Category: Teaching Reflections

This is my last hour of teaching the online ESAL oral communicative class. I am very glad that all of the students who used to attend our class were here today. In this class, we did some activities with the students to wrap up this semester. We asked the students if they needed any assistance or advice on their final assignments and then we started our activities.

In order to help the students to review their time spent working with their student teachers (my teaching partner and me), we invited the students to share what they have enjoyed in class, what they are going to miss about our class, and what they would take away from our class. The students summarized what they have learned in our class, and they felt appreciated that the activities we planned also helped them to review what they have learned in their oral class with their instructor. Also, the students said that they enjoyed the discussions and activities we had planned for them in which they learned many interesting points from their peers. A student mentioned that he felt great that we always gave them a short break after their last before ours as he felt that his brain could be relaxed a bit in this break time.

We also shared some future plans about our lives and studies with each other, in which we found many commonalities that brought us a sense of community. At last, we put the names of students and student teachers’ in the shared notes and asked everyone to write some positive comments and messages for their peers. The students could stay anonymous writing in the shared notes. In this activity, I was very happy to see that the students are a really friendly and happy community. Everyone, including my teaching partner and I, received quite a few positive and pleasant comments.

This teaching experience meant a lot to me. I learned so much in the ten teaching sessions. I have taught in classrooms before but I have never experienced teaching online. In the practicum, I developed my skills to manage a virtual classroom, build a sense of connectedness with the students even if we have never met in person, and plan workable and flexible lessons for online courses. I have many takeaways about the teaching approaches, which I believe are not approachable if I only learn them from texts instead of practicing them myself.

The ninth hour of my practicum was another wonderful lesson, and it was the second evaluation of my teaching. In this hour of teaching the level 4 ESL oral communicative class, there were 4 Chinese students in the class while a Chinese student and a Japanese student were absent. The objectives of this class were to encourage the students to share their own opinions about festivals with discussion language, summarize their partners’ opinions, and practice their listening skills in capturing information.

My teaching partner and I decided to try a new warm-up activity this time. The goal of this activity is to practice summarizing language and discussion language. We prepared a circle on our PPT and asked the students to place their name cursors on it to simulate sitting in a circle in the classroom. We then provided a couple of questions about festivals. The students took turn responding to the former student’s opinions with discussion language and share their own opinions. The last student summarized the mini discussions with summarizing language. This activity went quite smoothly. The students showed interests and were actively engaged. They used summarizing language and discussion language well.

After stating their tasks in the post-discussion presentations, I put the students in pairs to discuss a few questions about festivals. The pair I observed had a pretty active discussion. The students appeared interests, creativity, and critical thinking upon the questions. In order to enhance the students’ attentiveness and listening skills in the discussion session, as well as their participation in the presentations, I asked them to summarize their partners’ opinions in post-discussion presentations. I could see the improvements the students have made each time. They have been getting more and more confident and open-minded while developing their speaking skills.

The students also did great in the post-presentation listening practice. This listening activity was meant to have all the students being attentive while listening to the presenters and develop skills to capture key information in listening while taking notes. I went through the listening questions with the students ahead of the presentations and ask the students to answer the questions when the presentations were finished. When we started this activity a couple of weeks ago, the students were not very engaged, and their participation was not balanced. Through the time and practices, the students’ participation in this session and skill of capturing main information were significantly improved.

As before, we took notes of the pronunciations that were mispronounced by the students throughout the class, and we did a post-presentation instruction on it. We sent two mispronounced words for each student, demonstrated the correct pronunciations, and have all the students to turn on their mics to practice with us. In our exit activity, we asked each student to make a sentence with the two words they were assigned. We saw improvements in their pronunciation as well. I believe that communicative skill is closely related to listening skills, pronunciations, fluency, confidence, and an open mindset. In order to develop students’ communicative skills, we should put effort into these factors and be encouraging and supportive to the students during their improvement.

The class on 22th was another successful one. It was my 8th hour of teaching the level 4 ESL oral communicative class. We had 4 Chinese students in the class while a Chinese student and a Japanese student were absent. The goal of this class was to encourage the students to share their own opinions about travelling with discussion language, summarize opinions, and practice their listening skills in capturing information. Before the warm-up activity, we did another survey with our students. Also, we did a group discussion session and presentation session. We also included a listening practice and a post-presentation instruction after the presentations, and we finished the class with an exit ticket.

In the student survey, we asked the students to evaluate the class activity speed, the level of their interests in the activities, and the vocabulary we used in class. The students’ feedback was quite positive. Also, according to what the students stated about their feelings in the classes and what they have learned in the last two months, they did enjoy our classes and improved their English skills in our classes. In our last survey which occurred a month ago, a couple of the students was not comfortable with the activity speed. My teaching partner and I did some adjustments about the activity speed, and I’m very glad to see that the students have been feeling good after the adjustment.

Aside from practicing the summarizing phrases we taught in the last class, we included a few new ones this time. The students mastered them quickly and were able to use them correctly to summarize the opinions of the video speaker’s and their partners’. I have been feeling that our class is like an encouraging and supportive community. All of the students participated actively and voluntarily in group discussions, summarizing practices, listening practices, and pronunciation practices.

This time, my partner and I used a different exit activity. Throughout the class, we take notes of the words that were mispronounced by each student. After the listening practice, we assigned each student two words and practiced the pronunciations with them. For our exit activity, we asked each student to make a sentence with at least one of the words that were assigned to them. The activity went quite smoothly. Each student was able to pronounce their assigned word correctly, and most of them managed to use both the two words correctly in their sentences.

It will be the other evaluation of my teaching next week. My partner and I will plan a similar class and I will keep encouraging the students to actively participate in terms of thinking actively, speaking much, and practice confidently in the class.

We had a successful lesson again on July 15. It was our 7th hour of teaching the level 4 ESL oral communicative class. We had 5 Chinese students in the class while a Japanese student was absent. The goal of this class was to encourage the students to practice summarizing language, express their own opinions about health with discussion language, present their main ideas with summarizing language and practice their listening skills in capturing information. We did a class introduction and warm-up activity before the group discussion, which followed by the presentations. Lastly, we did an exit activity to finish the class.

This time we added a “hook” at the beginning of the class. We put a piece of art on the cover page of our slides to match the topic of health, and we asked the students to guess from the art about the topic of the lesson. I found it a very successful approach as it increased the students’ interests as well as curiosity, and it could have all the students engaged from the very beginning of the class.

We found in the previous classes that the students tended to miss the “s” when using third-person singular verbs and we decided to work on this. After the warm-up activity, we included a brief grammar review, in which we instructed the grammatical rule of using third-person singular verbs. It seemed that all of the students were aware of the “s” rules, they just forgot to put it when they were speaking. Our sponsor teacher suggested that we could use a card with an “S” on it as a reminder, and we could hold up the card when the students forgot the “s”. This new measure went quite successfully. The students correct themselves quickly when the card was held up and I could see that they were trying not to forget the “s” after we started to use this reminder. I think this is a really good approach to remind the students when they forget about the “s” at the end of third-person singular verbs, even it can be a great reminding way for other common grammatically mistakes as the students will be reminded exactly on time without being interrupted in speaking. I think the reason for them forgetting the “s” on third-person singular verbs was that there is no verb form difference in Chinese grammar, and they have not practiced enough the third-person singular in the correct way. At the end of our class, I told the students to keep in mind the pink little card with “s” when they are expressing themselves. I think this vivid reminder in their mind will be helpful for them to remember the third-person singular “s” in speaking.

The students’ participation was so great this time. In previous classes, the female students would always participate after the male students and also not as much the male students; however, all of the three female students participated quite actively and even volunteered to present very soon after the presentation session got started. I was very happy to see the progress of the students and see them become more confident as well as feel better about themselves. I think that seeing themselves improving in English speaking and public speaking might be a reason for their positive changes.

This time, I showed the students that each of them was going to present a 3-minute summary of their partners’ opinions in their post-discussion presentations. I thought that this way the students would be able to take the notes of their partner’s ideas and have their presentations organized. Also, asking the students to summarize their partners’ ideas would encourage them to practice listening while taking notes of the key information. In the presentations, as each student summarized their partner’s ideas only on a few of the discussion questions, the listening practice questions were not all covered so I then decided to change it to a one-sentence interview and asked each student on the questions that they were involved in.

In our next class, we will keep using the “hook” as the starter and the reminder card to help the students to practice their third-person singular verbs throughout the class.

In this hour of teaching the level 4 ESL oral communicative class, we had 4 Chinese students in the class while a Chinese student and Japanese student were absent. We decided to introduce some new language skills this time, and we gave instructions about summarizing language this time. The goal of this class was to encourage the students to express their own opinions about movies with discussion language, present their main ideas with summarizing language and practice their listening skills in capturing details. The topic Movie was also one of the topics that the students were interested in. We presented the class outline and objectives and did a warm-up activity first. After that, we had instruction about summarizing language, including a list of summarizing phrases, what the functions of summarizing language are, and some dos and don’ts when summarizing opinions. We then put the students in breakout rooms to discuss their opinions around a few controversial questions followed by presentations in which the students summarized their discussions. We also provided the students with a few questions related to their presentations to practice their listening skills. At last, we finished the class with an exit activity.

This class was again a successful one. First of all, the students’ participation improved again in class. In the warm-up activity, we asked the students to share their favourite movies focused on a few specific questions to help the students to get ready for the later main discussion about movies. All the students were engaged well and spoke much about the topic. In the discussion, the students were assigned in different breakout rooms and discussed in pairs about five controversial questions. The pair I observed had an active and effective discussion. Both of the students shared and compared their opinions on the questions. One of the students was taking the class in China, the class time for her was 2:30 a.m., and she was still attentive and engaged well in the class.

Also, the students’ willingness to share their cameras represents them being comfortable to open up and participate. In our warm-up activity, we wanted the students to turn their cameras on when presenting, and the two female students refused that. In the presentation, we asked the students to turn their cameras on again, but we didn’t ask again the female students as we didn’t want to make it stressful for them. Surprisingly, one female student turned on her camera this time without asking again. I felt that the student must have been felt less pressure so that she can open up more. Before the students got into the discussion, I presented the format of the post-discussion presentation. I think this could help the students to be clearer about their tasks in their discussion and do better in their presentations.

Another success we had in this class was that the students completed the listening practice very well this time. In the previous classes, participation in this session was not very balanced. I mentioned before the presentations to the students this time that I hope each of them can answer one of the questions this time and suggested them to take notes while listening. They all participated and got the correct answers this time, and I was so happy to see their improvement.

Lastly, we planned to assess the outcomes of our instruction about summarizing language by asking the students to share the dos and don’ts they just learned. All of the students were able to recall the points and we were very happy to see the progress in the students.

I have a few thoughts about our next class. Firstly, our warm-up activity finished a little later than planned as some of the students were very willing to share in detail. In order to finish the class on time, I then decided to cut a little bit of the discussion time as I had planned a few more minutes than needed just in case. In the end, we finished the class right on time. It’s good that the students were being very active, but we still should make the class going as planned. I think we can provide fewer questions in warm-up activity so that the students can share freely, and we can move the activity at the planned pace. Our sponsor teacher suggested that we pay attention to students’ grammatical mistakes in their presentations, for example, the third person singular verb form, so we will work on that next time and keep encouraging the students to practice their summarizing skills.

In the 5th hour of teaching the level 4 ESL oral communicative class, we had 5 Chinese students in the class while the Japanese student was absent. The goal of this class was to encourage the students to express their own opinions about food with discussion-specific language, improve students’ presentation skills, and practice their listening skills in capturing details. The topic Food was one of the topics that the students expressed their interest in. We shared our class outline and objectives followed by a warm-up activity which also included a review of the discussion language. After the discussion session, the students presented their opinions. There were a listening practice and a post-presentation instruction after the presentations, and we end our class with an exit activity.

There were a few successes in this class. Firstly, the students in the group I observed and facilitated participated actively in the discussion, and they tried to use the discussion language throughout their discussion. While they were discussing, I typed some of the vocabulary and phrases that they used incorrectly in the public chat. After they finished their discussion, I spent the left 50 seconds to give them some instruction of the vocabulary and phrases so that they could practice them immediately in their follow-up presentations. I was very happy to see that they used the newly learned vocabulary and phrases actively and correctly in their presentations. Second, we finish this class exactly on time. Our warm-up activity went a little longer than we expected so I cut a bit of the discussion time to cover that. Although the time for discussion was still enough for the students to discuss, my partner and I will plan a shorter warm-up activity so that the students will have a longer time to discuss.

In the presentation session, students’ participation was not so well balanced. Some of the students were actively engaged while a few talked less. I was thinking if we could assign each student to present the group opinions on specific discussion questions or assign different presenters of each group every time. I will discuss it with my partner and decide which approach we will employ for our next class.

In our post-presentation instruction, I taught the students the pronunciations of some vocabulary and a phrase that was incorrectly used by the students. Next time, we will take our advisor’s advice and creating meaning communications to encourage the students to practice the phrases.

In this hour of teaching my level 4 ESL oral communicative class, we had 4 students in the class (3 from China and 1 from Japan), two Chinese students were absent. The goal of this class was to encourage the students to articulate their opinions about fashion, improve students’ presentation skills, and practice their listening skills in capturing details. We chose fashion as our discussion topic today as it was one of the topics the students were interested in. After sharing our class outline and objectives, we did a student survey to get feedback from the students about our previous teaching. Before the group discussion session, we did a warm-up activity which also included a review of the discussion language. The discussion was followed by the presentation session, and we added a listening practice and a little instruction afterwards.

In the student survey, my partner and I provided a few multi-selection questions, including understanding teachers’ vocabulary, teachers’ speaking speed, activity pacing, students’ interest in the activities, and comments (suggestions, ideas, expectations). In order to encourage the students to put their thoughts without any pressure, we put the questions in the shared notes as we could not know who was typing in there. The students chose “agree” and “strongly agree” on the questions about understanding teachers’ vocabulary, teachers speaking being at a good speed, and students being interested in the activities. However, on the question of activity moving at a good speed, two of the students chose “disagree”. I think the students were referring to the presentation session. I felt that they tried to speak fast in presentations and kind of in rush. To give the students more time in the presentation part, we should either shorten the warm-up session or provide fewer discussion questions each time. I prefer shortening the warm-up activity as the presentation part serves as one of the main in-class speaking practices for the students, and there is a listening practice followed as well.

In the discussion, I put the students in pairs of two in breakout rooms. I observed group 1’s discussion. While they had the discussion questions on their screens, I put the discussion languages in the shared notes for their reference. The students were engaged pretty well, and they tried to use discussion language on every question. They looked much more active and communicative during the discussion, which I think was because of them getting more familiar with each other and being interested in the discussion questions. Because of the speedy pace of speaking, the students in group 1 finished their discussion earlier than the time. Also, having only two members in each group contributed to this early completion. I then encouraged them to talk in a deeper way about the reasons for their opinions and they practiced more about this way. I think this is important for teachers to encourage students to think deeper within specific areas, which enables them to have more output in communicative practice.

In the listening practice followed the presentation, the students were not all engaged to answer the questions although I mentioned that there were some questions in the shared notes and they needed to answer them after presentations. I thought of a few reasons for this situation. Firstly, they might not able to capture the information to answer the questions. Second, they might not understand the questions well. And third, they might not be fully focused on their peers’ presentations. Next time, I will explain the questions to the students before the presentation and make sure they all understand the questions.

I also added a short instruction time after the presentation this time to teach some of the common mistakes they made in the presentations. I took notes of the mistakes, but I only taught one phrase as we were short of time. In our next class, my partner and I would probably shorten the warm-up part and put a little more time on this post-presentation instruction so that the students will learn from the mistakes they made in presentations.

In the third hour of teaching this online level 4 ESL oral communicative class with my teaching partner, we had 5 students in the class (4 from China and 1 from Japan). The goal of this class was to help the students use discussion language to articulate their opinions about pets and improve their presentation skills. We chose pets as our discussion topic today as some of the students chose it as a topic they were interested in. After finishing the presentations of the two groups that were left from the last class, we started the lesson with a warm-up activity including a few interactive questions and a video. We did a review of the discussion language before group discussion, and the students presented a discussion summary afterwards. To end the class, we did an exit activity and let the students shared whether their minds have been changed by their peers’ opinions.

In the two presentations, the students were willing to turn their cameras on at this time and they looked more comfortable and confident in their presentation, their speaking was fluent as well. In order to introduce some listening practice in the presentation session, we put a few questions about the presentation contents in the shared notes before the presentations and asked the students who did not present to answer the questions. One of the students showed us his great concentration and listening skills by providing correct and detailed answers. I want to keep this listening practice in our future classes and encourage each student to actively participate in this practice to enhance their skills to capture details in listening.

In the discussion session, I joined one group in the breakout room to observed. There were three students in this group, and I found the participation was not well-balanced. After encouraging them all to jump in the discussion and to use the discussion phrases that was showed at the time, they worked hard on it to use the phrases and engaged well. In our next class, I plan to assign different roles in each group, such as the presenter, the active participant, and the devil’s advocate, so that they can be more engaged with their individual responsibilities. Also, while the presenter is presenting, the other group members should be there to add some more aspects.

As we had to finish last week’s presentations, we were a little short of time, so we asked the students to choose two or three discussion questions from the five one we had prepared. We finished the discussion and the presentation sessions for this time, so we will have enough time to focus on the topic for the next class. I found that it’s hard for teachers to turn time around in short-time classes as the schedule is packed. In short-time classes, teachers cannot turn the time around by adjusting the break time or activity time like in long-time classes, so teachers must be more flexible with reasonable plans in one-hour classes.

In the presentation session, I realized that it’s a good way to develop the summarization skills by asking them to give brief statements of the main points of their discussions. I would like to ask the presenting students to summarize their discussions in our next class while their group members should be adding some more parts of the summary. Also, I think we should increase the difficulty of the listening practice by providing more difficult questions for the students who listen to the presentations, questions that include more information and require them to think deeply. We should raise increasingly the difficulty of the listening practice and develop the students’ ability to catch the details in listening, deal with the information in mind while listening, and take notes while listening. Another issue I think we should pay attention to is that the students might be overwhelmed with too many phrases on a list of the discussion language as they might be confused about which one they should use. Also, they might always choose to use the ones they are more familiar with. Instead of asking them to practice many phrases together, we can ask them to intensively practice a few specific phrases at one time. After practicing them all in a while, we can then provide all the phrases together. By then, they will be using all those phrases easily.

In the second hour of my teaching with my teaching partner Sylvie, we had all five students in the class. Our objectives for this class was to help the students figure out their personal strengths in English communication and their learning goals, improve the students’ discussion language knowledge (including agreeing, disagreeing, verbal feedback, responding, confirming meaning, and expression of neutral/strong opinion), develop their discussion and presentation skills, and to find out about the discussion topics they were are interested in to use for our coming classes.

In the activity about figuring out personal communication strengths and learning goals, we found that most of our students wanted to improve their vocabulary and listening skills. I think we should include more instructions about vocabulary and some activities to practice their listening.

When we are playing our jeopardy game, there was one student who was not sure how to play the game as he missed the game introduction part. I realized that we might need to give the students a few minutes to take a break between their last class and our class. As they have another class right after ours, we must end our class a few minutes before their next class so that they can have a short break. We will ask our students about their ideas about this in our next class.

One thing I think we should spend more time on is the instruction part before games. We played a jeopardy game today as a pre-instruction activity to assess students’ current knowledge about discussion language. A student asked about the difference between responding and verbal feedback when the game was almost done. Since they got quite a few mistakes during the game, I think most of them might felt confused about this question, yet nobody asked earlier. Next time, we need to give some more instructions before games. Although the game was for assessment, helping students to learn and practice should be our main direction. Also, I’m thinking of adding more focused practice about the discussion language to see if they are all clear about it before getting into discussions so that they can use the phrases better in discussions, which is also the communicative practice.

We didn’t ask our students to turn their cameras on this time. When I was observing their former class, I noticed that they showed only tiny parts of their face and I felt they were really uncomfortable with the cameras. Helping students to learn effectively and happily is essential, if the students will be stressed and affected mentally by turning of cameras, it will be a counter effect then. We may ask the students the reasons for not wanting to turn cameras on next time. Our time-control was overall good today. As we started a little late, we were not able to finish the presentation part and we left two groups to the next class. For our closing activity, we asked the students to choose the topics they are interested in from a list provided so that we can prepare even more engaging and motivating discussion. contents for them in the coming classes.

In the practicum teaching this semester, I will be teaching an online level 4 ESL oral communicative class with my teaching partner Sylvie. There are six adult students in our class, five of them are from China while one is from Japan.

The first hour of the teaching was an introductory class. We had five students in this class as the Japanese student was absent. In order to meet our goal of getting to know each other, helping students to learn how to better use the BigBlueButton, and build an encouraging learning environment for the students, we planned a series of class activities, including student introductions based on some key points, the introduction of our expectations, questions and expectations for student teachers, BigBlueButton orientation, two truth and a lie activity, and a closing activity.

I found two challenges in this class. Firstly, there are differences between the students’ participation. Although they all participated in the activities and completed the speaking tasks, it was easy to tell the ones who liked to speak more. It’s good that students are active and willing to speak up, however, while some students behaved very active in class, the others might become relatively quiet. I believe that teachers should manage the class participation and keep a balance between students’ domination of discussion and students not willing to speak so that each of the students has chances to practice in class. In our next class, I will try giving the speaking opportunities first to the students who spoke less.

The second challenge was that the students did not like to turn their cameras on when speaking up. The reason for them not willing to turn their cameras on might be them not being prepared to show their looks and their space. As we are having online classes and not able to communicate face to face, I think turning cameras on is helpful for students to practice their non-verbal communicative skills and build a close learning community. Since we have stated our expectations and the reason for turning the cameras on when doing presentations and answering questions, they may be able to prepare themselves and turn their cameras on in discussion next time. I don’t want to make the students feel stressed about this, especially the shy ones. After all, helping the students to learn effectively and happily is one of the essential objectives. Sylvie and I have talked about this issue, we will see next time if the students can accept this better, if not, we may figure out some other ways to maintain the students’ learning effectiveness without them turning cameras on.

In the self-introduction activity, we asked the students to introduce themselves based on some key points we provided. I learned this approach in classroom observation and I found it very helpful for students to figure out what to say. With the key points, the students introduced themselves easily and they came up with even more topics around the key points we provided, which enhanced the class interaction. I felt we have already created an encouraging and supportive learning environment for the students in this hour of the class.

We almost finished our lesson plan in this class except for a two-minute closing activity. Also, we learned that the students have another class right after ours so we will plan our next lesson according to this situation. In our next class, we will introduce the students to some discussion language and arrange class discussions around some interesting topics to enhance students’ discussion skills.