Date: September 20th, 2022

ESAL 0450 is a level 4 Communications class with a focus on enabling students to participate in meaningful conversations.

Observations:

  • Teacher hands out the class textbook to students.
  • A student is chosen to recount their weekend.
  • Attendance is taken
  • The teacher reminds students of the homework and where they can hand it in.
  • First Activity (~40mins)
  • Students take a break (~10mins)
  • After the break, some students are directed to a conversation club to practice speaking.
  • Second Activity (~30mins)
  • The teacher assigns homework and reminds students there will be a quiz next class.

Reflection:

The class is in an open room and students are seated in chairs on wheels with their tables attached. This was very conducive to learning as it allowed students to easily move around the classroom without much difficulty. After the break, some students were chosen to leave class and attend the Conversation Club. The room the club is located in is very open and there are many resources students can use to facilitate their learning.

The objective of this class was to get students to use modals for making requests. The teacher informed students verbally and then provided examples to repeat after them. As a teacher, I found this a great way to introduce students to a topic while also providing meaningful uses of modals and showing proper pronunciation.

During attendance and throughout the class the teacher uses open-ended wh- questions as well as yes/no questions to elicit whether students understood the tasks or if they needed help with clarification. The teacher circulated the class regularly which allowed students to ask for help while he was next to them while also showing presence and command of the room.

Students were encouraged to work in small groups and for every student to have a turn speaking. At the start of class, a student was chosen to recount her weekend in detail. This allows students a chance to practice speaking publicly and at length about a single topic without interruption. Students would also have much practice listening to the teacher as well as their fellow classmates. Some new vocabulary was also introduced based on the topic of Sociology.

Students responded very well to the activities. Though in the first activity there was some confusion as some provided images were unclear about what they were, the teacher was readily available to answer any questions.

Students were very calm and talkative throughout the class. I believe that this is because by working mostly in pairs students are able to become more comfortable with each and are able to open up and speak their minds.

Students were engaged and stayed on task throughout the class. It was easy to tell students were engaged since they were always asking for clarification or to know if there were other uses. Students were rarely on their phones and most of the class readily volunteered to ask questions.

From this observation, I learned that it is important to build a safe space for your students as it allows them to open up and be more willing to ask questions when they do not understand. Also, using activities that are similar to popular games makes giving instructions to students a lot easier.

If there was a way to change some of the images used during a task to ones that are a little clearer or self-explanatory they might help students complete the task more efficiently.