Description

One of the lessons I taught, in person, was about direct speech. My mentor had briefly taught this lesson in Week 12, but in Week 13 she asked me if I could go through the lesson again with Blue and Green group for the purpose of refining their understanding. So, during English I took Green group to the library with me to check their understanding. First, I asked them if they remember what direct speech is. Many of them were familiar with it, so I went ahead with my readiness activity. I showed them an image with a speech bubble, and asked them to write down a sentence using the speech bubble. While they were working, I went around and checked their progress to see if they needed help and to check their sentences. In that activity, I realized that although the students understood what direct speech is, they had some difficulty forming a sentence correctly. I only had 20 minutes to work with the Green group, so I stopped their progress before we could move any further, since there wasn't much that I could do with what their current level of understanding of the lesson was. After that, I sent the Green group back to the classroom and took out the Blue group and went back to the library. I repeated the same thing I did with the Green group with the Blue group, but the Blue group were much faster when forming the sentences. The only thing I realize is that they tend to make some minor mistakes when punctuating the the sentences. Seeing that I had a little bit of time left, I went over four rules for the Blue group to remember. Then, I took them back to the classroom just before English was finishing. During each lesson with the Green and Blue group, I noted down the changes that needed to be down with each group for tomorrow's English lesson. For the Green group, I scrapped the lesson for how to correctly punctuate a sentence with direct speech and added in more practice on how to create a sentence with direct speech. For the Blue group, I realized that they needed a little bit more work with punctuating their sentences with direct speech, so I inserted a few more practice questions that will enable them to practice their punctuation. students by myself, without supervison.

Before this experience I was definitely nervous. This would be the first time I get to teach a small group of students by myself, without supervison. The students had learned about direct speech, so I wasn't extremely nervous. I was just worried whether or not my activities would be appropriate because I did not know where they were at when it came to direct speech. I didn't know if it would be too hard or too easy for them. What was good about the experience is I was able to work with the students in small groups. This would act as a practice run for my first whole class teaching experience in the following days. What went well in this situation is that since we would be learning this in a different environment, I quickly went through the rules of the library with the students. I asked them what the rules of the library were, and hoped that one of the rules they mentioned was to keep a lower voice, as well as to not run. Fortunately, they were able to list this. It was important that I had them come up with the rule themselves because it lets the students know what the expectations are of them in the library and to assume responsibility of their learning, as well as to prevent misbehaviour in the library, so they can concentrate on my lesson at hand (Hsu, 2018). Next, what went well was I had them prepare for their lesson by writing down the date, as well as the learning objective. This was a smart move because it gave me time to set up my laptop, because when I opened up my laptop, I discovered that it was quite slow due to the amount of software open. So I had to quickly reboot my laptop. It's also a good practice to have so they can practice writing down the dates, because I realized that some students still have difficulty spelling it correctly or even not capitalize the first letter. It's also good that I asked them to write the LO because it would help me to assess their work when I'm marking to see if they are able to achieve the LO, as well as to have the students take control of their learning and connect this lesson to what they have done previously (Royal Society of Chemistry, 2018). What didn't go so well during the lesson, was that I was unable to corral the students who weren't focused on their lesson. This is because they were able to quickly finish their writing because the students had already achieved mastery of this lesson. So, these students tended to be distracting to me, as well as the other students. For this situation, I had only wished that I brought up back up activites centered towards this activity so they had something to do. I also realized that it took quite a while for the students to write down the sentences. Some students' writing speed was much slower than I had hoped for, which helped contribute to the distraction of the other students because he was bored and didn't want to wait. Therefore, I next time I handle a teaching experience like this, I think it would be better if I had printed it out beforehand, and then have them adjust accordingly to the worksheet. But, I realize that this would dissuade them from writing out the sentences. What I learned from this experience is definitely that contrary to popular belief, working in small groups can be quiet challenging, as it gives some students the opportunity to act out because they feel comfortable to do so. To combat this, I should definitely prepare additional activities that would have them focus on the work, rather than doing their own things.