Reflecting on ELT Lesson Excerpts

    To supplement my knowledge from the 2 recorded lesson observations, I decided to watch a couple more examples of ESL lessons. In the 'recommendations' section of our Developing Teaching Skills course I found a YouTube channel called 'That Teacher Chris,' which contains videos with advice for English teachers. There I found 3 demonstration videos for various topics - teaching vocabulary, grammar, and listening skills. In my reflection I will go over those 3 videos, the main points, and my reflections and opinions on these English class demonstrations.

    Video 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwCSbH_ScR0&ab_channel=ThatTeacherChris 

    This first video is titled "ESL Vocabulary Demonstration" and was a lesson on words related to appearance. The teacher began with a warm-up exercise ('how was your weekend?'), followed by a lead-in story ('I shaved my head this weekend'). He then proceeded to present the phrase 'to stand out,' modeled it, checked if the students understood it, and then conducted a group work activity ('what stands out about your appearance?'). The presentation of vocabulary happened in categories ('facial features, hair, etc.') and as a brainstorm, while the teacher was giving new ideas or guidance in the form of hand gestures. Later the vocabulary was used for real life situations, such as describing the appearance of class mates. Finally, the climax of the lesson happened around an 'investigation' exercise - describe what the robber looks like in pairs. The lesson ended with a grammar error correction exercise using the new vocabulary. 

    To me, this lesson seemed like the textbook, picture perfect lesson. The sequencing was amazing. The teacher would always model things first, explain them to the class, drill it in front of the whole class, and then let them work in groups to rehearse even further. All the activities were connected immaculately, where the previous one led to the next one. There was a lot of repetition utilized in all exercises. The professor was lively, gesticulated to give hints, and came up with fun, creative ideas of activities, like the investigation. It truly felt like the perfect lesson. It's hard to even find a weak point. One could say that maybe the students were not challenged enough - they were the ones providing most of the vocabulary. Maybe the professor could've introduced even more words on his own, so that there was more new, challenging vocabulary, but that's the only negative I could think of. The structure of the lesson itself was perfection. I am glad I found this video and I will make sure to save it, because it really is an amazing model for a vocabulary lesson.

    Video 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue4-8y2MfQw&ab_channel=ThatTeacherChris

    The second video was titled "ESL Grammar Demo Lesson" and concerned teaching gradable and ungradable adjectives, as well as nouns, which go with 'a' or 'the.' The lesson began with students asking the teacher any questions they wanted about him, followed by a discussion on where to go on holiday. The teacher wrote a couple sentences on the board, which were on the topic of vacations, and the students had to ask him those questions. Next the students talked about holidays in groups and had to also ask one another the questions from the board. Then the teacher presented the words 'good' and 'awesome' to explain the concept of gradable and ungradable adjectives. To practice the students had to match pieces of paper with gradable and ungradable adjectives that had matching meanings (like 'cold' and 'freezing') and then practiced writing them on the board. The teacher wrote different words and phrases connected to vacations to explain using 'a' and 'the' with them. Lastly he asked students to give him questions about his holidays, he would answer with ungradable adjectives and using either 'a' or 'the,' asked the students to do a similar thing in groups, and finished with an error correction task like last time.

    When the lesson started I was very confused with the topic. The questions on the board at the beginning modeled past simple and present perfect, but later I understood that was irrelevant and it was just to introduce the holiday theme for the lesson. It took me a while to understand what the topic was and even then, more new things would be introduced. However, by the end of the lesson it all made sense - there were two grammatical topics and the lesson had a holiday theme. I think the teacher did a good job introducing these new concepts by explaining them first, then using a lot of repetition, and finally allowing students to use them on their own in groups. Considering that the two grammatical topics were not too hard, I don't think the lesson felt too difficult or jam packed with new information. The vacation theme added some fun and a nice through-line to the whole experience. That being said, as successful as the lesson was, it didn't feel quite as perfect as the previous one. You need to get to the end to fully grasp the sequence and why everything was introduced. It is still a good example of a successful lesson that does not have as textbook of a structure, which is also interesting to experience, because not all lessons will go perfectly or be simple to organize and structure.

    Video 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olkVB2KgpbQ&ab_channel=ThatTeacherChris

    The final video was titled "ESL Listening Lesson Demo." The class began with a discussion of Valentine's Day, since it was February 14th on the day the lesson was conducted. The teacher wrote some sentences related to dating on the board, discussed them with the students, and then told them to answer them in groups and present the answers to everyone. Then he introduced some new vocabulary on the board, which we soon find out is a form of pre-teaching for a listening activity with a song. First the students listen to the song without lyrics and have to figure out things the singer likes, loves, or dislikes. After they shared the answers, the teacher gave out a fill-in-the-blanks exercise for the lyrics. The class culminated with a dating agency role play exercise. The teacher explained the concept of a dating agency, profiles, and then proceeded to show pictures of people to discuss potential ideas to put on a dating profile. The students then pretended to be a dating agency, created profiles for clients, and tried matching them with people from other groups. Once again, the lesson ended with an error correction exercise. 

    At this point I've kind of been able to notice how the teacher likes to execute his lessons. There's always a theme that introduces new vocabulary, he always models first, then applies repetition, and finally group work for students to use concepts on their own commences. All his lessons also end with an error correction exercise, which involves concepts from the lesson. The error correction is a nice idea to have more repetition, as well as to bring some grammar drills into each class. There's also another aspect that appeared multiple times. The method of having the students read the questions from the board and either ask them to each other or the teacher appeared in the previous video already and I find it very interesting. On the one hand, I think it's sort of an easy way out and it doesn't require much creativity from the students. On the other hand, it gives them a model sentence and it's easy for the teacher to get exactly the results or responses that he was hoping for. I'm still torn on whether I like this method or not, but for now I'll just say that it has its advantages and disadvantages.

    What interested me most in this lesson is how the song was utilized. I've prepared a lesson plan centered around music as well, but the differences in approaches really interested me. What I liked the most is that the teacher didn't start with a fill-in-the-blanks exercise. The students listened to the song without lyrics at first, which I thought was a good idea that I would definitely implement in the future. However, I did feel like for a 'listening lesson', the teacher moved on from listening very fast. The students listened to the song twice, did two short exercises, and that was it. I think this lesson only had a listening element or activity in it, but it felt more like a vocabulary lesson, which is not a problem at all - only that the title is slightly misleading. In general, this teacher is clearly very experienced and this was another strong lesson from him. A lot of repetition, great teaching structure, fun (though in this one the humor felt very outdated), creative - I believe he is a really good example to see for myself, a future teacher.

Conclusion

    I am very happy that I decided to watch these three videos. This teacher is very experienced and has a very strong sense of a good lesson structure. The transitions between tasks are always masterful, there's a lot of repetition, creative and fun role play, and a lot of variety, while still maintaining a sense of all the lessons having a similar structure. Watching 3 of his videos, and not 3 from various teachers, allowed me to get a feeling of his teaching style and notice certain patterns. I am glad this channel was recommended to me and I strongly encourage other students to watch this teacher's videos.