8th, September. 2022
Prior to the lesson, I noted that while the classroom was of standard size and shape the front of the classroom was very conducive to learning. The front of the classroom contained a large television that was able to display the activities and show videos that the teachers had prepared. The students were also organized into predetermined groups and were well acquainted with moving their tables and chairs to form the groups. On either side of the television were whiteboards, one side was used to keep scores of the groups throughout the class, and the other contained some common translations from Korean to English.
When the lesson began the teacher verbally informed the students of the objectives and content of this lesson, and added that it was a continuation of the previous lesson. The teacher also directed students to open their books to a specific page in order to start the first task.
The teacher met the lesson objectives by leading the students through a variety of activities throughout the class. First, the students watched and listened to a discussion between 2 students on the video, then students were taught and sung along to a song. Finally, students participated in a large group activity.
There were little to no questions used to gauge prior knowledge. I believe this is due to the class being more of a review class rather than an introduction to new material.
The teachers used open ended questions to draw out further information on the topic. In this case, teachers asked students what they did last weekend (Past tense focused lesson).
The lesson focused mostly on listening and speaking skills. Reading skills were necessary for some of the activities. Very little writing was used except for writing keywords for the last activity.
Student responses varied depending on the activity. Students showed little interest in the sing-along but were highly motivated during the last word activity. Students’ interest in the last word activity may be due to its competitive nature. In comparison, the students may have had a negative response to the song choice and not solely from the sing-along activity.
The atmosphere was generally positive, it started off a little quiet but by the end, most students were laughing and having a fun time in class.
Student engagement was measured by tickets handed out to students who answered questions as well as participated in volunteer speaking. The group who won during the last activity was also handed tickets.
The engagement was determined by tallying tickets by the end of the class. The peak engagement was during the final activity where groups competed against one another in order to earn points.
I learned that having a partner teaching relieves a lot of stress from teaching alone but may lead to some dependence if it’s all you know. I also reinforced my learning that competitive games are generally well received and improve overall class motivation.
If I was the instructor I would have liked to change the song choice for that activity to something more mainstream or catchy.