Reflections for Week 10: Modeling debate language and information gathering

Student level: Advanced-low to Advanced-high, depending on student. 

In my debate class this week, we were building towards two areas in particular. The first was modeling argumentative and explanatory dialogue for them.  The students did a mock-debate the previous week for practice, but I noticed while they could stand up and read about their issue, they didn’t know how to frame it as a direct contrast to the other side. I felt like they were reading an instruction-manual instead of expressing a heartfelt opinion. Consequently, I prepared handouts for them (yes, this was a hand-out heavy class, because in both instances I wanted them to have an aid or a guide for reference and a space to gather their ideas). In the first handout I organized a list of terms that could help them attach opinions to their issues. My hope was not only that they would apply some useful language, but also take ownership of the issue by addressing it in more personal terms. As well as terms that emphasized the centric approach I wanted them to take, I also gave them contrasting terms to play against what the other person said. I don’t know how much of the language I taught them became exercises in parroting and how much will be acquired, but I hope they apply them in next week’s debate. Here are the terms, reproduced from my handout:

Language:

Opinions, preferences:

I think…, In my opinion…., I’d like to…., I’d prefer…., The way I see it…., As far as I’m concerned…., If it were up to me…., I suppose…., I’m pretty sure that…., It is fairly certain that…., I suspect that….., I’m convinced that…., I honestly feel that…., I strongly believe that…., Without a doubt…., Anyone can see that….,

Disagreeing:

I don’t think that…., Don’t you think it would be better…, I don’t agree…., I’d prefer…, Shouldn’t we consider…, I see your point, but…., But what about…., I’m afraid I don’t agree…, Frankly, I doubt that…., Let’s face facts…., The truth of the matter is….., The problem with your point of view is that….,

Giving reasons and offering explanations:

To start with…, The reason why…, That’s why…, For this reason…., Many people think…, Considering…, Allowing for the fact that…., When you fully consider….,

I had them frame their issues using the provided language. To ensure they had absorbed the language instead of just reading it aloud, after a couple minutes I asked them to turn over their paper and continue. The results were mixed. Some had more trouble than others in processing or absorbing the dialogue. I was hoping Swain’s comprehensible output theory would work its magic here, with them latching on to the new language as a bridge between what they’re thinking and how they want to express it verbally. Perhaps I need to set up the exercise in a way that makes them think more, delivers the language in a more demonstrative, but passive way and doesn’t provide them quick and lazy reference-points that they can read off a piece of paper. 

Next, we did some research-gathering on the Internet, their first time collecting sources in English. This was an exercise focused on learner autonomy and seeing how well they could (a) navigate the internet, the most important multimedia tool there is, in L2, (b) be able to distinguish key-points from less important or unrelated points, (c) comprehend and summarize those points on the handout and (d) demonstrate initiative and leadership skills by directing their group-mates towards the more important sites and explaining what they found to each other. Here was my handout for that:

                                       Women and Men: Equal at Last

                                                        My TEAM is:

       Affirmative, because….                                               Negative, because….           

__________________________________ ________________________________________

            (central premise)                                                       (central premise)

Supporting details:

1) _________________________________________________________________

2) _________________________________________________________________

3) _________________________________________________________________

4) _________________________________________________________________

Research: 2 Internet Sites to support my argument:

1) Name: _________________________________________ Address:__________________________________________

2) Name: _________________________________________ Address:__________________________________________

For the most part, they worked well and did perform as I expected. Again, some students had more success in this task than others. These weaker students would give up too readily, or rely too much on the stronger students to hunt for information and summarize the salient points. Perhaps more scaffolding is needed on my part, especially in regards to the weaker students in the class. All in all, it was a productive lesson, but tweaks are needed in both cases to make them more efficient and useful for the learner. 

Reflection from last week: Debating how to be a better teacher.

This was supposed to be a dry-run of my microteaching from early last week for my debate class. I’m a bit embarrassed to post it, because it didn’t incorporate TD, BU and TDBU as it should have. I still think there was a lot of good interaction in the class. It was a new class, so

I was trying to teach them the basic components of a debate and what would be expected. By using the PowerPoint and showing them a video of a debate I was hoping to activate their schema so they could better relate the vocab terms to what I was describing. Then at the end (though not on the filmed clip here) I had them do their first mock debate with each other, which helps them to “learn by doing.”

In this clip, even though I’m showing them a PPT, I’m trying to keep them constantly engaged by peppering them with questions throughout and doing my best to personalize the concept of a debate for them (“when have you debated someone?”, “how do you win an argument with a friend?”). They eventually got together after the PPT and worked together in groups, organizing their points for the eventual debate and this culminated with them speaking in front of their class, personalizing the issues they felt passionate about. It was a fun class and it had a good energy, but it wasn’t what it should have been and I should have done a better job incorporating the Harmer readings into my class. It’s aggravating because I know now what I could have done differently, and I’m going to try to do a proper listening/reading task with my class this week.

            Tom, if you’re reading this, I also want to work on what you said yesterday about putting too much attention on myself.  Looking at this clip I know there’s too much teacher-talk, which makes me think I overestimated the students talking proficiency as well. I want to change this imbalance and I know it’s a problem, but I worry about the direction of the class if I’m not keeping the students’ attention or guiding them. What should I do less of (or more of) to give the students more autonomy in my class? 

Reflections: Mount Never Rest

This week I had a pretty successful lesson concerning Mount Everest, which then segued to a general lesson about teamwork. The students in this class are generally around intermediate-mid to an intermediate-high speaking and listening level (reading and writing aren’t as observed as closely).

The previous class I had them craft trivia questions (such as “what is the largest country in the world?”, “what is the fastest animal?” etc., which they then used to test their partners). This class I picked up from there by refreshing them about question structures and then posing a new question on the board “What is the most dangerous sport in the world?” I then asked students to discuss with each other what they thought the deadliest sports were. I modeled the reply I wanted on the WB as “I think the most dangerous sport in the world is ______ , because ___________” I got many answers such as bungee-jumping, rugby, jetskiing, but I stopped when one student announced climbing dangerous mountains like Mount Everest. Now, I’m not proud of this, but I have to admit I’m not sure that extreme mountaineering is actually the most dangerous sport. One student said “Russian roulette” so that threw a monkey-wrench into my plan. The point was in trying to get them to think critically and initiate some interactions with their peers and myself, so what’s the harm in a white lie every now and then? At least that’s what I tell myself every time my girlfriend asks me the “dress question” (if you’re reading this, I’m joking. Seriously! You look fine). 

I then asked some general questions about Everest, such as what percentage of people who climb it die (10%) and what are some of the reasons they die. They didn’t know the answers to these questions, so I played them a small clip on YouTube, which showed the scale of the mountain and visually demonstrated the dangers the climbers could encounter (such as hypothermia from the cold, altitude sickness and death from low oxygen levels, avalanches, falls, lack of food, etc). The visual scaffolding provided by this clip, helped them to come to the answers more easily. The dangers were never outright said, but by seeing the crevices, hearing about the “dead zone” near the top and observing how the main climber in the clip had basically turned purple, they could guess at the proper answers.

This then led to teamwork as I asked the students to think of how someone could overcome these dangers. Could you climb the mountain alone or would you need a team? If you had a team, what would the jobs be of the team-members? They told me each member would fulfill a certain task; someone would bring the oxygen, someone would bring food, someone would bring shelter in the form of a tent and so on.

I then shifted gears and engaged in some personalization with them. “Have you climbed a mountain in Korea?”, “Did you go alone or with your family?” (of course no one climbed alone), “What did you bring?”, “What did your father do to help you when you were climbing?”, etc. Then after we had some dialogic discourse in the form of open, referential questions, and some great student-initiated IRF (finally!), I subtly shifted the questioning to teamwork in general; “in what other situations have you been on a team?”, “how is working on a team different from working alone?”, “if you were on  a team, what was your job and why were you important to the team?” The students discussed being in study-groups or playing on soccer teams and we had a very lively, productive class with a lot of student-led discussion. Probably one of my most successful classes so far (unfortunately, murphy’s law dictates I film my so-so classes and never have the forethought to film my great classes). It was productive enough that I didn’t get through half of what I had to have covered, so next class will be the dreaded catch-up, the one downside of an otherwise excellent class.

Reflections: Food, food, glorious food.

           Yesterday I substituted for a teacher who was sick, so it was a nice change of pace. The class is an intermediate-high (speaking) Middle-school class. Like the other classes, the focus is mostly on oral communications. I tried to apply some of the MIC techniques more forcefully in order to reduce my power-distance problem in the class. We were learning about foods from around the world and I thought I might try Role Reversal and have one of the students come up to the front of the class and test his peers on which foods come from which countries. I gave him a hand-out with the answers and he called out questions for his classmates to shout back answers to. The other students did seem more engaged and excited when they saw one of their own up there role-playing as the teacher. He took his role seriously and carefully enunciated questions such as “where does the naan come from?” and seemed to delight in the hands that shot up. This went on for a few minutes and seemed moderately successful, but I didn’t really know where to take it. I obviously lack the time to have every student take on the teacher role. I considered having them quiz each other in groups, but in the past group-leader rule has often devolved into ‘Lord of the Flies’-esque chaos. Regardless, they responded well to this initial warm-up and I think it was the best part of the lesson for them.

           Later on in the class I modeled dialogue on the WB for them to practice (eg: “What is a food you like?”, “What is a food you love?”, “What is a food you can’t stand?”, “My favorite food is ________ while my least-favorite food is ______________ “, “My mom is good at cooking ________”, etc) and tried to encourage some student-to-student interactions. As I proctored, I noticed this yielded more mixed results. For some students, the dialogue was too complex to grasp, while others were just unmotivated and/or restless. If I have this class again in the future, I’ll remember to keep their interactions simpler. Although the class as a whole went pretty well, by the end they started to lose focus and goof off a bit.

           My limitations in the middle-class environment stubbornly persist, but perhaps each week I chip away at them a bit more as I challenge myself to affect a more positive dimension in the classes I teach. Every class is teachable, at least on a base level, and the struggle is to find what the students respond to and figure out how you can utilize that to teach your lesson in a way that engages them. Slowly, but surely, I think my instincts in this area are improving. 

Reflection based on actualization of Lesson Plan

(Note: Video of first 15 minutes has been added.)

Reflection:

This reflection is based on the class I prepared the assigned lesson-plan for.  It’s a second grade middle-school class of about 40 students and their skill-levels vary greatly, from novice to advanced. I’m assigned a unit in a book to teach that I can supplement and it’s mostly centered on oral communications. Of course this lesson is different in the sense it was much more thoroughly prepared than usual.

However, preparation does not always equal success. How I planned my lesson and how I performed it in a challenging classroom environment shows that you can’t anticipate all eventualities. I wanted to start the class with some conversational dialogic discourse, but the students weren’t very receptive to my questions and their answers were generally muted or confined to a couple words. Consequently, I became flustered and moved on from greetings faster than I would have liked. I was hoping that by bringing up their exams they could provide some anecdotes or discuss how they did with their fellow students. Having prepared as much as I did, I expected more focus, but instead I found that whenever I stumbled or lost confidence in how an activity was going, I’d move on. Thus, I did depart from my prepared lesson, even if I tried to maintain the basic tenets of what I had planned.

In retrospect I’m disappointed I didn’t try to build on the answers of individual students. Instead, I was trying to speak to the whole class, which is pretty much impossible. I could have been more forceful with my attempts to elicit follow-up answers by giving more feedback and displaying more energy. I could also have had them talk to each other about their exams, but being the first five minutes of class I think I was worried about losing them before I even began. A few minutes later, an attempt to have students relax and discuss sports they’re into was a lot more successful, focused and produced a lot of open, referential questions that helped establish our upcoming discussion about skills.

Another thing I noticed in reviewing my tape is that I tend to “dumb down” my speaking in the class to suit lower-proficiency listening. While it’s useful to slow speech and gesture more, what’s not useful is engaging in broken grammar as I seem to occasionally do in an unconscious and misguided effort to have students understand me. I think this is another classroom confidence issue I have to overcome. Having students understand my directions is not an accomplishment, when those directions are delivered in a corrupt fashion. Teaching proper syntax one moment and then speaking an almost “pidgin” English the next, presents a huge contradiction in my teaching style and something I should actively avoid turning into a habit.

There were some successes though. I found by devoting more time to chunking and repetition, the students became more familiar with the sentence structures I wanted them to practice and their comprehension improved as well. As a result, they could have more fruitful dialogic conversations with their partners when I assigned them a personalization task, such as asking each other what their talents are. Visual cues and schema were also used to help the lower-level students identify certain vocabulary terms with familiar pictures.

In conclusion, I think the meticulously prepared lesson-plan did improve the class, but there’s still problems that inevitably arise, both in the unwieldy and unpredictable dynamic 40 middle-schoolers bring to a class and in the personal faults and temperamental shortcomings that I, as a teacher, sometimes bring to the class. The former will always be a factor I have to anticipate, but I can work on the latter. 

Lesson Plan for Wed, Oct 2nd.

(Note: The reflection based on this lesson will be posted above this one. That post will also contain the video of the first 15 minute or so of the lesson. Hopefully there's no formatting issues with this post.)

Lesson Plan:

Personalization and self-expression in an EFL environment

By Andrew Cutler

Date & Time:

Wednesday October 2^nd, 2013, 9:45am-10:30am.

Background:

This is an early morning class composed of approximately 40 2^nd grade public middle-school students.  I am their EFL teacher and like all my classes we meet once a week. It’s a challenging class because the proficiency of the students varies widely. Novice-mid students who cannot construct sentences sit side by side with intermediate students and even some advanced-high students who have lived in Western countries. The school supplies me a textbook and since we only meet once a week I’m to cover a whole unit. My focus in this class is on speaking and no writing is checked, except to confirm that the students are filling in the answers in their workbooks. I try to supplement the exercises in the book with syntax or personalization activities and engage with as many students as I can. Unfortunately it’s really hard to cater towards all the different skill-levels in the class, but I try my best to proctor and give assistance to the lower-level students, while pushing the higher-level students for more complex answers.

Location:

This is a specially designated classroom for English lessons. The class is big enough to accommodate fifty students if needed. Desks are usually arranged single-file, although I like to group students if I require student-to-student interactions. It’s a relatively modern classroom with a whiteboard and a computer, which is linked to a video-screen.  It is not my personal classroom, but much preferred to the older ones where I teach a few other classes. It helps to make the lessons go a bit more smoothly if you don’t have to worry about chalk breaking off in your hand or A/V equipment that doesn’t work.

Co-Teacher:

My co-teacher is a woman named Ms (or Mrs., I honestly don’t know) Suh. She’s a nice woman in her late 40’s or so and I’d categorize her speaking proficiency as advanced-low or so. She’s probably my favorite co-teacher and seems to take her job more seriously than the others. I usually request her help if I need to translate a term or activity that the lower-level students can’t comprehend or if students are acting out-of-line.

Student and Textbook Profile:

As mentioned in the ‘Background’ section, the class consists of about 40 grade 2 public middle-school students in an EFL class. They are about 15 years old in international age. Their proficiency level runs the gamut, with some students being as low as novice-mid and a couple as developed as advanced-high. Most students are around novice-high to intermediate-mid. This provides a challenging dynamic to the classroom and one I try to address through proctoring and individual teacher-to-student interaction. Despite this disparity in skill level, they are a generally well-behaved class in comparison to some of the other classes. I am expected to teach them a full textbook Unit in a 45-minute class, with a focus on oral communications. The Unit is very dull with repetitive listen-and-repeat or fill-in-the-blank activities that do little to interest or engage students. I supplement the book with my own ideas and activities that provide fresh and more interactive angles to the tasks in the unit. These activities tend to focus on personalization, role-play exercises, chunking and when possible, dialogic IRF. Since there are so many students and so little time to get through the material, choral repetition and closed questions are unavoidable.

Overview of whole lesson:

The first eight minutes will be focused on greeting and relaxing the students. We will discuss the recent exams and I’ll ask them how they fared. Hopefully, students will volunteer answers that I can build off of and ask follow-up dialogic questions to (eg: “Why do you think you did well/poor?”) I will model dialogue on board, detailing proper response structures and I’ll have the students repeat the sentences. Next, I will utilize the PPT to have students discuss their afternoon activities. This will provide an opportunity to help them get adjusted to a simple student-to-student interaction before more complex activities later on in the lesson. The next 12-15 minutes or so will be used to introduce the concept of talents and skills that make people unique. I will activate their schema by showing them pictures of people doing activities. This way they can relate it to their own lives. I’ll model new grammar and vocab terms on the board for them and might have them repeat sentences I’d like for them to use. We might also practice how to ask questions and how the word-order for questions are different than that of sentences. Eventually I will expect them to interact with their partner and find out what their talent is. Answers will be passed on to me at the end of the activity and I’ll use it to take a tally of the class.

Later on another student-to-student interaction will concentrate on favors and chores they ask one another. I will want to know what chores their parents ask them to do and how it makes them feel. I hope to elicit a lot of feedback out of this activity. The students will also role-play asking each other a favor. The favor will be broken into three steps that I want them to consider before attempting the role-play: (a) What do I want and why? (b) How will I ask? (c) Will my friend agree? I anticipate this taking another 10 minutes.

Lastly, there will be a small quiz concerning trivia facts about Korea, which ties into one of the tasks from the book. I usually like to end the class on something fun, but educational to keep them from losing focus. This will probably be 5-10 minutes depending on how successful it is and whether they finish their other work quickly enough. That will more or less, take me to 45 minutes. Usually the co-teacher likes to spend the last minute or two making an announcement.

Target Language Content:

Grammar:	Structure of questions. Simple future tense (“I will…”) and future-progressive tense (“I am going to…”).
Vocab:	“Chore”, “favor”, “talent”, “skill”, “area”, “specialize” difference between “borrow” and “lend.”
Pronunciation:	In such a large class it’s sometimes hard to monitor individual pronunciation, but I’d like them to practice their “w” sounds when asking questions.
Function:	Dialogic exchanges.  Student-initiated IRF. Peer-to-peer interaction. Personalization. Follow-up questions. Visual scaffolding. Chunking.
Tasks:	Role-plays. Listening and repetition. Problem solving.

Teaching Objectives:

Terminal Objective

-Students develop their self-expression skills through personalization activities.

- Students improve conversational skills through dialogic exchanges.

Enabling Objectives:

-       _Students will engage in dialogic role-plays with their partner. These role-plays will focus on personalization.

-       _Students should practice “what”, “who”, “why” questions and ask follow-up questions that build on the answers.

-       _Test students’ listening and comprehension skills.

-       _Have students practice pronunciation through choral repetition.

-       _Utilize “chunking” in order to have students improve their sentence-structure.

Personal Objectives:

-       _As this is my first attempt at this Unit and I will teach it to other classes many more times over the next week, find out what exercises students will react effectively to and discard or refine whatever doesn’t work.

-       _Despite large and diverse student body, attempt to engage in more dialogic interaction with students and proctor more efficiently. In my previous classes, I’ve observed students sleeping, playing, arguing and even watching TV on their smart-phones.

-       _Slow my talking more and repeat phrases. I’ve heard complaints that my directions are sometimes difficult to understand. Perhaps I could use more schema and visual scaffolding to prompt students where words might fall short.

-       _Rely less on co-teacher for translation.

-       _Try to activate students’ schema.

Assessment of T.O:

-       _Through vocab recall and personalization, can student express who they are and what skills they have during the course of a dialogic exchange with a fellow student?

-       _Can students successfully complete activities without relying on Korean translation from co-teacher or more advanced students?

-       _Can students react to answers with appropriate follow-up questions and build coherent dialogue trees?

Anticipated Difficulties/Solutions:

- Structural: Student gets confused with different word-order in English question as opposed to single clause English sentence. Solution: Writing and breaking down components of sentence on WB. Chunking.

- Conceptual: Student does not understand how to personalize and express their talents. Solution: Use schema and visual scaffolding to fill in gaps in vocabulary.
-Cultural: Students are shy about their English level, nervous in front of their partner or they just don’t like to talk about themselves.  Solution: Prompt them by approaching hesitant or quiet pairs and having them role-play with me first.

-Behavioral: Holding students’ attention in such a large class. Solution: Proctor more effectively. Make sure problematic students don’t partner with friends. Perhaps use reward system to encourage good behavior.

Timetable fit:

As I have a whole Unit to get through in this class, not a lot of time can be spared for refreshing language from previous class. I will spend about 8-12 minutes each on the various role-play activities and 3 minutes or so on verbal repetition activities. There are 45 minutes in the class and 4 pages of the book that the school wishes me to cover. On top of this, I have 40 students in a class and I only see them once a week. It’s very difficult to cover the required material, supplement it with activities that are both educational and interesting, while still building a rapport with the students. Occasionally my co-teachers add to the difficulties when they request I spend the last ten minutes showing students funny YouTube videos or play a “simple game” like Hang-man that serve no practical or educational value in the classroom. 

Materials:

School provided textbook, whiteboard, computer linked to A/V screen with pre-scripted school produced PPT. 

Components of Lesson (not necessarily in order and steps may be repeated):

1.     Greet

2.     Relax

3.     Activate schema

4.     Focus on and personalize topic.

5.     Vocab

6.     Grammar and comprehension

Sample script:

Phase/ Aids	Activity: MI      Procedure	Skill Prac.	CI Mode	Time
Preview WB Markers A/V Equipment Computer	1.    Greeting: T greets Ss: How did you do on your exams? S1: So-so. S2: I didn’t do good. T: Why not? S2: Because… hard. T: It was harder than you thought. Why do you think it was so difficult? S2: Ah… it hard because…. T models sentence on WB: It was difficult, because … (Ss gives reasons and dialogic exchanges occur) 2.    Relax T shows short clip of students talking about basketball. Using the book as a starting-point, T asks how Ss will spend their afternoon: T: Sujin (character in Unit) will play basketball this afternoon. I’m interested in what activity you will do this afternoon? (Point to student) S1: I will go to academy. T: Why? S1: My parents want me to improve my English. T: What about you (Student)? S2: I want to play soccer with my friends. T: Are you good at soccer? S2: Pretty good. T: Why do you enjoy it? S2: Because it makes me … exciting. T models correct term on WB and distinguishes between ‘excited’ and ‘exciting’. T: Will anyone else play sports this afternoon? Why don’t you ask your partner what they will do this afternoon? S-S interaction. T proctors.	L, S S L S L S L,R L S L S L S L S L S L,R L L,S	TàSs SàT S->T T->S S->T T->S S->T T à Ss TßàSs, T->S S->T T->S S->T T->S S->T T->S S->T T->Ss S->S	8’
Lesson A/V screen WB	Activate Schema/ Personalization       T shows students pictures of children engaging in areas of their talent:        T: What is this person doing here?       S1: Painting a picture. T: Does anyone here like to paint? Is anyone here an artist? (Student raises hand) T: Good, we have an artist. What do you like to draw? S2: Pictures of my family. T: Good. What about this picture. (A girl is by a piano) Raise your hand if you’re good at this. (Student raises hand) T: So what are you good at? S3: I can play piano well. T draws circles on WB. One is for music. One is for sports. One is for art. One is for academics (or school as a simplified term). T: Which area (T gestures towards circles and slows speech since this is a relatively advanced vocab word) is your partner talented in? And if they’re talented in an area, what do they specialize (another vocab term. Write on WB) in? For example, my “area of talent” is art and I “specialize” in painting. (T models sentence on board. “Art” and “painting” are left blank so Ss can find their own specialties.) S-S interaction commences. At conclusion of exercise, T tallies results and groups students in circles. Then T asks S: What is your partner’s area of talent and what do they specialize in? S1: His area is music and he specializes in the violin. Many Ss would be asked the same question.	L S L L S L L S L, R, W L, S L, S S L,S	T -> Ss S->T T->S T->S S->T T->S T->S S->T T->S S->S T->Ss S->T	12-15’