My second observation was with an ESOL Level 1 class, and the lesson was a speaking and writing lesson which used common superstitions to prompt discussion and then shared writing using cultural information.

After the feedback from my first observation, I was able to reflect the positive and negative aspects I noticed from watching the lesson back on video, and the suggestions for improvement given by my observer. I approached the planning of my second observation with these areas for improvement in mind.

The first area which I wanted to show improvement in was the lesson plan itself. To do this, I did the following:

• Provided a more detailed class profile, including information about the learners’ reasons for studying, strengths and weakness, and personality.
• Added columns for rationale and anticipated problems.

As a result of this, I felt more confident with the plan and thought that the addition of the anticipated problems column helped me to focus more on teaching the class, rather than teaching the lesson as I sometimes tend to do.

Having watched the video of my second observation and taken some time to reflect on how it went, I think there are three main areas I would like to discuss further

Giving the learners opportunities for personalised input

The first area was something I reflected on after my first observation; giving the learners opportunities for personalised input. This was an area I was extremely conscious of during the planning stage for this lesson. I attempted to meet this aim in three separate activities where the learners were able to personalise the topic of superstitions:

1. As part of the lead-in to the topic of superstitions, instructing the students to discuss in pairs:

• • Are you superstitious?
  • Do you believe in good luck and bad luck?
  • What things do you do in your life to avoid bad luck or get good luck?

2. Giving the opportunity to discuss if they had the same or similar                                      superstitions as the examples I had given them in their own culture.

3. An activity where the learners wrote superstitions from their own culture on strips of paper then explained them to their group, discussing both the meaning and if they believe in it.

I thought these moments of reciprocal sharing of cultural information helped to keep the students engaged and led to high levels of student interaction. I also wanted to try and reduce my teacher speaking time while increasing student speaking time which I believe this helped me to do.

How I monitor the learners

Another area which I wanted to improve on in this lesson was how I monitor the learners while they are working together. For this lesson, I focused on two areas that I wanted to try and show improvement in, and which I hope will help me to develop a more effective procedure for monitoring my students:

• Not being too much of a presence when monitoring.

For this, I made it a point to squat down when I joined a group so that I was less imposing and was at the same level as them. Another thing I did, was lower my voice when joining a group so that the learners in the other groups wouldn’t become aware of me speaking and stop their discussion to listen to me. Watching the lesson video, I thought I achieved this reasonably well, coming across as was relatively unobtrusive yet also available when needed. 

• Not interfering too much.

After my feedback from my observer on my first observed lesson, I re-watched the video myself teaching and saw what my observer had pointed out with regards to my eliciting answers from students. This tendency to not wait for the learner to say the answer and answer the question myself was something I wanted to cut out from my teaching. I believe that I have shown improvement with this not just in the observation but in the classes I have taught since the first observation.

Another area of weakness that I noticed while watching the first observed lesson was that when I joined groups, I often became part of the proceedings. To try and counter this, I decided not to interfere and only to offer a prompt if it was needed before moving away.

• How I transition between stages

This was an area I hadn’t really thought about before and always presumed because the learners started the next stage that it was an area which needed focusing on. Having watched the lesson again, it became apparent that it is an area that I could improve.

Firstly, there were moments where because the learners were so engaged in their discussions, I struggled to get their attention when it was time for me to give instructions for the next stage of the lesson.

I also think I should have used concepts questions to check that they have understood my instruction (There was one activity which I thought I had set up, but I ended up going to each group and explaining the task to them again.

Something which I always do, and indeed is college policy, is to have a menu of the lesson stages on the board, which I use to draw the learners’ attention to what is coming next. I think me forgetting to do that was probably due to some nerves about being observed.

 

Conclusion

I think on the whole the lesson achieved what I intended, to keep the lesson student-centred and to encourage student interaction and personalisation. From the perspective of my teacher development, I felt that there was some improvement from the first observation. I also became aware of another area to work on, how I manage the transitions between the stages of the lesson. Another area which I would like to explore in future assessed observations is differentiation. I think if it were something I could think more about in the planning stages, I would be able to provide a more effective and relevant learning experiences for the learners.