Category: Teaching Reflections

Lesson: Teaching APA style and discussing the essay assignment.

This class consisted of a small group of 3 students. The class was a 5th-level academic reading class. The objective of this lesson was to either introduce or help students with citations. Students were also expected to read a short story for their assignment before class, so part of the class was given for students to discuss aspects of the story.

This was the second time teaching this material however this time it was prepared for a much smaller group which made it much more personal. Due to the small class size, I could sit down with students and work with them to answer questions they had about a worksheet or resolve any confusion they had about citations.

This class focused primarily on discussing topics and working through a worksheet.

This class was far from what I was used to but I relished the ability to work closely with students making sure they are engaged and that they fully grasped the material they were learning. It was a pleasant way of moving teacher talk from the front of the class to a small group together at one table.

Lesson: Teaching APA style and discussing the essay assignment.

Date: 23/11/2022

This class consisted of a smaller group of 7 students from multiple countries and cultures. The class was a 5th-level academic reading class. The objective of this lesson was to either introduce or help students with citations. Students were also expected to have read a short story for their assignment and so part of the class was given for students to discuss aspects of the story.

The lesson focused on reading, writing, and speaking. Students were responsible for reading through activities and discussing answers before writing a response.

This lesson focused primarily on group work and rotating stations while part of the lesson was used for me to explain citations and how to incorporate quotes for their written work.

I continue to find that building rapport and creating a comfortable atmosphere for my students comes very naturally and allows students to seek out help if needed. I also find that staying on my toes and thinking about how the lesson will go before teaching allows me to think about how to change the activities in case either some students are absent or we are running out of time. A couple of students were chatting and not paying attention and instead of pausing class to get their attention I instead moved toward them and stood right in front of them which caused them to stop talking.

Reflecting on this lesson I would change some of the worksheets that I created that students had trouble with. I would also try to implement a better way to check student answers that would not take up to much time.

Moving forward I would still like to improve on class management, specifically getting students’ attention after group discussions.

Lesson: Discuss questions and settings based on a short story the class had read.

Date: November 8th, 2022

This class consisted of a small group of level-5 (Upper Intermediate) students with a variety of cultures and languages. The objective of this lesson was for students to work through a worksheet in partners or groups and then discuss it with the class. The material in the worksheet varied from discussion questions to matching to fill in the blank.

The lesson focused primarily on reading and speaking. Students had to read questions and topics from the worksheet. Students also discussed openly with the whole class.

This lesson was taught a bit differently, instead of students being in multiple groups or pairs they worked in one main group. This was because there were fewer students than normal and so the lesson plan had to be altered to accommodate for that.

I found that working with students in one large group felt very comfortable and made guiding the lesson much easier. When a student had an issue with a question it was brought up to the group and other students were welcome to answer if they were able to. This also allowed students to actively agree or disagree with the answer of their classmates.

Reflecting on this lesson, I would like to attempt a similar teaching strategy again, since this one was a consequence of attendance. I would like to work on keeping the class on task since many students used the casual aspect of this lesson to elaborate on their lives which did not pertain to the current activity.

If I were to teach this lesson again I would like to focus more on time management and keeping students on task. I would also like to refine the discussion questions to better suit the time we had in class.

Lesson: Discussion Questions and Vocabulary Review

Date: November 1st, 2022

This class consisted of a small group of level-5 (Upper Intermediate) students with a variety of cultures and languages. The objective of this lesson was for students to think more critically about the story regarding topics such as theme, title, characters, and setting. Students were also given a matching exercise to practice the vocabulary that will be on their quiz next class.

This lesson focused primarily on reading, writing, and speaking. Students had to read questions from the PowerPoint as well as read vocabulary and definitions. Students chose to write out the answers even though they did not have to. Students also discussed their answers with one another.

Students were shown a short clip from the movie “The Most Dangerous Game” and asked which literary device did that scene elicit, for context the scene played heavily into foreshadowing. After this, a number of questions were posted on the slide, and students were put in groups to answer and discuss. I through the first few questions with the class but due to time constraints for the last 3, I simply asked if anyone had. any questions about them, and Students felt comfortable asking a couple of questions.

The vocab matching worksheet was handed out and students were given 10 minutes to answer as many as they could. After they ran out of time I went through the list giving out the answers.

I gave out slips of paper to students to write teacher feedback on and reminded them of their homework. After the students returned the feedback paper they were free to go.

This lesson felt very natural and flowed quite nicely despite having to cut one of the tasks short. The small groups were easy to manage and students felt comfortable asking me questions when they needed help. I felt very comfortable talking to students and would often kneel next to them when answering their questions.

The more difficult part of this lesson was planning it so that I could fit everything I wanted to do into a 50-minute lesson. Initially, I planned a lesson and was advised that it didn’t take up enough time then after modifying it, it ended up taking up too much time. Finally, last minute with the help I was able to cut it down to roughly 50 minutes. Though I still went over time.

Reflecting on this lesson I would have liked to add some physical aspects to the tasks. Perhaps getting students to go up to the questions on the wall and answer them one at a time.

This lesson taught me that planning a lesson can be hard and that it is okay to seek help from others either colleagues or through internet sources.

Lesson: Vocabulary Comprehension and Characters

Date: October 27th, 2022

I taught a small group of 5th-level reading multicultural students during this lesson. The objective of this lesson was for students to comprehend some of the more challenging vocab and be able to describe and identify characters from the short story they read.

This lesson focused primarily on reading and writing. Students had to read vocab from the PowerPoint and find the definition using their phone or a dictionary. Some speaking was used when students were asked to give the definition for certain words and to describe their character to the class.

After students were given enough time to go through the vocabulary students were asked one at a time to give the definition to the class. After this students were given a character card and had a short amount of time to come up with the literary devices and adjectives to describe that character. The other students had to guess which character they were describing.

This lesson was great practice for not having the number of students that I originally planned for. This class usually has 10-12 students but this week only 6 students had shown up. While the vocabulary aspect of the lesson was easily adapted for fewer students, for the second part of the lesson I had to give out one less character for the students to describe.

What I found challenging was staying within the time that I had set for each part of the lesson. Students came back a little late from their lunch and so I had less time than anticipated. Some students also hadn’t read the short story by this time and had difficulty defining the vocab. To try and help this I paired students who had read the story with those who had not.

Now reflecting on this lesson while pairing those with had done their homework and those who had not is an easy way to balance out groups and have a smooth lesson it is also unfair for the students who had done the work to now have to help those who had not.

I really enjoyed this lesson because since there were fewer students it was much easier to check on each student. It was also much easier to listen in on the partner discussion without having to hover over their shoulder.

Lesson: Jeopardy! Vocab Review

Date: October 13th, 2022

During this lesson, I taught a level 5 academic reading course to a group of ~10 multicultural students. The objective of this lesson was to give students a chance to review some vocabulary they had learned from some of the short stories and from the literary devices they had learned before a quiz.

This lesson focused primarily on speaking and secondarily on reading. Students had to read the vocab and discuss it before speaking to the teacher and the rest of the class before giving its definition.

At the beginning of the lesson, the objective and explanation of the activity was given. Though popular in most of North America, Jeopardy is not very well known elsewhere around the world. Students were grouped into 3 groups and named groups 1, 2, and 3. A scoreboard was written on the whiteboard.

Once the vocab was shown students were given a few minutes to discuss the words before group 1 was chosen to answer one of the vocabulary words then group 2 and so on.

This lesson was great practice for use of gamification! In which a teaching objective is taught through the form of a game. Gamification is a well-known way to engage students in the activity and in this case bring in some competitive aspect to the lesson.

This lesson was planned to take around 20 minutes so that students had sufficient time to complete the quiz. Due to the eagerness and quick responses of the students, the lesson ran fast and so I had to add some bonus vocabulary and move on to discuss if there were other terms students wanted to review before the quiz.

During the activity, while other groups were waiting for their turn to answer, instead of paying attention to the group giving the answer they were instead busy talking about which word they wanted to answer next. Another thing I noticed was that certain students were more likely to speak in their group than others.

To improve this lesson I would make sure that each student in each group gets a chance to answer by either name cards or by calling students up to the front to answer the vocab. I would also move around the room more especially when other groups are talking amongst themselves in order to gain more control of the room.

I really enjoyed using gamification in my lesson and will hopefully attempt to use more games to assist with the learning objectives.

Lesson: Summarizing Thanksgiving

Date: October 6th, 2022

During this lesson, I taught a group of multicultural students in a 5th-level academic reading course. The objective of this lesson was to give students practice summarization. Since this lesson took place near the time of Thanksgiving here in Canada the articles I choose for them were based on the holiday and its history.

At the beginning of the lesson, students were separated into 3 groups of 4. Each group was given a different article which they had to read and then discuss that article with their group mates. Students were reminded to try and come up with a short summary which their group mates. Around 20-25 minutes were given.

After students were given sufficient time to try and summarize each student from each group was given a letter A, B, C, or D. Students with the same letter were grouped together and had to give the summary of their article to their new group mates. Students were reminded to not read from their article and to instead try and recount their summary from memory. This took around 20 minutes for students to complete.

While students were summarizing I posted a list of questions in order for students to think about while discussing their summary.

After students finished summarizing I asked each group a couple of the questions posted and if they noticed how depending on which article they read some of the questions may have different answers.

This was great practice for teaching a lesson that required guiding students from one part of the activity to the next. In this case, getting the students’ attention after they finished the discussion and moving them into their new groups in order to summarize what they had read.

What I found challenging was making sure that I had the class’s attention before moving on and explaining the next part of the exercise. In this case, a couple of students were talking during the explanation and in turn did not hear the instructions and so I had to repeat the instructions for them. Making sure I have control of the room either through physical presence or through something that can catch their attention is something I’d like to pay more attention to.

If I could improve this lesson I would try to find articles that were more similar in length and difficulty. Since one of the articles was shorter than the others the group finished earlier and spent some time waiting for the others to finish. While another group had some difficulties with the article and had much less time to discuss it and practice summary.

I really enjoyed this lesson and thought it was a great way to get students to practice summaries and forced each student to participate and practice in their groups. I would definitely reuse this lesson and just modify the subject of the articles.

Lesson: Vocabulary Comprehension

Date: October 4th, 2022

On October 4th, 2022 I taught a 5th-level reading course. The objective of my lesson was to give students time to review vocabulary from their reading that may be difficult or have a specific contextual meaning.

This lesson focused on specific skills objectives most of which were student-to-student speaking and listening. The students had read a short story for homework and this lesson could be used as a review or as a homework check as well.

Students were organized into groups and encouraged to find the definition of the vocab simply through clues in the story. In total there were 26 vocab words from their reading.

Students were given 20 minutes before the first check-in and the second 20 minutes were used as a quick response activity.

This reflection is a great way to find the strengths and weaknesses of this lesson and also as a teacher.

For improving the lesson, I believe creating a handout for the students to write on instead of writing them from the board could have saved them a lot of time and effort looking for the words in the text. I think that adding a gap-fill aspect to it could make the activity more engaging as well.

Something that I noticed I needed to work on as a teacher was classroom management as some students were very eager to answer questions while others stayed silent. This could be resolved simply by calling on specific students to answer that question to keep them engaged and to give everyone a chance to participate. Something else I would like to work on is my enunciation and pacing so that the students are more likely to understand me and the instructions.

Something that I really enjoyed was that I created a comfortable atmosphere with my students which allowed them to ask me questions without feeling self-conscious about it. Students were also very eager to answer questions and participate in the activity which gave me a great sigh of relief and very seldomly went on their cellphones unless they were looking up definitions.