready to get the show on the road and……..nothing! I tried again. Nothing. I told myself to keep calm, that it would all be fine. I’d give it a minute and then try again. Meanwhile I told the class the zoom link was playing up so could they have a chat with the person sitting next to them whilst I sorted things out. Silence. I tried the link again, but still nothing so I decided to resort to my technical skills (if only I had some) and turn my computer off then on again. That didn’t work. The next thing was to check all the leads, but they were all ok and it had all worked perfectly fine earlier. Meanwhile, the class were simply staring at me. I was getting more and more stressed and starting to physically sweat. There was no technical support at the school and all the other teachers were teaching. Besides which, I’m not sure what any of the other teachers could have done except for make me feel like I wasn’t so much of a plum!

I decided to ask the class if any of them knew anything about computers or would be able to come up and have a go at helping me sort things out. Most of the class said nothing and the rest just shook their heads. I could feel myself getting angry. Surely someone could have helped me from the class. I asked them again to talk amongst themselves whilst I tried to sort out the problem. Some of them started to chat a bit or just go on their phones. Other students remained looking at me which made me feel more stressed and agitated by them.

I was in such a panic, thinking about the poor online students trying to connect. What an earth was I going to do? I shut everything down again on my computer and then reloaded it. Bingo, it finally worked. By this time my top felt like it was soaked at the back but I was so relieved that everything was working. I spent the next 5 minutes apologising to the online students, who were actually fine about it, and to the students in the classroom before I finally felt able to start the lesson, which actually went ok. I checked the clock as I started the lesson and found that it had taken about 7 minutes to sort the problem out. It had felt like much longer than that to me. My stress gradually went from complete panic to a medium level, which I think I felt the majority of the time when I first started hybrid teaching.

After the lesson I went back to the staff room for a debrief and sympathy from the other teachers.  I told them how stressed I had felt, but I didn’t say that I had felt angry that the students hadn’t tried to help me. I felt a bit ashamed about that. It wasn’t their fault that there had been technical problems and they probably hadn’t  realised how I was feeling either. After all, it was their first day at the school and in the physical classroom so they would have had their own apprehensions.

I thought about the lesson a lot during my break and started to feel anxious that the same thing might happen again at the beginning of my next lesson, or the one after that. I had no control over the technical stuff. So I had to ask myself what I did have control over. I could easily put the first lot of materials onto google classroom with instructions of what to do in case the link didn’t work at first. Everyone had access to google classroom now because we went through it in the first lesson, so both online and offline students could access the information. At least everyone would have something to be getting on with should the same problem happen again. I quickly put up the link with a few instructions and instantly felt better. I used this same procedure for the rest of the term and google classroom saved me on more than one occasion.

Looking back at that first lesson I was clearly anxious before starting the lesson and this would have fed into my reactions and emotions when the incident happened. Meeting a new class and teaching in a way I hadn’t done before was always going to be challenging and I put way too much pressure on myself for this lesson. I was surprised at feeling angry and frustrated with the students responses. As I have already said, they would have had their own apprehensions. I think it was feeling helpless that I was frustrated about, and that my fears of things going wrong had come true. I have since spoken to another teacher about my true feelings that day and they have told me how they have felt the same at times for various reasons. Again, it seemed that frustration was the real problem.

The incident that had happened to me happened to other teachers too during the term and it was something that we came to discuss many times. We all used google classroom as a place for students to find work to access and it did help to take the pressure off. However, we all still felt that sense of frustration and feeling that we somehow weren’t doing our job properly because we weren’t actually ‘teaching’ during times of technical difficulties. Perhaps that is something that will always be a part of hybrid and online teaching.

Further reflection: Almost a year on from delivering this class I am still in the position of hybrid teaching. I am not a fan, but have found ways to make the best of a challenging situation. When delivering teaching this way it seems that all the students lose out in some way, but in my opinion, it’s mostly those online that suffer. I seem to naturally gravitate towards the learners in the physical classroom. Everything seems to flow much better. When stopping and starting to include online students, making sure everyone can hear and see all the information, the natural flow is lost. Integrating students is much more difficult too. Whilst I ask learners in the physical classroom to login to zoom and work with online students, this takes time and can be frustrating for students. However, on the positive side, I feel much more confident now and am able to shake off technical issues that occur a little easier. I’ve carried on sharing information via google class when things have gone wrong, and always have links to documents on hand and ready to go if needed. Hopefully hybrid teaching will not be needed for much longer, but whilst it is necessary, that extra bit of preparation and planning can save a lot of anxiety and frustration.

Critical Incident 2

This incident happened during my penultimate lesson in December 2020 with a group of learners I had been teaching for 3 months. The amount of students in the physical classroom had dwindled to 6 as many had gone home due to fears of travelling home for Christmas and the COVID-19 restrictions. The students ranged from B2 to C1 in level, five were Swedish and one Italian.

I had originally planned a lesson on Christmas traditions. However, when I got to class we started having a discussion about careers and jobs which led to the students asking for a lesson on writing a good CV. I only had two lessons left with this group. My last lesson I had planned for them was reflecting on their term and I had some fun games to play and certificates to give out, so if I was going to do a lesson on CV’s it had to be this one. I’d taught a lesson on CV’s a couple of times before and had some materials saved on my computer, so I decided that if that’s what they wanted then I was in a position to deliver.

I began the lesson by asking students to think about what their dream job might look like and to either draw or write a few ideas down. After a minute or two thinking time all but one student got busy writing or drawing their ideas. I went over to the student who was staring at his paper and asked if he needed more thinking time or was he feeling stuck? He responded by saying that he felt at a crossroads in his life and his dream job was different from what his mum wanted or needed. He explained that they had a family business and the expectation was that this he would work within it, but this wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to go to university to study marketing and management. I sensed this was a big decision and consideration for the student and he seemed really conflicted. I decided to ask the rest of the class to get into small groups and share their ideas with each other, that gave me a few more minutes with this student. I asked the student if he would like some more time to think but he decided he would like to join a group and have a discussion with his class mates.

As the lesson progressed we came on to personal statements, what to write and the differences between a personal statement for a job and a university application. The focus of this lesson was on job applications so I asked students to work together in groups to exchange ideas of what they should write in this section. At this point, the student who had been talking to me earlier asked if he could talk to me about writing a personal statement for university. I decided the best thing to do would be for him to write some ideas for this instead of working on a personal statement for a CV. It meant he wouldn’t be so involved with the lesson and with the other students but it felt like this would be more beneficial and useful to him. I said if he wrote some ideas during the lesson I was happy to spend about 15 minutes with him after class today to discuss it, which he seemed happy with. We then met after the lesson and after a discussion about his ideas he went away to write a draft personal statement which he sent me to have a look at.

This lesson was an example of reflection in action. I’d decided to go with what the students had requested and changed my lesson which felt the right thing to do in that I was offering more personalised learning. This had generated some space for a particular student to explore an area he was having difficulties with.

After the lesson and a brief discussion with Nancy, my module tutor, I started to think about what my role as a teacher was and how this fits with the ‘bigger picture’ of teaching. I was in a position to offer a student some extra support with English for a specific reason, but also to give him some time and space to reflect on what he wanted for his future. I don’t know what this student will decide to do in the future, but it felt right that I could support him in that moment so that he had the tools at his disposal if he chooses to use them. I teach at a school that promotes fostering personal and social development for students. The idea is for students to learn more than just English but also about themselves and personal development. This lesson felt like it fit with the ethos of the school. I feel this is an example of a positive critical incident for two reasons. Firstly because it made me think both during and after the lesson about the decisions I had made, why I’d made them and if I’d do the same again (which I think I probably would if possible). It also made me think about my role overall as a teacher and how I fit within the school I teach in.

Critical Incident 3

I chose to write this as my third critical incident as I feel it shows an area that I find particularly difficult. The area being, standing up to my manager about something I don’t agree with or feel I should be doing. I’m fortunate enough to work at a very good school with a small supportive staff team. However, I still find myself being a bit of a ‘yes’ person when it comes to my line manager. On this particular occasion it had consequences on my teaching and therefore the students learning. The lesson was an English through lesson where we teach with more authentic materials away from the course book and ones that are often theme based. The class was a hybrid lesson and consisted of  C2 level Swedish students who had recently been split from one class into two as more students joined. This was my first week teaching them. The idea was that I would teach one of the classes in the afternoon and my manager the other. He very kindly offered to plan this lesson and I would take the planning for the following week. The day before I asked what the plan for the lesson was and he told me that it wasn’t quite ready and he would take me through it during lunch the next day. I already felt nervous. I knew it was going to be based around a podcast with some discussion questions but I wasn’t sure what the questions would be and if there was anything else involved.

The next day we sat down during lunch break to go through the lesson. As soon as we started to go through it I knew there was much more material than I would be able to cover, including some last minute links I had to find and share with students and a short presentation. As I was desperately scribbling down notes and trying to find links, I knew I wasn’t happy about the lesson and started to feel anxious. I think it can be a problem sometimes, doing a lesson that has been planned by someone else if there isn’t time to go through things properly and have time to process the information and double check anything you aren’t sure of. Just to add another element to it, my manager wanted the two classes to merge online towards the end of the lesson to discuss their findings and thoughts. I thought he wanted me to put my zoom link onto google class for everyone to sign in to and I would allocate break out rooms and group work.

As I rushed off to class feeling flustered I tried to calm myself down, telling myself that all I had to do was to be slick and keep the lesson moving at fast pace. They were high level students so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. I arrived at the classroom, set up my computer, connected everything up and put my zoom link onto google classroom ready for the other class to use later. Students started to arrive in the physical and online class and I got going with the presentation. The students asked me lots of questions, and this part of the lesson ended up taking more time than I’d initially thought. Then came the part where I needed to share 4 film trailers for everyone to vote on to decide which film they would watch for homework. That’s when the problems started and some of the students online couldn’t access the links for some reason. I managed to sort this out, but it took some time, and time is something I didn’t have to play with. I started to panic because I knew there was no way we would  have time to listen to a half hour podcast, have time for the discussion questions and then merge with the other class. I ploughed ahead deciding that at least the students would be able to share their findings with the other class but would unfortunately have little or no time for a class discussion.

When it came to merging with the other class their was a lot of confusion. What I thought was meant to happen clearly wasn’t what my manager had in mind. It ended up with students trying to join the ‘wrong’ zoom links and those in the physical classroom wondering what they should be doing. Myself included. At this point my manager phoned me to go through what he had meant to happen so we could rectify the situation. Things kind of turned out all right but the students had very little time to share what they had spent half an hour listening to. I felt like I hadn’t done a very good job and that I had come across as I didn’t know what was going on (which to be honest, I don’t think I really did).

I decided to walk back from school that afternoon as I needed to process and reflect on what had happened and what I could do about it. I felt I had two decisions to make. Firstly, did I bring the subject of the lesson and my feelings about it with my manager and secondly, did I acknowledge what some of the difficulties of the lesson with the students. I decided very quickly to do the latter. I spoke to the students as soon as the lesson started the next day. I apologised about the confusion and the amount of tasks that had been required in the lesson. They were actually totally fine about it and found the whole thing quite funny. I also decided to devote some time during the first part of the lesson to discuss the podcast they had listened to and share their thoughts when they had more time and space to do so.

Speaking to my manager was much more of a difficult decision to make. I decided in the end to approach it by talking to him about the following:

  1. I was unable to digest a lot of information just before a lesson and needed more time to process and understand what was required.
  2. That my teaching style was different to his and I worked at a slower pace with the students.

The conversation went ok, however I still left feeling somewhat anxious and like I’d failed. On the positive side, we did come to an agreement that I would be given the lesson information earlier next time so that I would have more time to go through it. I would also be able to put my own spin onto it, making it a more natural teaching experience for me and consequently a better learning experience for the students. It had been really interesting for me to see how different teachers work in such different ways and that it is so important to find what works for you. In this case, I think I was harder on myself because he is the DOS, maybe I would have felt differently if I’d been working with another teacher.

Critical Incident 4

This incident involves one particular student that is extremely intelligent and of a proficiency standard in English, but is experiencing a number of personal issues. Due to the nature of the school, many Swedish students often come with various issues and difficulties which had meant they were not able to finish school in Sweden and have had to do an extra course.  This student proved to be particularly challenging to teach and support. The difficulties in class were that the student seemed to bring their negativity and would display this openly towards the teacher or a student they didn’t get on with. I use the word teacher in general because it wasn’t just towards me, but any teacher who taught them. The negativity would be towards such things as British Culture, finding a task too easy, claiming materials were poor, saying lessons were boring, stating that teachers had not given enough information of what was required for a task if they hadn’t completed it.. I found this incredibly difficult to manage and not to take personally. I also had to be careful in considering my feelings towards the student and that I didn’t dismiss their comments as simply being another criticism from ‘the negative student again’. All the students have a right to give feedback and to have input into the course, but this seemed to be something more than that.

I could have chosen many incidents to write about concerning this student, however, I have chosen to discuss one in which they upset another student. For the purposes of this blog post, I will call them student A and student B. This particular week was English plus week, where students are invited to choose between three or four subject areas on offer. English plus weeks are a mixture of students from different classes so it is an opportunity for learners to get to know each other and work together. I was teaching Classic British Culture which consisted of 6 lessons covering subjects such as the royal family, classic painters, poets and Knights. The course overview is presented to students so they have an idea of what to expect before they choose the course. I really don’t know why student A decided to choose this course because it was clear  from the start that they really weren’t interested or enjoying the lessons. Perhaps they’d had different expectations of the course. However, the real difficulty came when I taught the lesson about the British royal family. For an initial activity I put students  into groups of three or four and into break out rooms. I asked them to discuss a number of questions ready to feedback to the group. I chose to put students from different classes together as much as possible to give them opportunities to work with different people.

As usual I went from break out room to break out room to monitor and discuss any issues with students. Everything seemed to be ok and I returned back to the main room. After a few minutes student B appeared in the main room, upset and asking to talk to me. He told me that in his group, student A had spent the whole time I wasn’t there being so vocally negative about the British royal family that they hadn’t been able to discuss or complete the task I had set.  Student B said he understood that not everyone was pro the royal family, and he had been happy to discuss this for a short while, but then wanted to get on with the task. However, this had proved impossible. I reassured student B that I understood this must have been difficult for him and asked if he would like to work with another group. He felt that he needed some time out and would come back to the next lesson. I agreed to this and reassured the student that I would put them into a different group next time.

This left with me with a decision to make about whether I should discuss what had happened with student A who had disliked the royal family or not. They were absolutely entitled to their opinion and I wanted them to feel free to express their opinion. However, there seemed to be a few issues here. Firstly, there are ways to express an opinion when in a group of people and it is possible that these opinions had not been put forward in a very diplomatic way. Secondly, regardless of this students opinion, there was still a task to complete. Working in a group requires  collaboration and perhaps this was a skill that  student A found difficult. Thirdly, it was possible that student B had not known how to cope with someone with very strong opinions and had found it difficult to express that he felt they should get on with the task. The other member of the group had not come to me with any difficulties. The difficulty I had was that I had not been in the break out room at the time so I hadn’t heard the discussion. However, I made the decision to speak to student A as they may not have realised just how upset the other student was.

I joined the break out room to inform the 2 students left in the group that student B had had to leave but didn’t explain why at this point. At the end of the lesson I asked to have a quick chat with student A. I asked how they felt the lesson had gone? They explained that the hadn’t enjoyed the lesson at all and told me their opinions about all royal families but especially their dislike for the British royal family. I listened and replied that I was sorry they hadn’t enjoyed the lesson, that they were absolutely entitled to their opinion and that I was glad they felt they could express themselves freely. I then went on to explain that the course was about classic British culture, that the royal family were part of this, and that this was presented in the course overview. I also explained that another student had been upset because they felt unable to complete the task I had set. I said I felt sure that student A hadn’t intentionally upset student B, but unfortunately that had been the result. Student A replied that they hadn’t meant to upset student B but they felt so passionate about their negative feelings and that they hadn’t wanted to be part of the lesson. I explained that sometimes we do things in lessons that aren’t for everyone and that they could always come and discuss any issues with me so that we could decide the best way to move forward. I then said that we were only doing the royal family for one lesson and that todays second lesson would be something different. They seemed ok with this and we both went on our break.

Student A did not return for the next lesson or any more of the lessons that week. Student B returned for all the lessons. I felt terrible and began to question if I had handled the situation poorly. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything to student A. I decided to have a chat with my line manager. As we were teaching at home, I phoned him and filled him in on what had happened. He was very supportive and felt I had made the right decision to discuss the situation with student A and that a couple more issues had been flagged up recently of a similar nature. He was going to arrange a supportive meeting with student A to see if we could help in any way throughout the course. Even though I felt a little better after this, I was still left wondering about how I would handle this situation of it happened again. When the students I am teaching are adults, how much involvement should I have with problems that may arise? I suppose in this instance, the problem was that a student felt he couldn’t complete a task due to another student, as a consequence his learning is being affected during a class that I am in charge of. Therefore, I feel some responsibility to support both students in the best way I can. Maybe in a physical classroom I would have picked up on the difficulties sooner and simply moved student B into a different group.

It’s great to be able to voice your opinions but there is also a time when certain tasks need to be completed. Perhaps it is more to do with knowing when it is appropriate to discuss your point of view and this is something I need to reflect on when planning a lesson. It might be that I need to give more time over to free discussion. I already do this but it may not be enough at times. It’s certainly something worth considering for future lessons.

Further Reflection

Heading into a new term I decided that I would be clear with students about when it was appropriate to feedback to me their thoughts and feelings about lessons and topics. Feedback has always been encouraged throughout the course, and students have tutorials once a month too. However, maybe I hadn’t made  these opportunities clear from the beginning of term. I’ve also decided to revisit this at the beginning of each module to remind students that their input and feedback is valuable and the ways they can go about this. I wonder if this is something that has got a little lost since going online or teaching hybrid lessons. Each physical classroom has a poster encouraging feedback and ways students can have input into lessons. There is also a space at the bottom of each weekly planner that asks for suggestions. I know that I definitely haven’t been reminding students about that since working online. There has been such a huge focus on adapting teaching styles and integrating on and offline students that I hadn’t noticed some areas of my previous teaching had been lost. This is definitely something I’ve picked up on and am changing this term.

Critical Incident 5

For my final critical incident I have chosen to write about a recent situation I’ve had with a twelve year old Russian student. Due to COVID travel restrictions still in place there had been little up take for face to face summer courses with young students. I was asked to teach this particular student 1:1 for a week in the physical classroom. They were due to stay for a month and there was the possibility of another student joining at some point. She would be having two 90 minute lessons each morning. At that point the level of her English had not been established, so the idea was to get to know her on day 1 and give her a level test.

I had anticipated the student would feel nervous and had planned a gentle fun first lesson that included showing them around the school and having a drink, cake and a chat. The student was dropped off early by her father, who was studying English at another school in Brighton. I greeted them both and tried to strike up a conversation. The student clung to her dad in the classroom and was very upset when he left. She sat on a chair with her legs crossed, arms folded and the hood on her hoodie as far over her head and face as was possible.

My first instinct was for us both to get out to the classroom, and have a wander around the school followed by a drink and biscuit from the kitchen. I asked her if she would like to have a walk around with me, but she shook her head. I asked if she would like a drink or biscuit. Again, she shook her head. I really felt for her. I knew she must be feeling nervous and possibly angry at the fact that she’d been left at a new school, in a different country where she didn’t speak the language (or little), with a new teacher and no other students. I was desperately trying to think about how to help her feel more relaxed. I had no real idea how much she understood of what I was saying, although she seemed to understand when I asked about going for a walk or getting a drink. I decided that it might be better if I stopped talking, and show her some pictures instead. I had lots of pictures of places and things around Brighton and Hove on my I-pad ready for a quiz. I thought I’d try and show her the pictures and she might have seen some things already or she might be interested in going there with her dad at some point. As I flicked through the pictures, such as the pier and the fun fair, I asked if she had seen them. I got no response at all. I named them and typed the words, trying to use as little speech as possible. I invited her to type instead of speaking but, again, I got no response.

After about half an hour, I really thought the best thing would be to walk around the school and garden. A change of scenery that isn’t about the classroom and teaching. My difficulty would be trying to encourage her out of the classroom. I told her that I had to go to the bathroom and I could show her where the toilets were. Luckily that seemed to do the trick and she got up in silence and followed me. From here I decided to seize the moment and take her on a tour of the outside of the school as it was a nice day, and Loxdale is lucky enough to have a lovely big garden. I felt relief that we were at least walking around, although I still had no idea what to do after the tour had finished. What would happen if she didn’t speak all morning? I was happy to walk to the local park with her if she preferred or go to the local garden centre cafe, which I’d already been given permission to do by the school and her dad. It’s something I’d planned for later in the week but right now, the most important thing was to try and help her to relax a little.

As we wandered around to the front of the building the school cat (not exactly owned by the school, but comes every single day) was sat on the table stretched out, asleep. I heard an “ahhh” sound come from the student. I pointed to the cat and said “do you like cats?”. She nodded and walked over to the cat. I followed her. She sat down at the table and started stroking her. I sat in silence stroking the cat too. Then out of the blue she said “I have cat”. Bingo! I have never been so grateful to a cat. “What’s it’s name”, I asked. She told me a Russian name which I tried to say, but failed miserably with the pronunciation. This made her laugh. After that, we spent the rest of the two lessons sat at the table with the cat. She told me about her animals and family. She wrote animal and family names down for me and showed me lots of pictures. It was so lovely to see her start to relax a little, I was  relieved. I really didn’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t spoken or engaged with me. The test, the games, could all wait until tomorrow. The most important thing today was for the student to relax and open up a little. I was also able to assess her speaking as being A2 so I had something to work with for tomorrow.

I think what I have taken away from this is that sometimes it really doesn’t matter how much you plan, as a teacher you need to be so adaptable and able to change direction at any point if needed. I’d had lessons before where, using reflection in action, I’d realised something wasn’t working for whatever reason, and therefore  had to change things around. However, this was something I hadn’t come across before. I don’t have much experience teaching 1:1, and those I have taught have been really keen to learn. This was quite a different scenario for me. Ordinarily, the student would have been in a class with other young learners and not on her own.

After the lessons I thought about what I would do if I were in that situation again. It’s a tricky one to answer. I suppose the main thing is to try and relax and be patient. If she hadn’t spoken for the whole lesson I could have let her father know when he picked her up, to see if he might be able to help. Knowing some of the students interests would have been really helpful. I’ve asked if we could have a CPD session about this, and put our heads together to come up with some ideas. It might prove useful if in the same position in the future.

 

Critical Incidents lesson

According to Brookfield (1990a:84) cited in Farrell’s paper ‘Critical incidents in ELT initial teacher training’, a critical incident is a ‘vividly remembered event which is unplanned or unanticipated’. Analysing critical incidents can be a way for teachers to reflect on their teaching. Richards and Farrell (2005) advocate that if teachers reflect on such incidents in a formal way, they can expose a new understanding of teaching and learning processes. Tripp (1993) believed that incidents can seem to be typical at first, but through analysis can become critical and therefore highlight ways taken for granted when thinking about teaching. It can then be viewed as something that has significance in the wider context.

There aren’t many studies that exist in ELT literature, but one that is discussed in Farrell’s paper, involves 18 trainee teachers in Singapore.  Each  trainee was required to report on two critical incidents during their training. The majority of critical incidents were around language proficiency, class participation and behaviour. Whilst it may be true to say that some of the critical incidents reported by these teachers may be considered typical incidents for experienced language teachers, it is likely that for inexperienced teachers these events are quite dramatic. I can relate to this and found incidents near the beginning of my teaching career particularly difficult. Thinking back to an incident that happened on my first day of teaching at my current language school, a student ran out of the classroom extremely upset and I didn’t have any idea why or what had happened. After checking the student was ok and getting them the support they needed at that time, I found out at lunch time that this was something that wasn’t out of the norm for this school. All the other teachers seemed perfectly relaxed with what I was reporting back, whereas I was really concerned by the event.

Another area of interest that this study brought to light was that most critical incidents reported by the trainee teachers were negative ones. Francis (1995) also found that trainee teachers found it easier to recall negative incidents more quickly that positive ones. During the seminar on critical incidents we all brought a negative critical incident to discuss and commented on the fact that it was harder to recall the positive incidents. It was clear that the incidents we recalled had had a dramatic effect on us at the time and had stayed with us. It was interesting to explore why we thought something had happened and if there was anything we would do differently if faced with a similar situation again.

References

Farrell, T.S. (2008) Critical incidents in ELT initial teacher training. ELTJ. 62: 1, 3–10

Peer observations – General thoughts and SETT

Aside from observing a couple of teachers during a short induction that I had for my first teaching job, my experience of peer observations has been whilst doing my TESOL and then at the school I am  teaching at now. Considering I have been working at the school for almost two years, I have only observed 2 lessons and been observed by 1 peer (aside from the observations from my DOS). I hadn’t really thought about this until now, but that doesn’t seem all that many if the advantages of peer observations are correct in terms of the benefits to individual teachers, the learners, and therefore the school as a whole. 

I look forward to and enjoy watching peers. However, I think in my current teaching context  I’ve seen it more in terms of developing my own practice rather than supporting my peers to develop theirs. I feel during my TESOL I had a different approach. I saw it as having a second set of eyes on what was happening in the classroom and seeing what it was like to be a learner for that lesson. It’s interesting that this is not how I have felt in my current teaching role. Maybe this is because I felt on a ‘level playing field’ during my TESOL. We were all just starting out and all feeling very nervous. We’d had so many classes together as learners ourselves and then trying things out on each other in a teaching role, I felt that I could not only offer support and encouragement, but be honest about what I thought worked well and areas that I felt hadn’t gone so well. We’d spend time discussing this. The school I am at now has some very supportive teachers, but I am aware that they have so much more experience than I do. My peer observations were set up to give me an opportunity to watch teachers who are experienced in teaching Swedes, especially at a Folk high school. So when I observed them I saw it as a learning opportunity for me, but also because I don’t think I was quite sure what I should be feeding back to them about.

I get extremely nervous about being watched. I feel nauseas and panicked and want the whole experience to end as soon as possible. I plan the lesson in far more detail than I normally would but feel this distracts from a  more free flowing lesson. The reason I plan it in more detail is probably to feel more in control, which then has a more negative impact on my teaching. 

I think that if peer observations are carried out using certain models or structures, they can be hugely beneficial. For example, the diagram adapted from ‘Classroom Observation’ by Matt O’Leary (2014) shows a model of how peer observations can work. 

This is what has been missing so far in the peer observations I have been involved in. Having an agreed focus would make it easier to know what to look out for during a lesson and feedback would be far more meaningful and beneficial for the person being observed. Actions should be made from this and applied to the observed persons teaching so that things move forward. 

There are benefits for both the observee and the observer. The teacher being observed has an opportunity to try out new strategies, develop different approaches to managing a problem they are having, to boost confidence and to encourage reflection on teaching and learning. The observer has the opportunity to view the lesson from a learners perspective and may pick up some helpful tips or strategies that can help with their own teaching. This in turn feeds into benefits for the school as a whole. According to John Hattie (Hatti, Masters and Birch, 2015; cited in Cambridge Assessment international education) a shared approach to professional development improves teacher effectiveness. Therefore, having the opportunity to learn from each other can stimulate new ideas and improve teaching practice. This doesn’t mean that teachers copy other teachers’ styles, what it does is open up opportunities for a teacher to reflect on their own practice and adapt another teachers techniques to suit their own style of teaching. As stated by William, 2016; cited in Cambridge Assessment International Education, “….the ability of teachers to modify the techniques to make them work in their own classrooms is an important feature of any effective model of teacher development”. This is an area that I feel I have had the opportunity to do with the peer observations I have been involved in, and one that I have used. 

In the current context, video recording seems the best way to engage in peer observations. It is going to be interesting using a video to record a lesson, or part of a lesson and then have my course peers watch it back. I’m not sure if I will feel less pressured by not having an observer in the classroom or if the process of watching the video back whilst with my peers will cause me more anxiety. Time will tell.

SETT

As part of a reflective process when observing peers, Nancy introduced us to SETT, and suggested it may be a useful tool for us to use. SETT stands for self-evaluation of teacher talk. This framework was devised by Steve Walsh and is discussed in his paper Talking the Talk (ELT Journal Volume 60/2 April 2006). It was largely influenced by social cultural theories of learning. The paper considers ways in which ‘a detailed understanding of classroom discourse can be achieved through the use of reflective practices and professional dialogue’ (Walsh 2006). It is important for the teacher to be able to understand classroom communication and make tactical decisions in the moment as a lesson develops to be able to develop second language acquisition within the classroom.

The SETT framework allows teachers to look at classroom interaction and how, through a range of modes (McCarthy and Walsh 2003), teaching and learning take place. According to Walsh, the classroom is made up of a series of modes (sometimes referred to micro contexts) which are created through interaction to give space for learning. Teachers are often concerned about the amount of teacher talk time (TTT) that occurs within the classroom, it’s often an area that I am very conscious of and came up on numerous occasions during working towards obtaining the Cert TESOL. However, Walsh states that it isn’t so much about the amount of time teachers talk, it is more to do with the place it has and what it’s doing.  He advocates that watching a snap shot of our teaching, even a video recording of 3 to 5 minutes, can raise awareness and highlight certain features in our teaching. It can help teachers to build up a profile of what we are like as a teacher and we can then work on particular aspects. By watching a video of yourself teaching using SETT, teachers are able to analyse their own classroom data and can then go on to use this information to facilitate participation in reflective feedback interviews with other teachers.

The focus of SETT is on the pedagogy goal of that moment rather than the lesson overall. For example, a focus on eliciting or giving a set of instructions. The SETT framework is made up of a series of 4 classroom modes and thirteen interactional features. A mode has specific interactional features and specific pedagogy goals, of which Walsh has identified four:

Skills and systems mode – focus on language, grammar, vocabulary or pronunciation

Managerial mode – main focus on setting up or finishing an activity

Classroom context mode – eliciting feeling and attitudes, trying to get personal experiences. Often used at the beginning of a lesson to set the context of the lesson

Materials mode –  main focus on using text or other types of materials

The thirteen interactional features are as follows:

Feature of Teacher Talk Description
  1. Scaffolding
  1. Reformulation (rephrasing a student’s contribution)
  2. Extension (extending a student’s contribution)
  3. Modelling (providing an example for students)
  1. Direct Repair
Correcting an error quickly and directly
  1. Form-focused feedback 
Giving feedback on the language used, not the message.
  1. Content feedback
Giving feedback on the message rather than the language used
  1. Extended teacher turn
Teacher turn of more than one utterance.
  1. Extended Student Turn
Student turn of more than one utterance.
  1. Extended wait-time
Allowing sufficient time (several seconds) for students to respond or formulate a response.
  1. Teacher Echo
  1. Teacher repeats teacher’s previous utterance
  2. Teacher repeats a student’s contribution. 
  1. Teacher Interruptions
Interrupting a student’s contribution. 
  1. Turn Completion
Teacher completing a student’s contribution for them.
  1. Seeking clarification
  1. Teacher asks a student to clarify something the student said.
  2. Student asks teacher to clarify something the teacher has said.
  1. Display Questions
Teacher asks questions they know the answer to.
  1. Referential Questions
Genuine questions to which the teacher doesn’t know the answer

As a group, we decided to use it for our second round of peer observations. We chose  a 10-15 minute video clip of our own teaching. We watched it and decided which modes were in operation. We then watched the clip a second time  and used the template to record instances and examples of teacher talk. As a group of three, we bought our clips to a session on Teams to watch through together and evaluate our teacher talk. My evaluations of Sians and Anna’s lessons using SETT can be found in the Observing my peers section of my blog. The evaluation of my lesson can be found in the Peer observed lessons section of my blog.

References

Walsh, S. 2006. Talking the talk of the TESOL classroom. ELT Journal Volume 60, 2 April 2006; Published by Oxford University Press.

Tutor observed lessons

 

 

 

 

Lesson One – hybrid lesson

This is my first recorded lesson I have done ready to be observed by a tutor. In fact, my lessons on the 9th and 10th of November are the first times I’ve ever recorded myself teaching. So this is a whole new experience for me. It was topic week at school and students from the 4 current classes were asked to choose between a variety of subjects on offer. For that week, students would be in a class of mixed abilities with people they may not have had lessons with before and that may not have been previously taught by me. The topic chosen by this class was food and I developed a week of lessons to cover this.

The morning of the lesson wasn’t without its difficulties. The class was originally meant to be offline only, but there was a last minute online addition. However, that’s the way teaching life can be in the current climate and hybrid teaching is something I am getting used to.

click here to view my pro forma

click here to view my lesson plan

link to lesson materials:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LxCFYP81vrvicjF2Iva_KqrPg1KZxGv3TC4l7MUnqz8/edit

After watching the video back I have identified the following areas that need development:

Timing

Both during the lesson and immediately after I was acutely aware that my timings were wrong. The beginning of the lesson took longer than I had anticipated and it takes longer to group students than I allowed for in my plan. I hadn’t anticipated the length one of the activities took too, and this took me by surprise. I was able to finish all that I had planned in the next lesson and adjust my plan but it did have an impact. Timing is definitely an area I need to think more carefully about when planning my lessons.

scaffolding activities 

One activity students found more difficult than I had expected was identifying verbs we use to cook. Originally I was going to show a clip of Mary Berry cooking and ask students to identify some cooking verbs she uses. This may have helped students with the activity that followed. I was trying to cover too many things in one lesson so had ended up taking the clip out.

Giving Instructions 

I’m not clear when giving instructions for all the activities. For example, when instructing students about a web quest to research celebrity chefs I think I say “what I want you to do….” 3 times before I actually tell them what I want them to do. It may be that I need to write down instructions in order to help both myself and the students

individual needs

As this was a multi level class and included SEN students I missed a few things. Firstly, I had allocated a time for an activity on the google document and then I asked the class how much time they would like. One particular student would have found this difficult and pointed it out to me. Secondly, from the video I’m not sure if 2 of the students at the back of the class are engaged in the lesson or not. They are both lower level students in comparison with the rest of the class and I should have tried to bring them into the class discussions more. Particularly as the stronger students were participating and speaking a lot.

Post tutor discussion

After some tutor feedback and discussion I feel that the areas I identified that need improvement were correct.

The first consideration is not to try and cram too many activities into my lesson as this had an effect on both my timings and my scaffolding. Leaving out the Mary Berry clip would have assisted with the students understanding and clarification of the cooking verbs activity. I think it would have helped the lesson to flow better too. As Nancy pointed out, ‘less is more’. With less activities to do the students will have the space to explore the subject more and as a teacher I will have the opportunity to explore more incidental learning opportunities. Funnily enough, just writing this makes me feel like I can breathe a little more throughout the lesson and make more room for growth for both the students and myself. I love the idea of the students having more input into the lesson and this is one way to do it.

In terms of giving instructions it may be that I need to write these clearly for myself and practise delivering them for a few lessons to see if this helps. This may enable me to give clearer instructions in a more fluent and concise way. I could also try and use ICQ’s, a tool I often use with lower level students but rarely with medium to higher levels. I’d have to think about how to write these into my plan so that they are meaningful and not just a token gesture, and target which parts of the instructions are likely to cause confusion. The game of taboo at the beginning of my lesson needed more explanation and a demonstration to aid learner understanding.

On the whole I was happy with how this lesson went and have learnt some valuable lessons to take forward. Here are some of the areas I’d like to concentrate on:

1. Don’t cram in too much.

2. Make sure all stages of the lesson relate back to the main aim and purpose (this relates to the addition of the Nigella Lawson video clip which didn’t really serve a purpose).

3. Work on giving clear instructions with a demonstration if needed.

4. Try out new materials before the lesson and have some visuals on hand to aid with explanations.

5. When writing the pro forma I need to include the situation we are in regarding COVID-19 as this impacts on the lesson and watching the video doesn’t always show this clearly.

 

                                                   Lesson Two – online 

For my second observed lesson I chose to do a topic based lesson that I could incorporate some reading strategies into. I chose the poem ‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling for a numbest of reasons. I have taught the poem twice before to B2/C1 level classes and feel that the themes are still of interest and relatable to students now. The aim of this lesson was to encourage learners to use strategies in order to understand the poem, generate more interest and make it more relatable. In order to do this I adapted some materials to make the lesson more coherent and structured. I have taught the students in this class since the beginning of January and have found that as long as the instructions and materials are clear, they will engage in class based activities.

Pro forma:

pro forma for observation lesson 2

Lesson plan:

Observed lesson plan for 2nd lesson

Materials:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XD57_UsICPqKT5c-1TouUTL8sCOSSrSQD6DdxJ-d95o/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1yhxJGTMmpSqH6FUaBvPehPPCKW-VXU_C8jjdAgjT6fM/edit?usp=sharing

Link to hot feedback video:

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0l5PtOfJT4o0T3cwJ7JJkLhRg#hot_feedback_for_observation_2

Initial post lesson feedback

Areas I chose to specifically focus on were scaffolding, content feedback and extended wait time.

On the whole I was really pleased with the lesson, largely because the students seemed interested in the topic and gained a good grasp of the poem. They were analysing, connecting and relating the poem to their own lives which is just what I hoped they would do. I was worried that I talked too much at the beginning of the lesson. A lot of the first half is scaffolding and build up to generate interest in the writer and the topic as I try and elicit who Kipling is and what the general them of the poem is. I felt happy that the class in general seemed to engage with the idea of advice and were able to identify times in their own lives they had had advice. After watching the lesson back I felt concerned that I hadn’t emphasised the strategies enough, however, the students did seem to grasp them and were having some incredible discussions in break out rooms.

In terms of content feedback I had made the decision for this lesson that I wanted students to discover the meaning of the poem rather than focus on form. I made a note of some of the errors that I can go back to in another lesson, but the important focus was on fluency. I have been working on giving students time and space to explore subjects, and this includes extended wait time when asking questions. Sometimes the silence seems to go on for a long time but that is more about me feeling uncomfortable than the students. I am beginning to realise that after a while, students will try and answer the question and I don’t have to fill all the silences.  Break out rooms do lend themselves well to giving students space without the feeling of being listened to all the time by a teacher. During this lesson, some learners were sharing some personal information about their lives and I’m pleased they felt at ease enough to do so. It is hugely important to create a safe and supportive environment for all learners, but especially in classes where some suffer from a variety of special educational needs.

My biggest concern of the lesson was regarding one particular student who is having difficulties with English comprehension at this level. I tried to include him in the lesson as much as possible without making him feel uncomfortable or under pressure, but I still felt he did’t have the comprehension and language tools to engage very well.  Since carrying out this lesson, it has been agreed that the student will move to another class where his needs can be properly met.

Post tutor discussion

After some discussion with Nancy, I am still pleased with the lesson overall. I discussed my unease about the student who found the comprehension difficult. Even though he was clearly in the wrong class for his level, I still felt a sense of responsibility both in terms of his language learning and feeling comfortable in the class.

Here are some areas I need to work on for future lessons:

  1. Adding timings to my lesson plans

After my first observed lesson I discussed how my timings were wrong and I had not planned enough time during the lesson to finish all the tasks. I have since tried teaching a few more lessons with structured lesson plan timings and have ended up becoming more worried about sticking to the times rather than concentrating on delivering the lesson itself.So for this lesson plan I decided to leave the timings off. I feel I have a good rapport with this class and felt confident that the lesson would flow fluidly in an organic way using intrinsic timings.  However, I’m not sure that this would work with a higher level class or one that I didn’t feel so confident in teaching. One suggestion from Nancy is that I structure and write the lesson using times, but then erase them when I actually teach the lesson. Therefore, I still have the structure without the pressure of the timings on the day.

2. Citing materials

When creating this lesson I used the poem itself, and then researched on the internet for comprehension questions, discussion questions, various poem analysis and strategies used for poetry comprehension. I then took parts from a number of sources and adapted them to make them more relevant for the learners I am currently teaching. However, I took all the strategies from one particular source before making some adaptions. I therefore need to make sure I reference the source on the lesson plan.

3. Future lessons

My first two observed lessons have been based around topics. The first around food and the second around a poem. My next lessons need to address different areas of teaching, for example on grammar or a different language aspect. I have already decided to focus on a grammar lesson. I think it will be interesting to see if I can still give students the time and space they need in a different type of lesson. It will also be a different challenge for me in terms of timings and how I keep to time whilst still trying to let the lesson flow organically.

 

 Lesson three – online

 

I chose to teach a grammar lesson this time. This is a small online class composing of two students. One I taught during the Autumn term and the other student I have been teaching since January. Individually they have had their difficulties both inside and outside of the classroom, but seem to moving forward in this class now. I chose to review the present simple and continuous tense as it is ones we have been working on for a few weeks now and I wanted to see if further support was needed. I decided to go with simple, straightforward activities that I adapted and personalised from a previous worksheet I had used. It is of great importance that both students clearly understand the tasks, so I needed to concentrate on eliciting and scaffolding each activity followed by clear instructions and ICQ’s. I also wanted to make sure both students felt they had time and space to work through the activities without feeling pressured, but feeling supported. I chose to offer to turn off my camera and sound but remain present in case I was needed for support.

Pro forma:

Pro forma for observed lesson 3

Lesson plan:

Observed lesson plan 3

Materials:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1H9hczOGtRKvRbXEFl4YWunedYr-X7p3Fix7VDIe8aF8/edit?usp=sharing

Link to hot feedback video:

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/03dpegBtmeDOGVVtTWj4BPKJQ#hot_feedback_observed_lesson_3

Post lesson initial reflection:

I felt this lesson went ok. I was happy with my eliciting and scaffolding before each activity and both students seemed to enjoy the lesson. I was able to identify that one student has a better grasp of both tenses than the other, which will help when I am developing future lessons. In terms of the ICQ’s I used, I’m not sure they worked too well. I needed to be so clear and exact with what needed to be done, and I’m not sure I achieved that. After the scaffolding and for the first activity I thought they understood the instructions. However, it became clear as I was listening to them discuss the questions that they had not fully understood so I interjected. After that they seemed to be ok. I gave them both the option of me staying or leaving them to carry out the activity without me there and they both chose the latter. The activity took longer than I had anticipated but I had created an activity later on in the lesson that could be easily adjusted if needed. I feel that by creating an activity that could be used or left out really helped with my anxiety around time keeping that I experience when following lesson plans.

Both the students had great discussions when tackling the first task. It was interesting to hear the stronger student taking the lead and supporting their class mate towards the right answer. It was wonderful to listen to the weaker of the two students engaging in discussion trying to work out the answers, especially as this student barely spoke in lessons a few weeks ago when in a different class.

Post tutor discussion

After watching the lesson back again I wasn’t as happy with it as I initially had been. I wasn’t sure if I had done the right thing in choosing to leave both the students to work out the answers to the first activity for the amount of time that had done. I had made a decision before the lesson to give them space to learn in a more autonomous way, and had kept to this. However, I felt concerned that I should have supported them more. After speaking with Barbara she felt that giving them the space had enabled them to find their own answers which was a positive way of teaching. Barbara even observed that one of the students was concept checking the other student at one point, which I hadn’t picked up on. This is something I hadn’t identified myself, but when I rewatched the lesson after my session with Barbara I saw one of the students concept checking the word ‘shaving’. I very much enjoy this style of teaching to enable students to find their way and explore the language. I realise it isn’t always possible and that different teaching styles are needed in different situations, however, I hope I feel confident enough again to try this.

In terms of setting up the activities, I had done a lot of scaffolding and given clear instructions and felt happier about this after the feedback session. Barbara raised an interesting point that it would be interesting to see how different it was setting up an activity and using ICQ’s with more advanced level students engaging in more complex task. We also discussed using materials that we have been exploring since starting the diploma and trying out different ideas. This is my goal for my next observed lesson.

 

Lesson Four – Hybrid lesson

I was extremely nervous about this lesson. This is my first time teaching proficiency students General English. I had taught C2 students as part of mixed level classes for short periods such as a week, but never as being the lead teacher for their general course and I was really being stretched by it. Due to my teaching context being within a folk high school I had a number of students with problems ranging from depression, anxiety and ADHD. This would be a hybrid lesson with students both in the physical classroom and online due to the pandemic. All of this information fed into my decision to do a lesson on small talk to address an intercultural communicative need. On a number of occasions previous Swedish students had spoken about their difficulties of making idle chit chat with people they didn’t know or barely knew. They spoke about not knowing what to say and feeling very uncomfortable in situations when in Brighton and people started chatting to them. They identified situations such as being at the bus stop, in a cafe, in a shop, having dinner with a host family or going on a date. Small talk is not a cultural norm in Sweden.

As society was starting to open up and COVID restrictions were being lifted, it seemed like an ideal time to approach a lesson on small talk. Students would be venturing out more and those currently online would be coming out of quarantine very soon. It was even more important to tackle this subject within my current teaching context as many of the students suffer with social anxiety and find small talk situations extremely difficult. Whilst their language level is high and they wouldn’t necessarily have any linguistic problems in this situation, their emotional problems impact on their fluency.

I decided to use a video clip that highlighted the difficulties Swedish people had with small talk and showed a couple of scenarios all spoken in Swedish with English subtitles. I wanted students to connect with how this made them feel and give them a safe space to discuss. This would then lead into reading and comparing 3 short dialogues to identify situations and to give a platform to discuss accepted topics, open ended questions and appropriate language. The final part of the lesson was to try out different role plays and scenarios they may find themselves in. For this activity I had designed an online game for my materials assignment and wanted to try it out in class. I had used text, photos and video to try and enhance the experience of the learners and engage in a variety of role play situations in a stress free and relaxed way.

Pro forma

Pro forma for observed lesson 4- final document

Lesson plan

Observed lesson plan 4

Materials 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MZZ7nyKfVxRo_nrRvQjAy_ApOcyPy5dQWtPRayHEGUY/edit?usp=sharing

Online game: https://www.flippity.net/bg.php?k=1UHgnCJszdOet5HTJdgqpOWJ2WmRurimLQK3JQOgeqwY

Link to hot feedback video:

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0MoMfPJ_yzvoMbFuAnm3z093g#hot_feedback_obs_4

Post lesson initial reflection

My initial response was that the lesson had felt a bit flat and hadn’t gone as well as I had hoped. I teach two different classes both at C2 level and had done this lesson with students who are all within the physical classroom earlier that morning. Whilst the lesson had gone well, I had found out that some of the material I was using (the video clip of Swedish people and small talk) had already been shown by a previous teacher in a previous module when they had touched on the subject of small talk. I felt annoyed with myself for not researching this more before planning and carrying out the lesson. During the short break between lessons, I could have changed things around and possibly found another clip to show. However, I decided to stick with my original plan and show the short clip. Not all the students would have seen the clip, it was short and the fact that it was in their mother tongue I felt would still help with connection. However, it still played on my mind a bit.

I’m always aware during hybrid lessons on being so dependant on the internet. It can be difficult to integrate students online with those in the physical classroom and this can be made so much worse if the internet is being temperamental. Throughout the lesson my unstable connection warning banner kept coming up on my screen which can be such a worry. Although, thankfully I didn’t lose connection with the students. It has happened to me on more than one occasion over the past 6 months since hybrid teaching, and can be disruptive for the whole class. The set up at school and in this classroom is that I project the image from my computer of those on zoom onto the white board behind me so that those in the physical classroom can see them. However, those on zoom cannot see anyone in the physical classroom as we aren’t using webcams, so I am very aware of students on zoom feeling disconnected. Sometimes those students don’t participate as much and I was worried that this was the case during this lesson. Students within the physical classroom were also reluctant to log in to zoom for the final activity.

In terms of my own materials I think I was nervous about their reactions to the game and the feedback I would get. I had spent a lot of time on creating the game and was well aware I could receive negative feedback and I had to be ready to accept, learn and reflect on this.

Post tutor discussion

I was reluctant to watch this lesson but, after a few days, I watched it back and felt some relief. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it had been. In fact, I was quite happy with some of the outcomes, especially after my discussion with Barbara. The video had worked well and students were at ease discussing the scenarios presented and expressing their opinions regarding small talk and different cultures. Out of the 3 students online, one had participated a lot more than I had initially thought. Barbara had wondered which way the lesson was going to go when some of the students bought up cultural differences and how they viewed certain situations. One student bought up how she was always asked when she would be having a baby when she visited her native culture, and discussed her feelings about this. Another student discussed how one of the characters in the video had seemed a bit like a stalker whist the girl was waiting at a bus stop. I explained to Barbara that I felt it was like walking a bit of a tightrope. I wanted students to explore these topics but was aware of some of their own personal difficulties and anxieties so didn’t want anyone to feel uneasy.

In terms of the 3 written dialogues, this was an opportunity for students to work out where the conversations were taking place and lead into a discussion about appropriate topics. I had a Padlet ready in case students needed more support with this and the use of open questions and expressions to carry on conversation. However, this didn’t seem to be needed so I made the decision not to use it. Time was also moving on and I wanted students to be able to try out the game because this was their chance to try be spontaneous and adaptable in situations presented. I had managed to record one of the breakout rooms on zoom so that I could reflect and evaluate in more detail the students use of the game. Some students from the physical classroom had agreed to log into zoom so that the class felt more integrated and students got to work with different people.

Barbara and I had a lengthy discussion about the game and designing your own materials to use  with a class. Barbara felt that on the whole the game had been a success. Students had fun with it, which was one of the instructions, and they took part in the scenarios. Watching back some of the role play of students online had been interesting. Some had used humour to explore the situations whilst others had seemed more openly anxious about what to say to keep a conversation going. Two things in particular came out of this observation for me. Firstly, it would be good to explore with students where the conversation broke down. Barbara thought about recording and playing students a conversation where this is highlighted and asking them to discuss what went wrong and what would be a better conversation. Another area is to look at expressions to carry on conversations when students get a bit stuck. Even though they have the language ability to do this, nerves take over sometimes and having some practiced language to hand might be useful. Perhaps the Padlet would have been good to use after all. I definitely think I would keep it in if I do this lesson again in the future.

I asked students to give me anonymous feedback about the game by answering questions I had put onto a Padlet. The feedback in general was positive. Some of the more negative feedback included students landing on the same squares. I had thought they might come up with different scenarios but they didn’t. Barbara and I discussed starting students at different parts of the game to minimise this. Other feedback included feeling anxious at times. Perhaps I need to look at more scenarios as a class first and work through them together before trying the game. It seems that more scaffolding was needed. Perhaps I could use a couple of scenarios from the game before and/or after.

This lesson was by far my biggest test and it is one I have got so much out of. I really want to try it again and make some improvements so the students can experience something that will help them whilst in England or travelling to other parts of the UK.

Further Reflection

I have since re-written the lesson plan for this particular lesson as I know I will use it every term whilst at Loxdale. I have included much more scaffolding so that students have more ideas to put into practise during the game. I’m really looking forward to trying it out again. Funnily enough, designing the game gave me the confidence to try my hand at using other online templates that sites such as Flippity and Wordwall offer. The students seem to really engage with them and it’s given me a platform to vary the way I teach. 

 

Lesson 5 – Hybrid lesson

This was a lesson for proficiency students, two of which were online and nine in the physical classroom. Unfortunately, one of the online students was away so that left one learner online which is slightly more difficult to manage in terms of integration. I carried out the observation on a Monday morning and I’m not sure if that was the right decision. This isn’t a particularly energetic lesson and I usually prefer to do something a little more up beat on a Monday. However, this lesson followed on from Friday and I wanted students to remember what we had done.

The class watched a Ted Talk in their previous lesson that challenges the simple view of emotional language. (https://www.ted.com/talks/tiffany_watt_smith_the_history_of_human_emotions?language=en).

Common core words such as ‘sadness, anger, fear, disgust, happiness and surprise’ are often used as a baseline to describe how we feel.  We looked across different languages and cultures to show the complexity and diversity of the words used to describe how we are feeling. The talk suggests that the very existence of these words may allow us to feel things that people in other cultures don’t. Following the Ted Talk, students took the 6 core emotions and broke each down into 4 more emotions, and then each of these down to 2 more emotions. The idea of this is based on a feelings wheel.

https://images.app.goo.gl/aRCbaSxdUFfTc78v8

This lesson uses the emotions broken down by students to find collocations and then use the language to create a piece of dialogue based on the differences of what people say and how we really feel or think. I started the lesson with a re-cap of Friday to engage and refresh students memories. They did well and seemed to remember a lot.

I began the next part of the lesson by eliciting noun, verb, adjective and verb collocates for the word disgust. I chose to work with ‘disgust’ as a group because this had been the most challenging emotion for students to break down. I had anticipated that students might change the form of the basic emotion and had decided not to error correct this, as the aim of the lesson was for students to come up with and use collocations in general more in their writing. For example, I didn’t challenge one students contribution of ‘disgusting food’. However, I did try and elicit further noun collocations such as ‘horror and disgust’. Whilst this part of the lesson felt a little lengthy and lacked some pace, I’d wanted to scaffold it well before asking students to work more independently. I had made the mistake in the past of assuming C2 learners understood what was required for what I thought was a fairly simple activity. However, this had resulted in some confusion, so I wanted to make sure they knew exactly what was required. One of the students is one I have discussed in the critical incidents 4 section of the blog. Therefore, I needed to make sure my scaffolding was as good as I could possible make it. Students were then able to work in groups or independently to collocate one of the other emotions and record their findings on a Padlet so that everyone had access:

https://padlet.com/sonjawootton/a7xubjn09kf9ppww

For the next part of the lesson I wanted students to think about situations they have found themselves in that might be somewhat awkward. For example, family get togethers. The aim of this is for students to think about when they say things that aren’t the same as what they are thinking or feeling. To illustrate this I chose to show a clip of the film ‘Inside out’. The clip shows a family scene and demonstrates that what we say is often not what we are thinking or feeling:

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwi_2v-ewZvxAhVsA2MBHRSFCwQQtwIwAXoECAIQAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DyRUAzGQ3nSY&usg=AOvVaw2q_c3AMwi4dWbtdsK6gcp0

Following the clip students were then asked to thought shower some more situations, which I felt they engaged well in. These situations were to give them ideas that they could use for the their next activity. This was to write a piece of dialogue showing what someone is saying and what someone is actually thinking or feeling. I gave them a choice of using their google document to write this, showing speaking and thinking in different colours. Or they could create a comic strip using the following:

https://www.makebeliefscomix.com/

I chose to use this as an alternative after being shown it by a fellow student on the materials module of the diploma. I thought it would be a great way for students to have some fun and be creative whilst using the language from the lesson. I had spent some time exploring the material and felt confident to explain how to use it with the class and take them through some examples. About half the classed seemed interested in trying this out. I gave them about 15 to 20 minutes of the lesson to start this task to enable me to support students who may be struggling. They could then finish it for homework.

Overall, I felt the lesson was fine. It lacked some momentum at times but the students engaged well and carried out the activities. They seemed to enjoy the film clip too.

Pro forma

Pro forma for observed lesson 5

Lesson plan

Observed lesson plan 5

Post tutor feedback and discussion

The initial discussion Paul and I had was about hybrid teaching and the difficulties it brings to the classroom. Whilst it is do able, it doesn’t mean that learners have the best experience.  My own personal experience is that both online and offline students suffer, but more so those online depending on the ratio. I think it is also dependant on learners in the physical classrooms willingness to engage with those online and how much the teacher wants to try and integrate the students. As teachers, one of our aims is for students to work with others and to vary who people work with. This is more of a challenge with a hybrid set up. One of the difficulties I have found is the reluctance of students in the physical classroom to want to login to zoom and pair up with an online learner.  I felt the online student, of which there was only one, was not as integrated into the lesson. Due to the set up at the school, the online student cannot see the rest of the class but only the teacher logged into zoom, this adds another barrier. Paul also felt that the students in the physical classroom were hindered due to having to use computers and shared documents (google docs). It disrupts the fluidity to some extent. I have to type contributions or instructions onto a document instead of using a whiteboard and this is then displayed on a monitor or students can use their own computers. In this particular classroom the screen is fairly small so may be difficult for students to see clearly, therefore using their own computer is needed.

The main focus of this lesson was to teach collocations and concordances in relation to the six basic human emotions already identified.  It is a follow up lesson to the one written about as my last peer observed lesson. I had started with ‘disgust’. Because this was the part of the lesson I felt lacked in energy and interest, I was keen to discuss ideas with Paul as to how I could have done this differently. Paul wondered if I had explored data driven teaching. I wasn’t sure I fully understood what this was, but after a brief explanation I could see how this would have benefited a lesson such as this one. Instead of trying to elicit collocations I could have asked students to explore resources such as online Oxford collocations or lextutor.ca (which was one I hadn’t heard of before) and they could have found collocations and concordances themselves. The task may have been more interesting and engaging.  Part way through the lesson I do discuss concordances and refer learners to using tools such as English-Corpora.org to use when writing essays. At the beginning of the course we give students a list of useful online resources, but I must admit, I don’t really incorporate these resources into my lessons so they may get forgotten or not used to their full potential. Lextutor.ca, advocated by Scott Thornbury, shows concordances for both spoken and written words. We could have gone on to compare the uses or examined the subject areas of when the word disgust is used, in more detail. Another possibility would be to begin the lesson with what subject areas elicit the word ‘disgusting’, before exploring the data driven material.

On reflection, I think a more data driven teaching approach would have worked better for this lesson. Firstly, it would have taken the pressure off of me. Teaching Swedish proficiency students can be challenging and I need to find material that will stretch and engage them. However, due to the nature of the students, there are often times when they are not forth coming with ideas, answers or questions and I often fall into filling their silences and gaps myself. This can prove tiring and somewhat tedious. However, one of the students in this class can be extremely forth coming if he is bored, confused or feels unchallenged. Again, I have written about this in more detail as part of my fourth critical incident, but I wanted to mention it here as it can feel like walking along a tightrope at times. Secondly, learners would have been using resources themselves and finding their own answers. Perhaps a few short activities of setting a task, research some answers, and feedback would have worked well.

I felt happier with second part of the lesson and Paul and I discussed how using the comic strip would also have worked well as part of my previous small talk lesson. Thinking back to showing students the clip of someone in a lift having to make small talk with someone they barely know, and thinking something very different to what is said, would work well with the comic style material. I’ve already started to look at when I could and how I could incorporate this. I feel incredibly positive about a small talk lesson that wasn’t particularly dynamic when I first taught it in January 2020, has the potential to become a really good engaging and useful lesson. In terms of the work I had returned for this lesson, I received some great pieces of dialogue. What was interesting was the differences between those who had chosen to use the comic style approach and those who had use their google doc to write a dialogue. Those using comix were generally more creative in terms of the story. For example, one student wrote about having a conversation with an alien, another wrote about waking up and finding themselves in Egypt. However, the level of language used was fairly basic. Those who chose to use their google doc to write a dialogue, included scenarios such as office conversation or family dinners. The level of language used was definitely more complex. This is something I need to consider that I hadn’t even thought about. It isn’t necessarily a problem, but I need to think about what the aim of writing the dialogue is.

Thinking about collocation lessons, I have some new ideas to try out when I next teach them. I’m particularly interested in reading ‘From Corpus to classroom: language use and language teaching’ (O’ Keefe, A et al, 2007) to get some ideas of activities that could enhance this kind of lesson.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introducing myself to blogging

I Joined the world of ESl teaching in 2018. After a long career in health and social care I felt I needed a new challenge. As part of my previous managerial role I had delivered training to staff on how to best support clients, and it was a part of my job I really enjoyed. This combined with my love of the English language and my hankering to do more travelling now that my children have grown, seemed to lead me towards retraining to become an ESL teacher. The transition has not been without its challenges, especially in the current climate, but I can honestly say I have never looked back.

After completing my cert TESOL I flew to Malta and taught in a language school there for 6 months. To say I was thrown in at the deep end would be an understatement. I worked long hours with large classes and short breaks in between lessons. However, I learnt fast, and even though I was pretty exhausted at the end of each day reflecting on my lessons helped me to keep moving forward. The bus journey home was the perfect time just to think back over my lessons that day and analyse what worked, what hadn’t and what I could have done differently. 

Since january 2019 I have been fortunate enough to work at a language school in Brighton. Whilst students are predominantly Swedish during the winter months there are a number of groups and individual students who come to learn English from all over the world. It is since I have been working here that I decided to embark on my diploma. Something I hadn’t originally intended to do, but that now seems the next logical step to learn more about my profession in order to grow and become a better teacher. Being part of a school that actively encourages reflective practise has enabled me to feel more confident to critically analyse my teaching. Whether this is done individually, talking over a lesson with a peer or as part of a group CPD session. 

I am hoping that during the course I am given the space and opportunity to explore my teaching practice. I am looking forward to discussing ideas with course peers and tutors to help my reflective process with the aim of trying and implementing different approaches in the classroom. 

As someone who has never blogged before, I am interested so see if this helps my process of reflection. It seems a place where I can discuss difficulties I might be having in certain areas of teaching, analysing when, where and why something went wrong or didn’t quite go to plan. It also seems a place where I can celebrate and reflect back on any successes I have.

 

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