Design

This artifact is from my complete curriculum design for the imagined context of an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course for Education students in a South Korean university. This large project covered many intricate elements of design. During the process, I designed a sample lesson plan (pg. 18) in which I will focus on in this reflection. For context, this lesson plan is meant to be at the beginning of the unit on academic discussion. I chose a webinar showing a conversation among educators (and a student) from different parts of the world about how the COVID 19 pandemic affected education as a whole. The reasons I chose this webinar was that it, (1) is authentic (not created for language learning), (2) exposes students to different varieties of English, (3) provides opportunity for discovery learning, and (4) is relevant and contextualized to the students’ experience and course goals. 

In many of the language classes I have taken, videos were used in more of a passive learning way. When I was implementing a webinar in my course design, I knew I needed to break the hour long video into meaningful segments for students to focus on. I could have just assigned the whole video and expected them to figure it out but I wanted to make good use of their time as well as mine. If I just gave them the video in its entirety without drawing focus to specific segments, I would have to spend more time in class reviewing the video and pointing these segments out anyways. Although I still had in my plan to go over what students observed, having segments helps students to be more successful the first time as well as helps orient them in the video in pointing out specific examples. Going through and picking meaningful segments was daunting, but it would have been even more daunting and counterproductive for the learners to do that on their own. On the other hand, discovery learning is a large component of this activity in that students are tasked with observing the selected clips and making observations on functions of group discussions (agreeing/disagreeing, introducing a new point, bringing in evidence, asking for clarification, etc). Throughout the term when I was busy and tired, I realized that putting that little bit of effort in earlier paid off later and contributed to a better design and use of materials (as well as being more beneficial for my imagined students). I think my growth mainly boils down to my sense of responsibility in how I choose materials, how I choose to implement them, as well as having a better sense of how to navigate this (agency).

This artifact is a lesson plan I designed with Nicolas Vassilenko during our internship at the AEI. We were tasked with taking the material that was prescribed (the textbook the teacher was using) and designing a cohesive lesson taking into account classroom management, technology, time management, and the logistics of having two teachers. Out of the 8 Criteria For Lesson Design (Yerian, 2022), Nicolas and I focused on active learning, clear instruction, and feedback. While the materials were out of our control, we knew that it was still important to deliver the material in a way that contributed to the students’ success (as this is something many teachers are tasked with). In the document, we mapped out the timing of activities, transitions, and benchmark times (times that we need to be at a certain point in the lesson in order to allow enough time for the remaining activities). During the planning, we made sure we were both clear on who does what as well as how to use the technology and pull up digital materials in the classroom. This was to minimize the amount of idle time and to maximize the time learning and engagement in the class. In terms of active learning, we attempted this by having students brainstorm what functions a brain does in order to encourage the students to think on the topic prior to being exposed to the material. This also allowed for students to personalize a part of the lesson by first having to think about their own experience before contributing. An example of applying clear instruction, we created a Google Slides presentation in order to give the instructions visually as well as aurally. Additionally, we were purposeful in choosing pictures and sentences to clearly convey the definition of the new vocabulary words. An example of designing feedback is how we went over answers to exercises in their workbooks. We would ask the class to say the answer aloud and then we would confirm if they were right. If the students were wrong or seemed mixed on the answer, the instructor (Nicolas or I) hinted at the right answer using context clues or gave an explanation for the correct answer. This feedback is meant to show students how they could have gotten to the right answer. 

This artifact is a lesson plan also designed with Nicolas Vassilenko for an imagined context of an Intermediate-High high school English Language course with a focus on creative writing. This lesson plan demonstrates various parts of the 8 Criteria For Lesson Design (Yerian, 2022) (as discussing more in depth in the artifact). An interesting point I want to make in this reflection is the importance of the way the classroom is physically arranged. We made the choice to design that the students would be in pods (using tables or desks arranged like a table to create small groups). This is to promote peer feedback as well as create a more positive classroom community through open discussion and collaboration. 

This artifact is a lesson plan I designed with Yueyuan Jin and Mary Kate McBride for the Talking With Ducks (TWD) class at the AEI as a part of our teaching practicum class. Talking With Ducks is a 50-minute elective English conversation class for the students at the AEI. This lesson took place in Week 10 and the topic of the week was ‘Friends & Family.’ Because the goal of the course is to give students as much opportunity to talk as much as possible, it is important for them to get to know each other and build a classroom community. This is exemplified in this lesson plan in that all of the activities prompt students to talk about themselves and/or ask questions about others. Because of the personalized nature of these activities, active learning is a strong component throughout. Along with building classroom community, this lesson is designed with diverse output and engaging activities. This is exemplified in the gameboard that is not only visually appealing but also requires tactile and kinetic activity. For students who need to be occupied with more tactile or kinetic activities, including this characteristic helps the students to be better engaged with the point of the activity: conversation. The activity is more active which helps to keep student attention. Another example of engaging activities and diverse output is the use of drawing in the Show & Tell activity and the Strange New World reflection activity. Some students may be more drawn to creative activities, so this is a way to use their interest to keep attention and motivation to participate. This not only positively impacts those students, but also helps other students in communicating with and understanding others with the use of pictures and gestures. Having a variety of activities with different energy requirements and modalities affords more students the opportunity to engage with at least some part of the lesson.