Week of April 27 Reflection

This week I had very few classes. Most of these were make up classes because a change in schedule force them to be postponed.  The only modification to my previous lesson plan was during the listening activity. I had the students do the book exercise before the fill in the blank exercise on the worksheet. I don't how effective this change was since most of the students had both mostly finished after one listening. The one advantage was that I could highlight the activity on the worksheet. And I could walk around the room and check to make sure that the students were doing the activity. Because I could see that some students weren't doing the activity, I was able to play it an extra time.

Because of my lack of classes, I decided to review my last recording: Grade 1 Lesson 4. This was the lesson were the target language was: "Can you fly?" and the appropriate response. I'll reflect on the things that I did well and the things that I could improve upon.

The Good: The students were animated for the freeze frame video activity. I had four of these videos. And the students were very enthusiastic about the drawing game on the WB. I had students yelling "Pick-me!" There was some dialogic conversation. This was tough because the target language in of itself is very monologic. During the speaking practice, I had the students ask each other why. While preparing the scaffold for this activity, I had the students tell me what their hobby is. To make this a dialogic exchange, I asked the student to be more specific. 

For example:

Me: Who has a hobby?

S: Drawing.

Me: Drawing what?

S: Drawing a picture.

The Bad: I think I am trying too hard to make an activity dialogic. During the video activity, the students have to question whether or not a boy can dance. The students guess "Yes, he can" or No, he can't." I throw in a "Really?" or "Are you sure?" I'm not sure if this is dialogic. Sometimes it feels like it is forced.

The above script example, I should have made the student speak in a complete sentence.

For the speaking activity, the advanced students completed it very quickly, but I wanted to make sure that all students completed the activity. So I spent many 10 minutes walking around the class checking for completion. Maybe I should have given the more advanced students another activity to do while they were waiting for everyone else.

The ugly: When I reset the camera during the second half of the lesson, it was out of focus. 

Week 8 Post

This week was Grade 1 and Grade 3. There are two weeks until the mid-term exams. Briefly with Grade 3, this is the last week that I will have them in class, so I decided to help them prepare for their exams. For review, I usually do a bomb game. The students like it because behind every question is a surprise amount of points. To make this activity dialogic, I made 18 of the 24 questions require the choosing team to ask another team a question reflecting a particular grammar point. So this is students asking students.

With Grade 1, this will be my last teaching lesson with them. The topic was the question "Can he dance" and the response "Yes, he can" or "No, he can't."  For increased talking time, I had a speaking activity, and a speaking game at the end of class.  Because this type of questioning is monologic, I expanded it a little to make it more dialogic. After the first question, I had the students ask "Why?" For the game, it was the same activity that I did last week with Grade 2. A student drew a picture on the board, and the other students need to guess the answer. To add a twist, I would then ask the team the question, and then they would need to answer. To introduce this activity, I tried not to speak at all until the students guessed the correct answer.

I did try a reading activity with my after school class. From the MT last week, I realized that I could do this type of activity better. I have a book entitled "Totally True." The book has picture drawings based on the story. I first passed out the pictures, and had the students write a caption for the story. I then had the students read their captions to the class. Then  I gave the story to the students, and had them read it to themselves. And then I would ask the students comprehension questions about the story. I like this type of activity. The amount of student talk time is much greater than my old method.

This week, I had Grade 2 and Grade 3. The Grade 3 was the simplest lesson plan. Because I didn't have to teach out of the textbook, and could come up with my own lesson plan, I decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to do an ICC activity that Corrienne wanted us to do. So I chose an activity from the ICC book involving the students looking at pictures from different cultures, and then choosing one thing that is the same, and one thing that is different. I previewed it with an open question:  What is Korean culture?  The students would then yell out different aspects like Kimchi and K-pop. Sometimes if I would want them to think about a topic, I would suggest, "What about music? or What about sports?" Then I would get into the actual activity.  I would do one example: Thailand. I would ask them: How is this like Korean culture? and How is it different? Then I would give them about 10-15 minutes in groups to make a list. I didn't give a long speech. I thought it would be more effective to go through an example with each group.  Maybe luck of the schedule was that the classes earlier in the week were more higher level, they seemed more into the activity than students later in the week. I usually had at least two or three students with each group doing the activity. Towards the end of the week, I noticed the level of participation was dropping off.  So I would sit down with one of the least motivated groups and go through each picture, asking them how it is the same and how is it different. That seemed to be effective when motivation was lacking.

Grade 2 was more of an adventure. This was the fourth lesson with Grade 2, and this is first lesson that I felt is getting on the right track as far as putting the lesson with an increase of student talking time. Being a bad textbook, the speaking topics were unrelated to each other. The topics are the sentence "What does that mean?", and the Q and A of "What would you like to do?" and " I'd like to ...". It was probably too much to cover in one class, but this will probably be the last time I see them before the mid-terms in two weeks.

The first topic was pretty straight forward: preview, listening and speaking. For the preview: I told a bad Konglish joke, and then literally did the idiom "Smiling from ear to ear." (I had a big print out of a smile.) For the speaking part, I divided the teams into 2 parts. I gave the A group a list of idioms, and I gave the B group the answers. I did a quick demonstration with "Die Laughing." Then I went to each group to explain the activity. As I stated above, I think this technique is the most effective. I can see the students' faces for understanding. (If I'm getting a blank look, then they probably don't understand.)

The second topic was more of an adventure. I planned a game to using the cards with an activity on them, and having the students act them out, much like the activity that we did in class 2 week ago. And then I planned a speaking activity where they would ask two students, "There is no school. What would you like to do?" First, I tried the speaking activity, and then the game. But I lost the students attention for the game. Then I tried the game and then the speaking activity, but the students didn't seem to understand the rules of the game. Or they weren't interested in acting. Then I changed the activity from a group to a class activity where I would draw the action on the board. So I did the speaking activity and then the boarding drawing game, but I again lost the students' attention. So then I changed it for the last time, the drawing activity and then the speaking activity. Finally it worked. I would draw two examples on the board, and then ask for student volunteers. I always got 5-6 volunteers to draw, and I think that most of the students enjoyed the game. And because I didn't lose the students' attention, I was able to segue into the speaking activity. I liked this set up because after the game started, my talking time was reduced.

The first activity was probably monologic because the dialog was tightly controlled. The student practiced saying a certain phrase. I know that this isn't ideal, but it was the best speaking activity that I could think of for this point. The second activity was, in the strictest sense of the word, monologic was well. I was looking for a specific answer.  But the students would yell out different answers, which is probably good. So overall, I think that Grade 2 lesson plan is a good stride over my previous Grade 2 lesson plans. It's probably not the ideal class where every student is speaking more than the teacher, but it's a step in the right direction; I feel.

Update at 10:36.

I feel that I should probably include a couple more items. Grade 2 is probably indicative of the typical lesson plan that I would do in the public schools. Since the first week, I have decrease my talking time and increased the students' talking time. This past week I had two speaking activities rather than one, and I also had a speaking game. I explained the directions no more than once. I figured that most of the students probably would not understand me anyway. For the first activity, I modeled "die" and "laughing". And I gave them the phrase they were suppost to use on the Power Point. And then I gave then the phrase for eliciting the answer. I gave out the two sheets of paper for each side of the table. And then I went around to each group explaining it.

The second speaking activity involved the students asking two other students "There is no school. What would you like to do?" Looking back, I think that this activity is probably monologic because there was only one question. I probably should have had each student ask why they would want to do it. That would have made it dialogic. 

I don't know if the speaking game was dialogic or monologic. There was a student drawing a picture on the board and the other students needed to guess. I called on the various students to answer. I would accept an answer that was close to the picture being drawn.

As far as CI techniques go:
Introducing the phrase "What would you like to do?" I did the same choral repetition model that Tom did in class a couple of weeks ago.

I had pairwork and groupwork. I had students talking to students.

MIC techniques: I previewed by activating their schemata. I used visuals like the print out of the smile. And for the speaking game. I didn't try to explain it, I just drew the picture. The students would say "cry", and I would point to the phrase "I'd like to ...". So then the student would self-correct.

Multiple Intelligences: With my warm up of "What happens next." I briefly hit on the spatial learner. The game involved a video. With the speaking game, I tried to do Bodily/Kinestetic, but it wasn't having much success. So by moving it to the whiteboard, it became spatial.

Overall, this lesson was probably the best that I've done so far. I could probably increase the students' talking time even more if I would only focus on one point in the book rather than two. Maybe in this case, less is more.

This Week in Review

This week was different. I feel that this was the first week that the students started to push the boundaries, so this week was a little more hectic.

Grade 1, we reviewed last week's materials, and learned "What do you like?" The preview for the review, I used realia such as a book and a football. I switched to this mid-week. Before I was just using pictures on PowerPoint  I think I got the student's attention better by using the objects instead to the PowerPoint   I also did part of the preview at the back of class. I tried to speak slowly and pronounce my words clearly. In the video that I recorded, I was trying to elicit "I'm drawing a picture." No student was able to say that so I repeated, "What am I doing?" I said slowly, "I am drawing ...", putting the emphasis on "drawing." And to make the class more dialogic and more broken up, I planned two speaking activities.  During the speaking activities, I would check random student's comprehension. I would either squat down to get to their eye level, or I would sit in an empty chair. I also didn't point at students; I either pointed at a table with a marker in my hand, or extended an open hand.

Grade 2, we learned the phrase "Sorry, but that's not right.", and ordering food. This lesson plan wasn't great. The first time I did this lesson, it fell apart. I planned two speaking activities back to back, I couldn't get the class's attention, so I changed the ordering of activities. I also tried to do a preview much like Tom did as waiter in a restaurant last week. I did this for a couple of classes, but I felt that it wasn't adding anything to the class. I didn't plan any activity around that dialog, so I scraped it. But then I was struck with some inspiration the last class of the week.  I did a back and forth with the class using a potato, candy, crackers, and ramyon.  It went something like this:

T: What is this?
S: Potato.
T: Do you like it?
S: Yes