Mar 4, 2020 Wed
Topic: Sports in the World
** Moved to highest level class
Observation
· Roll call
Content
· Writing corrections is a really good activity
· Kahoot! Can not tell the answer right after
· Everyone is looking at their screen when I wanted to talk so make them listen to me
· Common sense (you don’t need to be taught) vs. general knowledge (something you should know)
· At the beginning, you should break down the steps of what they should do for each group, rather than giving them
· Advent
· Having the actual text undermines their function of teaching. Cuz people will just read the slides. They can explain the slides without the text on it
· Where’s misunderstanding there is learning
· It was a big ask to ask them to rephrase the texts to teach the class
· Show them the worksheet when you ask them to take it out
· Be clearer and use prop and example as much as possible
· To make sure everyone is listening: Wait for silence and then let the debate
· Is better to type down the exact words
· 2min to organize the information is too short!!!!!!!!
· Should encourage everyone to speak
· Debate #1 went well, used transition well
· When videotaping them, you should ask them beforehand.
Lesson Plan & Class Materials
Reflection
· They said the listening activity from yesterday was easy, which made me think their level are high up there.
· Some teams are faster while the other is much slower. Need to think of ways to organize the activity well so that no one is left out or feeling boring.
I have to say I overestimated the students’ level a little because of the false impression I got from them yesterday. After doing the listening activity yesterday, I ask the students how hard they think it was. I got an answer of 4 to 5, which made me think it is too easy while I thought it would be quite challenging for them. Therefore, I leveled up today’s activity and shovelled two major activities into one short 70-minute teaching session.
In the first section, I let the students play a Kahoot game about the trivia of the Olympics. They all had fun and it was very engaging, quickly warming up the class. Then I explained what they have to do for the “teaching” activity, where they need to read their assigned slides and explain/introduce the content to the class. A few students did well by reorganizing the content and presenting the main information on the slide to the class, but most of them had trouble using their own words to express the content. A lot of them read the passages on the slides out word by word, which failed to reach the objectives of “comprehending written information and to transform it into their own words to explain/present to others”. I should have delivered a clearer instruction to them by giving an example and emphasizing on the language objectives of this activity. That would really help.
In the second section, we did a debating activity. It took a lot longer than I thought it would take, because I did not take the time they need to organize how they’re going to present their arguments into account. They needed much more time to assign who to say what, and to note down the exact words that they’re going to say on stage. One problem that I encounter was that it was hard to correct all the grammatical or pronunciational mistakes they made when on stage. I couldn’t decide whether to correct them on the spot or to collect all the mistakes and point them out at the end, so I chose the easy way out, to interrupt the team after each person is done talking. I should bring a notebook to write down their mistakes and talk about it after team is done presenting. Another issue I faced was that I did not explain the flow of the event well enough, leaving the class a little overwhelmed with all the new information I forced onto them. A better way to do so is to print out a clear outline of the debate session
Due to the time limit, I had to move the second debate session to the beginning of the next class. I think it turned out fine as the second group wold have more time to prepare and they can do some more research on the topic in their free time if they’d prefer to. I am confident that the second debate will be much smoother.
Also, during the first two groups’ preparation for their debate, the other two groups seemed boring and they might think it’s a waste of time. I planned for it to be a good chance for them to brainstorm a bit more to come up with more complex ides, but they seemed lazy to do so, which is understandable. I should come up with some ideas to better make use of that period of time for the students who are not debating.