Today’s observation was of a synchronous virtual meeting of a university English conversation club. Participation was voluntary, so attendance numbers and proficiency levels vary with each time the club meets. The topic of conversation was national holidays and there were 2 teachers leading the discussion.
The club opened with 4 short videos on the history of Canada from the “Heritage Minutes” series. Each video was followed by one or two questions on the content. After the videos, the students were asked to turn on their microphones and cameras and talk about where they were from.
Next, there were small group discussions in break-out rooms about the national holidays from each students’ home country. A return to the whole class environment included a summary of the discussion, followed by questions on the students’ favourite holiday foods, cooking styles that were unique to the students’ local area and the students’ favourite holiday.
Participation was slow to start but was much better by the end of the class. I thought the teachers did a good job of building participation by choosing people to speak, while still encouraging people to volunteer. The environment they created was a safe place for students to try out new language that they were learning. The thing I would do differently would be the initial videos. They used more difficult language and did not speak about Canadian holidays. It may have been better to find some simple images of celebrations in Canada, or to screen share and look up images on the holidays that the students were sharing.
Today I observed a synchronous virtual class of university students in an upper-level academic reading class. The lesson was about the literary terms for character types and they were studied using the story that had been assigned for homework.
The lesson opened with a review of how to use elements of the virtual space and a request for permission to record the lesson. The teacher began by showing a list of terms for character types and called on the students to give a definition of a character type. Students were encouraged to agree or disagree, and to support their reason with evidence from the story. The teacher gave feedback as well, and at one point used a piece of realia to help solidify the students’ understanding. After a short break, the students were to return to small group work to discuss the characters in the story. Then the teacher would address the questions that students had emailed her.
What I thought was effective about this class was that it communicative elements, while allowing the students to develop their analytical skills and the terminology to express their opinions.
Today’s observation took me back to Mexico to watch another synchronous virtual class of advanced high school seniors. However, it was a different teacher and class from my previous observation. The teacher had a good rapport with the students. She spent several minutes in casual conversation with the students while waiting for class members to arrive.
The topic of the class was professions whose members could be considered heroes. The lesson was about listening for gist and listening for details using a TED talk by Mark Bezos about being a firefighter. The teacher introduced the TED talk briefly and led a discussion about what is the difference between a superhero and a real hero. The students were engaged and on-topic when the video was played the first time. There was a multiple-choice question for the students to answer that was about the gist of the video. The first run through was followed by another discussion, this time about kindness and heroes and the students’ personal values.
The second time the video was played, the students were listening for details. Prior to the video being played, the teacher gave detail-oriented questions to the students and checked for comprehension as well as making sure the students understood the different types of questions they would see on the IELTS listening exam. After the video, the teacher had the students hand in their answers, but also went over each answer, calling on a specific student to read a question out loud and give their answer.
The lesson was communicative, focused, and gave the students a chance to develop their listening skills while evaluating their own beliefs and reviewing their understanding of the structure of the IELTS exam. It was well managed and flowed smoothly from general ideas to specific concepts. The only thing I would change has to do with technology.
The teacher had two places where the students would submit answers to questions. The students were permitted to submit their answers by any means possible. They could send in an attachment via email, MS Teams, What’s App, or a photo or screen shot from their phone. They were also permitted to ask questions via the class chat, What’s App, or messaged through their phone. The teacher was monitoring and using dual screens, her phone and her ipad, all at once, while trying to teach. As much as I admire her ability to keep track of all the input and allow the students as wide a range as possible to connect with the class, she was a little distracted from the substance of the class.
Today I observed an advanced synchronous virtual class of high school seniors in Mexico. The teacher had a great rapport with the students, which was developed through personal sharing by the teacher and relationship building exercises such as a pajama day. There was an honest affection between the teacher and students.
The class itself seemed disjointed. There was not a consistent topic or vocabulary used throughout. The class started with a review of vocabulary, but when the class shifted to listening exercises the vocabulary was not used. The topic of the second part of the class was stereotypes, but the previous vocabulary had nothing to do with stereotyping, and the only stereotypes presented were gender stereotyping around makeup use. That said, the students were comfortable sharing honest reactions and feelings.
The class wrapped up with a student presentation that was leftover from a previous class. The presentation topic was on the student’s ideal future university that included a budget, a virtual tour, and information on scholarship essays and sample interviews. The student was given immediate feedback and a grade in front of the class.
Although the students were engaged throughout the class, but when I look at the level of the presentation, I wonder if the content around stereotypes provided the students with a challenge, or even new material. I was a little shocked that a grade was given in front of the class, but that may be a cultural difference since none of the students showed any reaction.
For this observation, I watched 3 condensed videos of longer classes. The first was a grade 6 class in China, the second was an adult beginner class, and the third was a class that was an intermediate orientation and placement class for international students at a university.
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The topic of the grade 6 class in China was the past tense within the context of what happened on vacation. The teacher progressed the lesson from general areas of the world to visit, highlighting different climates (cold/north, jungle, beach, city), and moved to discussion in pairs about what the students did on their last vacation. Much of the lesson was listen and repeat, spelling, identify and repeat exercises. What kept the students engaged was that the teacher used photos of herself, from her own vacations. The physical setup of the classroom did not allow for the kids to be up and moving, so there was no physical portion to the lesson. Assessment was done by having a list of sentences on the screen that had been learned previously that each student took a turn to stand up and say 1 sentence from the list. The only thing I would do differently is ask the students about their vacation while still in the whole class group. The only time the students spoke about their own experience was for a brief time in pairs.
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The adult beginner class was a functional class in giving advice. The classroom itself was very small, with only a white board to use. The teacher maximized the space by putting the students in a U-shape around the edges of the room. When the teacher wanted the students to see images, he took his tablet around the room. Leaving the centre of the room empty allowed the teacher to have the students up and moving in different groupings for the communicative parts of the lesson. While students were having discussions, the teacher would pause the action and write a sentence on the board and either correct it or discuss its use or pronunciation, then have them go again. Feedback was pertinent and immediately used. The teacher used himself as an initial example of needing advice for his cold. He went through phrases to use when asking for and giving advice; he gave feedback, correction, and praise; the students were engaged and participating throughout, and he never let them sit for more than a couple of minutes. I thought this was an effective class.
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The topic of the intermediate university class was “free time”. This video seemed to be a “what not to do” for classroom management. The teacher did most of the talking and the students were not engaged. The students were chatting amongst themselves, trying to get a date, and playing on their phones. The teacher was asking the students about how many hours of free time they had in their home country, but it was only as part of a response to survey. There was no asking the students about what kind of activities they did or what their interests were, it was multiple questions where the only possible response from a student was to spit out a number. Due to the lack of any relationship between the teacher and students, it seemed intrusive and out of place for the teacher to talk about partying and the beer the students would be drinking. All in all, a complete disaster of a class.
What I observed today was a presentation done by a university instructor to a group of Japanese high school students. The presentation was about how to be an effective learner of English and how to prepare for university entrance exams.
Although this presentation was set up to have student interaction, it was mostly the instructor speaking. The students read a short story out of the first-year textbook from the university and underlined the ways to learn more English. The entire class boiled down to 3 very general points on language learning, and 2 generalized parts of learning. All of which were presented in the last 10 minutes.
I kept waiting for a larger point to be made, but it never happened. I wonder if the students found it useful because I almost fell asleep just watching. I was also slightly uncomfortable when the instructor mildly mocked a student for their travel goals instead of clarifying what the student was trying to communicate.
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.
Today I observed the English Conversation Club at TRU’s Language Learning Centre. Unfortunately, there were no international students in attendance. There were several English-speaking students who attended however, so we followed through the lesson plan and had a conversation about music.
The plan for this conversation included a fill in the blanks on music lyrics, questions about favorite music, music that had an impact on individuals, identifying the meaning of songs and applying it to your own life, and a game of music Jeopardy. I enjoyed the process, and the instructor was well prepared to keep the conversation going with ongoing questions and activities.
Some of the questions/topics needed you to be willing to have higher level of vulnerability to give an honest answer, which I was comfortable doing because I knew some of the others and the instructor from previous classes, but I’m not sure I would have been willing to share had it been a group of complete strangers. This particular music lesson might get better responses later in the semester when students have a chance to build rapport as members of the club.
Today I observed a beginner adult ESL class of about 13-15 students identified by the instructor as being at a CLB level 1 or 2.
The classroom had a traditional physical set up, with the teacher’s table at the front of the class, in front of a whiteboard, with a movable blackboard to one side. There were three large round tables in a line across the back of the classroom. Although there were no computers in the classroom, there was a pull-down projection screen above the white board. This seemed to be a functional space for language learning. The large round tables gave the teacher immediate small groups for games, that were easily broken up into pairs for communicative activities. The empty space at the front of the class meant that TPR activities could be done without moving furniture, yet there was space to do so if the activity required a change in configuration.
The instructor completed activities with the students that involved simple instructions with hand gestures to aid understanding, and realia. The lesson was about functioning in a clothing store. What I thought was interesting was that the instructor used a combination of elicitation, repetition, reading and speaking to aid in the lesson. A typical greeting and question conversation was written on the board as the instructor got verbal responses from the students. The instructor would practice the conversation with each student, but the other students would be able to read the conversation and follow along. The level of engagement was high because other students would say the difficult pieces or intonations out loud with the teacher and student doing their practice. The use of realia gave the students a focal point and a concrete object to use for directions.
What I learned from watching this class was how to provide a functional lesson without using any explanation of the why of the language, or options in the wording. There was also no formal assessment in this lesson, but there was almost constant informal assessment as the instructor had one on one practice with each student and had each student name a piece of their clothing in a sentence as an exit ticket. It was functional use of English at its core.
