Reflection on Recorded Lesson Observation 2

     This week we watched another recording of an English lesson - this time from an elementary school. I found myself resonating with this style of teaching more compared to the one from my last reflection. While there were still some minor details that I didn't quite love, most of this lesson gave me fantastic examples of how to properly conduct a lesson for young learners.

POSITIVES

    The first thing that I appreciated about the lesson was that it was conducted fully in English. I already mentioned this in my previous blog post, but I want to highlight it again, because it's so important to me. Allowing the students to fully immerse themselves in L2 is an incredibly powerful tool to teach the language. Using context clues, pictures, and gestures to contextualize and explain new vocabulary is a great way not only to teach new information, but also allow learners to use their own thinking to discover the language. Early on I thought this was a hard feature to achieve, but watching all these examples has shown me how to do it properly, which has been the most valuable lesson for me.

    Another thing I loved was how active and interactive this lesson was. The teacher started class by using a plushie to play games and get everyone involved. By throwing it around and asking students questions, she was able to revise past concepts and get everyone warmed up for the rest of the lesson. She also asked the students to 'stand up' and 'sit down' over and over, which resulted in a comedic activity that made all the kids laugh. It was a great way to catch their attention and make the classroom a more positive environment. There was a lot of engagement from the students, similarly to when the teacher would draw on the board and they would guess what those images were. What I found most fascinating was how she combined the activities with English teaching, where she would tell students to go to their desks based on the colors they were wearing. It was a great way to revise vocabulary, while doing something physical. There were a lot of creative activities that were a perfect warm-up for the lesson, got everyone excited, and all while memorizing concepts and words.

    Finally, another thing I enjoyed was how the teacher was able to maintain order in the classroom. This was something that I felt like the teacher from the previous class recording struggled with, so to see it done in a better way was inspiring. The most interesting aspect was that those two teachers actually used the same method. They would count down from 10 to 1 to make the kids quiet down. Why did it work this time when it didn't the last time? It could relate to the fact that the children in this class were older and therefore slightly more disciplined. I also believe it has a lot to do with the teachers themselves. The lady in this video felt much more stern and authoritative, which actually scared me slightly at first. However, that also helped her control the classroom better. The students had more respect and paid attention to her more. Even when they sat down to read a book (which I thought was another amazing activity that boosted creativity and contextualization of language), she made sure everyone was listening and active. It's a hard line to walk between being approachable or likable and having a tight grip on the classroom, but I think this teacher did it very well and I learned a lot from her.

NEGATIVES

    While there weren't many aspects of the lesson that I disliked, I still wanted to discuss a couple moments that made me slightly unsure. In the previous section I discussed how the teacher used only L2 during the lesson, but there was one instance, where I felt like it mislead the students a little bit. One of the new concepts introduced was 'good' and 'bad'. The teacher drew a smiling face and a sad face to explain these ideas, which wasn't that successful in my opinion. You could hear some of the students saying that it meant 'happy' and 'sad', which is why it's extremely important to be careful about the tools we're using to explain new vocabulary. In this case, it maybe would've been better to draw a 'thumbs up' and 'thumbs down', so that the message of 'good' and 'bad' was clearer.

    Another aspect of the lesson that I had a slight issue with was repetition. The concept of repetition in itself is very important and I'm glad the teacher tried to revise with the students as much as possible. When they sat in the circle together and she asked every single kid 'how are you today?', I thought that was an effective way to 'drill' this phrase in their heads and make them remember it. Where I felt like it went wrong, was that the kids seemed to answer very mechanically. It felt like they had their answer memorized and it didn't seem like the interaction was genuine. On top of that, almost all of the students just answered with 'fine', which didn't really contribute to a meaningful exchange. While repetition is a great tool, I think it's important to understand that there's a line to cross, where it becomes too mechanical and there is not a lot of conscious interaction and use of language, but rather just a quick, memorized answer that might not even mean a lot to the speaker.

    The last idea I wanted to discuss was team games. Dividing students and having them compete was a great activity to get everyone excited, involved, and raise the stakes. You could tell the kids were even more involved during this part of the class. However, where I felt like this activity slightly failed was the way it would conclude. When kids are young, they hate losing and you could see that in the video. I noticed some small fights breaking out after competitions and the overall mood would go down. I think it would be a better idea for the teacher to be more lenient with the scores, so that everyone would win in the end. Teaching children that losing is ok remains an important lesson, but it maybe doesn't need to happen in an English classroom. Something that would start so positive, does not need to end in a mess. It's important to keep the morale high during the entire class and competitions at such a young age can be tricky to manage.

CONCLUSION

    In conclusion, apart from a couple minor details, I loved how this lesson was conducted. The constant L2 usage, the creative exercises, using physicality, pictures, and so much more - there was a lot to learn from this class. I hope that I will be able to adapt some of these techniques when it finally comes time for me to play the role of a teacher.