Feb 28, 2020 Fri
9:00-10:10 (70min observation)
10:10-10:40 (30min teaching)
Topic: Living in Community
Observation
· Roll call
· Give out student information form
· The year of their birth year on the sheet was typed wrong, but Randall fixed the situation in a humorous way.
· Teach how to fill in the form. (address, cell phone vs. landline, mo/day/year)
· Spent for almost 25 min to make sure everyone filled out the form correctly.
· Go with the flow
· If there are some time left, ask each of them to take turn to answer simple questions.
Content
· Reading practice:
· What did John do?
· Students would come up with answers by themselves when the article doesn’t mention anything about the question.
· Below vs. above
· Should have told
Objective
· Reading comprehension
· Opinion sharing
· Creativity (what happened next?)
· Forming sentences
Lesson Plan & Class Material
*Today's lesson is contenued from yesterday's lesson plan.
Reflection
We spent quite some time asking the students to fill out their information form today. It was actually a good way to instruct them about these forms of basic information. I assisted the students with filling in the forms while Randall instructed them how to put down the date, the address, and introduced the difference between cellphone numbers and landlines. This could actually be an authentic class teaching them about how they should fill out these kinds of important information.
For the reading part, I find it to be challenging to some of the students. There was this one question with no answer stated in the reading, so instead of writing down “I don’t know” or “it doesn’t say in the article”, a lot of them started to make up possible answers. From my understanding, this has something to do with the typical Asian education model. Students are not encouraged to say “I don’t know” or ask “why” in most Asian educational environments. On the other hand, they are more polite, willing to follow rules, and are good at reciting and memorizing information.
Growing up in Taiwan, I have experienced the exact same learning culture. After exposing to the western educational environment, I completely fell in love with their pedagogy promoting critical thinking and creativity. This is why a big part of my teaching philosophy emphasizes on raising the awareness of these two concepts, encouraging students to learn the western way of learning. In the long run, these students can then take on both the Asian and western way of learning, optimizing their academic and general learning journey.