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.