Observation Five
My fifth observed lesson was a little outside my comfort zone. I had been teaching EFL in a small private language school where, due to the nature of the short courses offered, I was unable to arrange an assessed observation. I was however able to have an observed lesson at the centre that I had previously been volunteering. Unfortunately I hadn’t quite yet found my feet in the Wednesday drop-in ESOL classes. I was keen to offer the students skills for outside the classroom but had difficulty finding suitable materials from the EFL resources available. Further the class was just changing from an intermediate class to elementary and all students had been told they could attend. I found some copies of a form-based lesson concerning flat hunting and was keen to use them to aid student communication outside the lesson: Please see below for the materials in question, my lesson plan and reflective feedback.
Materials: aniceflat
Teaching Reflections: Lucinda obs 5 25.5.16 NC
On reflection I believe the board plan above would have been clearer to my students, (please see above). Furthermore the materials (below) I created would be more efficient in aiding communication. Exercise 1 would be cut up and jumbled for the students to put into the correct order. Exercise 2 would enable the students to create their own conversation using gap-fill activities with speaking. A dramatically simplified version would allow novices in the group two interact with the class on the topic through images.
Observation Four
Observation four took place in a mixed level free ESOL drop-in class. My aim was for students to be able to communicate in English using advice forms. The class was an exciting prospect as students often attended classes keen to work together and gain new skills. It would however involve differentiated and adapted materials, not only because of the lack of materials available but also to be able to offer all students equal challenge.
Materials: techLooktotheFuture
Observation4ReflectiveFeedback
Observation Three
For my third filmed observation I followed the advice given to me during my previous observation; which was that the ESOL [English as a Second or Other Language] students in the current class need to improve their listening and speaking skills to cope with day to day life.
I was teaching grammar and was keen that the students noticed the future forms in the listening exercises for which they had transcripts, (in the form of questions). I had differentiated the materials but thought that the lower level materials might still cause confusion. To remedy the problem, for two students, I further differentiated materials to include the grammar forms they would be looking for. Some students responded well to the Task sheets but two students were a little bemused. I have read many Books [Ellis 1985], [and Journals which have stated the importance of noticing and also the importance of differentiated task sheets [Fateme & Mohammad 2014] ,[Akhter & Kormos 2015 and feel that there is still more to learn on the subject of both differentiation and noticing. Something I have tried before but not yet mastered is spending time with different groups of learners. Richards and Renandya suggested “One way of managing the large, multi-level class is to plan for the teacher to work with different groups of students at different times.”
Akhter Jahan and Judit Kormos The impact of textual enhancement on EFL learners’ grammatical awareness of future plans and intentions Lancaster University [International Journal of Applied Linguistics ◆ Vol. 25 ◆ No. 1 ◆ Pages 46 – 66]
2004 Second Language Learning Theories (2nd ed). Published London: London: Arnold.
J.Fateme and A.S.Mohammad, 2014 Comparing Two Pre-listening Supports with Iranian EF Learners: Opportunity or Obstacle [RELC Journal◆ Vol. 45 ◆ No. 3 ◆ Pages 253 – 267]
Jane Spiro 2007, Changing Methodologies in TESOL Published Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press
PLEASE FOLLOW THE LINK BELOW FOR THE LESSON PLAN AND COVER SHEET, MATERIALS AND TEACHING REFLECTIONS:
Observation3ReflectiveFeedback
Observation Two
In the ESOL [English as a Second or Other Language] class I’m teaching some of the students have had very little grammar instruction. The class has elementary to upper-intermediate students who had recently had a present tense grammar lesson; all the students recognised the different present tenses. As a result I decided it was time for further past tense instruction. I found an appropriate lesson and planned for an observation. The lesson also drew attention to the recent floods in Cumbria as the subject matter was the emergency services in Cumbria. Please find the lesson’s materials, plans and reflections below.
Materials: emergencypastFCE,
Observation2ReflectiveFeedback
Observation One
As I was in the second year of the diploma I was aware that I needed to complete my five assessed teaching observations. As I had recently had a major change in workplace I knew that my first assessed observation might be challenging. However I had a friendly group of students who were keen to learn and so invited an observer to come to the centre, where I was teaching, and video an assessed lesson. As my students varied in level and changed from week to week I was keen to keep the lesson format simple. The higher level students in the group looked through some conversation questions about work and different jobs while lower level students looked at vocabulary and images for different vocations which were used with a simple board game. Intermediate level students were also given some word building exercises to complete if they finished early. Please see below.
Materials: JOBTALKING
-er or -ist [Success Pre-Intermediate Teacher’s Support Book]
The students worked diligently but the higher level students did not always interact with each other and the lower level students found the multitude of vocabulary difficult to digest. Teaching the different levels together was quite exhausting and in future I would try to encourage the weaker students to interact more together with prompt based activities to stimulate independent production.
ObservationOneReflectiveFeedback