The class I observed today was a synchronous, online class of university students in an advanced composition class. The topic of the lesson was the use of transitions in academic writing. The class was a mixture of following a page in the textbook, with the students all providing answers to the questions, and then having a short discussion about the correct answers.
What I found interesting in this class was the instructor’s ability to work within the limitations of the online platform. Big Blue Button is not very suitable platform for a writing class, yet the instructor had a system of using numbers in the chat for yes and no answers and used the chat as a place to review student answers. The instructor was supportive, encouraging and was able to discuss how North American academic writing differed from other cultures.
The class had about 30 middle school students, and 2 teachers. The course material seemed to be an entire teaching package, with activities built to follow and supplement the textbook lesson. This lesson was a speaking class about using the past tense.
The lesson began with the teachers modelling the dialogue of a conversation on “How was your vacation?”, and “How was your weekend?”. It was a lead-in to the first portion of the class that was a pattern of the students doing a look and listen activity with a video conversation, then a listen and repeat activity with the same dialogue.
Next was a song that was the dialogue. It was sung, but it also was practice of intonation and sentence flow. It was first modelled by the teacher and then sung by the whole class with the song speeding up each time through the chorus.
The final 20 minutes of the class was a team game practicing past tense. With each round the students were asked for the past tense of a given verb. The object of the game was to have students provide the direct object of the past tense verb. The teams each had a whiteboard and marker. For each round they were given time to brainstorm as many answers as possible. The game play was to go to each team in turn and get them to say the sentence with one their answers, but they could not repeat any answers that had been given previously. I thought this was a great game. It was both collaborative and competitive. The students got more invested with each round.
Throughout, the teachers used hand gestures and hand clapping patterns to cue the students. This class was fast-paced, but had a high level of student engagement and enthusiasm.
For my final lesson with my class in Mexico, I decided to do a review lesson and tie together the two parts of the IELTS writing test. For four weeks we worked on specific tasks and writing skills, so I wanted to review the overall parameters for the test while connecting the skills they had learned to both parts of the test and writing in general. In this way, I hoped to reduce their anxiety about writing the IELTS exam and boost their confidence in their writing ability.
I got another round of student feedback and it was much better. I’m glad the adjustments I made to my teaching style were effective. Flexibility is key, but I also think it is important to not take it personally. Different cultures, schools, students will have different needs and expectations. There is no such thing as one technique, or style, or teacher, that will reach every student every time. I need to be prepared to pay attention and adjust when necessary.
I didn’t expect to have an emotional reaction to the end of this practicum. It is hard to connect with the students online, especially with having technical issues where I couldn’t see the class chat or access the class list. I could only see a few people out of the 25 people in the class. I used a clip from Disney’s Inside Out as a lead in to saying thank you to the class for having me. It is the part where they discuss significant, or core memories, that help to create or shape aspects of personality. I thanked the class for being part of the core memory that helped to begin the “teacher” aspect of my personality. I was surprised to feel a little teary.
Today was my second lesson using Nearpod. It went better than last week. I felt much more comfortable knowing that this type of lesson would be successful. I was able to relax while I was teaching.
In reviewing the students’ writing from last week, I identified some common errors in the structure of the introductions they had written, and tailored my lesson around making sure they had a solid grounding in academic essay structure and how using the structure would make their writing easier and get them better IELTS grades. I made a pdf file that was a visual aid about the essay structure that also showed timings and word counts for each paragraph for the IELTS test.
After a writing exercise, I had a collaborative board activity that asked the students to anonymously identify what they were still unsure of in terms of the IELTS writing task. There were quite a few different concerns and I was able to address them all one by one.
It was a slightly slower paced lesson today. I think the most successful part of the lesson was taking the time to listen to student concerns and give direct and practical answers.
My class went much better today! My voice was back, my energy up, my camera on and I had a fully interactive lesson with different types of activities through Nearpod. I was incredibly nervous. Not only did I need to show the students that I changed things up based on their feedback, but I was being evaluated by my practicum advisor.
The Nearpod was great and easy to use. I didn’t have all the glitches worked out, but it was much smoother. What I enjoyed the most was that although I was doing another task introduction (IELTS writing task #2) and there was a lot of information, I was able to transmit that info through varying activities, with brief summaries, instead of giving a lecture. We had a group collaboration board, a pair matching activity, we watched a video, and did a collaborative writing exercise. I was thrilled when there was a much higher rate of student involvement.
However, the lesson didn’t run absolutely perfectly. I hadn’t figured out how to do the collaborative writing in Nearpod, so we switched back to Teams and I shared my screen. Unfortunately, in switching back to Teams, I lost my ability to move the Teams window to my second screen, so I couldn’t see the students as we worked together, but it was just a small exercise in adapting to the technology.
This was the worst week for me. We were supposed teach on Oct 26th & 27th, but we had technical difficulties. Our MS Teams membership in the class we teach was lost and it couldn’t be restored right away, so we had to move our teaching days. The next day we were able to get into the class, but only as guests. This meant we had no access to the chat, and we were passing links to our sponsor teacher in Whatsapp so that she could post them in the class chat. Also, I was still sick. I had laryngitis and a fever, so my voice was not very useful.
On top of that, it was a day for the students to give us a halfway point evaluation. The students responded that they wanted more dynamic lessons from me, and more animation and energy in my voice. Fair enough. What made it difficult was that although the written form was anonymous, a couple of the students turned on their microphone and gave me this feedback directly, which I am absolutely ok with, but it is hard to be called out in front of a group. I thanked them for their information and made some notes. On the plus side, I got some wonderful feedback about my interactions with the students, so it was an up and down evaluation.
I have thought a lot about what the students had to say and considered how to give them what they need from me. I emailed my practicum advisor for advice on any other programs I can use for interaction. She let me know another student is using Nearpod. I am checking it out.
Next week I will do better … provided I have my voice back.
This evening my partner and I taught the English Conversation Club (ECC) that is part of the Language Learning Centre at TRU. The ECC is open to any student, at any level, to join in and practice their English conversation skills. There is no mandatory attendance, so the number of attendees and their skill level is random and variable. It is a far more challenging prospect than teaching a regular class of students.
We chose the theme of “Your Favourite Place”. We each introduced ourselves and then asked the students to do the same. We had several activities and questions planned. At first, we had to call on people, but as the hour progressed people volunteered more. As a cultural note, the 6 students that joined in were mainly from Japan and China, so they politely waited for each person to take a turn and didn’t pry by asking questions. It was also either very early, or very late for the students as they were online in their home countries. Everyone got practice speaking, but it was not a very lively conversation by Canadian standards.
I was sick this evening. I didn’t have much of a voice, so my partner did most of the explaining of the conversation topics and activities. I was more active in the last half of the meeting. I felt that my partner and I worked well together. We didn’t speak over each other and coordinated our speaking times.
At our practicum, my partner and I teach 2 days in a row each week. Our team-teaching approach is to take the topic given to us by our sponsor teacher, split it over the two days and we each teach a specific piece on our day. We use the same examples, same pdf’s, build off of each other’s work and both of us attend both days, prepared to help out.
This week we taught about IELTS writing task #1. For my part of the lesson, I introduced the topic, talked about the overall requirements, the grading structure, the types of charts, and had the students take the full 20 min and write a complete answer. The second day, my partner broke it down and taught the elements and timing of each part of the answer. Next week is more refinement and practice in writing task 1.
There was a lot of information to give the students on how this task is laid out and the requirements. I’m not sure it was a good idea to put so much info in one lesson. It was a bit dry. Lots of listening and work, without much fun. Part of the difficulty is that I’m not sure how to make the Teams environment interesting. I don’t have access to the full functionality of the program because I’m not in the system as a teacher. I can only share my screen, look at the chat and use google forms to get responses.
Next week will be better, because I can build on specific pieces and have more interaction with the students.
This morning I taught my first class. It was an online class of grade 12 students at CUAM in Mexico who are preparing for the IELTS exam.
I found this class had some particular challenges when I was preparing the lesson. The first challenge was connected to the fact that the school, and the students, are based in Cancún, which had been hit by hurricane Delta. In fact, all classes had been cancelled the previous week and most of the students had spent days without power or water. Some students were still unable to attend their virtual classrooms due to ongoing problems with power or the availability of wifi. My challenge was in thinking about how the students might be feeling, or the physical conditions that they were currently living with that might provide an impediment to their learning. The second challenge was a personal one, I did not have any experience with the software platform, MS Teams, which is used for this class.
To answer the first challenge, I planned 15 minutes in my lesson to speak to the students. To give them a chance to talk about what they had been through and how things were for them now. The students seemed to be open and engaged. Almost half of the students chose to speak about how the hurricane affected them.
To answer the second challenge, I practised the night before with my daughter as a student to be able to get instant feedback on whether the student was having the experience with the material that I had planned.
The topic that I taught was the IELTS listening task #4. I used 5 minutes and 46 seconds of a TED talk by Gene Yang on how comics belong in the classroom as a lecture style listening exercise. I created questions on the content in the format of IELTS questions. I had prepared some vocabulary that I thought was challenging from the TED talk, but the students already knew most of it. The final part of my lesson was a discussion around the meaning of the content and the students’ opinions on the speakers points. There was good participation. After the lesson, I was very appreciative to get my sponsor teacher’s feedback on easier, and more effective ways of handling the MS Teams virtual environment so that I have a more definitive way to complete a formal assessment.
All in all, it was a good first class. I felt comfortable with the students and my sponsor teacher. With this group of students, I will need to make the activities more challenging.
Today was the first day my team-teaching partner and I were to be introduced to our practicum class and run some fun “get to know you” activities. There were some tech issues with MS Teams and getting me into the class. It was finally resolved just as my partner finished his portion of the introductions. I jumped into the class feeling behind and without knowing any of what had gone on before. I did my introduction and activity as planned. I introduced myself and we played Two Truths and a Lie. The students asked questions and participated. They were surprised by what was truth and what was a lie.
It was not until I had finished that I found out that Cancun was due to be hit with a hurricane. The lesson was cut short due to the emergency. I listened in as my sponsor teacher spoke with the kids about what was happening. She played two different audio clips for the students by a meteorologist from Texas who happened to be a friend. One was the official clip about the hurricane that was played on the news, and the other was personal message on the hurricane. With both clips, the teacher pointed out specific vocabulary, the formality of the tone and had the students respond. She was able to use current events as part of the lesson.
What this lesson highlighted for me was the importance of being knowledgeable about the events that can affect the students and being flexible enough to bring it into the learning process.
