Click here for the Teaching Practice 1: Lesson Plan

A few days ago I had my first formal observation and I have to be honest, I am relieved to have gotten it out of the way. I think the added pressure of having both an observer and a camera in the room made me feel a little more nervous than usual at first but after the first fifteen minutes I gradually eased into it. As I stated in the audio feedback made directly after the lesson, I was about 70% happy with how the lesson went. There were areas where I think I have improved since my last peer observation and things that didn’t go entirely according to plan. These two aspects will make up the main part of this post with the final section being dedicated to watching the video recording of the lesson and sharing some thoughts on self-observation.

Initial reflection

Slides

Upon reflection of my observation by F, I’ve started introducing slides into my classes to help tackle the problem of IWB clarity when writing. I think this was really helpful for the students and the interesting thing I’ve noticed is that students seem to pay attention more to slides than board writing; perhaps there is some notion of importance when something is typed rather than written? I think I will look into this further to see if any research has been done about the presentation of board-work and its effect on retention of information.

However, I did have one student who was sitting at a bit of an awkward angle  and despite me rotating the computer screen towards him, he still had to stand up and walk across to the computer/board on more than one occasion. It is strange because this is something that doesn’t usually happen with this particular student but maybe my font was not large/bold enough, which is something I should consider for future lessons.

Staging

I think my timing for my lesson stages was fairly consistent and I had given more consideration for student questions in my lesson plan. Having fewer lesson stages and more realistic timings assigned to each stage really made the lesson more enjoyable to teach, as I wasn’t as focused on trying to get so much content into a short space of time.

One thing that did not go so well with the earlier staging was actually the order. Perhaps nerves got the better of me and I was eager to move on, but I swapped my second and third stages around. I think this was a problem initially, as one student asked the meaning of one of the pieces of target vocabulary and my response was “We’ll just focus on stress now and meaning later.” As soon as the words left my mouth I realised I had made a mistake and I think once we through the meaning of the vocabulary, the lesson was back on course.

Materials

This lesson saw me introduce bespoke worksheets for the class for the first time and it had both benefits and problems during the observation. It’s an idea I’ve been toying with for this class for a while so I thought this would be a good opportunity to experiment. I think the document looked professional and was more or less suitably adapted to the needs of the class. I stripped away some ‘unnecessary’ vocabulary from the source material and tailored some of the wording to fit in with forms and vocabulary we have previously studied.

Perhaps my biggest negative point (and a lesson learned for next time!) is my glaring discrepancy between the vocabulary on the whiteboard and the worksheet. In question 3, the student is required to write ‘secondary school’ into the gap but that term was not in the initial input stages nor displayed on the IWB. I realised my error almost as soon as I had finished giving my worksheets out. My solution to this was my classic “Ahhhh there’s a trick question in there too. Bonus points for anyone who can identify it!” or something along those lines. I think my mistake was detrimental to that stage and of course it was later rectified through (lucky) student feedback and a lengthy explanation but just a little more care from me would have avoided the issue altogether.

The video

Above is a compilation of two of the problem areas mentioned previously. Aside from what has already been mentioned, it is strange observing myself and I can’t stop focusing on my physical mannerisms. Some, like Richards, believe teaching is ‘an act of performance’ (Richards, 2015: 108)
There are some physical gestures or even spoken mannerisms that occur in the classroom that simply doesn’t happen in other contexts (the amount of times I begin and end sentences with “OK” is truly staggering…). But, like with the observation itself, I got used to seeing myself on film after a few minutes and there were of course some areas that I found positive, such as delivery of instructions, which has come a long way since I first received my CELTA.

I also responded to a couple of issues that required me to change the course of the lesson, such as cutting the second listening stage as students had some difficulty with the gist listening task. I did this to allow adequate time to be spent on the grammar section of the class (first conditional), which was one of my intended learning outcomes.

Closing thoughts
Despite not being perfectly happy with everything, I think this experience was mostly positive and I have some ideas for areas to focus on. I really have found the value in videoing lessons and actually seeing myself has been both insightful and embarrassing… but I’m sure this will improve with further recorded observations. As for next time, perhaps a skills-based lesson or a lesson designed with a particular method in mind might be a possibility.

References and materials:
Richards, J.C (2015) Key Issues in Language Teaching, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

TP1 Lesson Plan

TP1 Student handout

TP1 Slides