Articles: my own material (almost)

I like making my own stuff (without sounding suspicious). It allows a bit of creativity, and when you have to use such a horrible useless nonsense book like NH, well, sometimes it's the only thing you can do.
So today it was articles, which for a class of Arabs and Czechs and Koreans was a real struggle, but thanks to James Bond it worked well.
So all you do is: find an extract from a book (can't, for the life of me, can't remember where that reading came from), a very short passage about James Bond and someone named Mary and a guy from KGB.
Give it to the students with random questions to answer (being the last thing on my mind I had to make them up as I was writing on the board, so it was all about "who do you think Mary is" and "what do you think will happen next").
Write a couple of examples on the board, test how much they know of why in one there is "the" and in the other there is "a".
Go throughsome examples and rules.
A matching exercise (from sentence to explanation) is useful, at this point: I found a good one in "Trouble with articles" or something like that (have tried to find a link on Amazon, no such luck). Of course the students will want to do the other exercises as well, which is just fine as they are dialogues and spot-the-mistake kind of exercises, so it's good.
Finally, take the reading back (I made them turn the page over so that they couldn't read it), and give them the same reading but with gap-fills: I have never seen them so interested as in those 10 minutes (excluding an idiot who doesn't deserve more attention here than what he gets - not - in class. Seriously, nothing hurts an attention-seeker more than not getting attention, and I am soooo good at ignoring people when they annoy me. Unfortunately for him, I always give people 3 chances, and he burnt his 3 within 5 minutes of the first day in class).
Optional: snakes and ladders from New Cutting Edge pre-intermediate Teacher's Book: meant to be a 20 minutes game, it turned into a 50 minute-tournament...
Optional 2: Skaterboy from New English File intermediate TB; a song is always appreciated, and in today's case, it was a good way to conclude, since it also goes quite fast, so even if they had to predict how to fill the gaps before listening, it was still tough.

Big smile! Tomorrow it's speaking day, mostly, Friday will be food and easy stuff, maybe a category game, then at 12 half the class will leave to go to the Mosque, so I'm nearly done. And next week it's L5, so, back to my pre-intermediate. Hopefully I'll have "small Abdullah", who is fun to teach. Shame I'll have to leave "big Abdullah", who has been renamed "sweet Abdullah": you look at him and melt, nothing but that.
I love this class:-)

PDA - Stage 2: Research and Action

Following the diagnostic observation on October 19th, these are my reflections and comments on “the story so far”. This is only a draft, although I am pretty happy about it so there won't be many changes, after all...

Strengths of my teaching

- ability to create a friendly and stress-free learning environment
- ability to involve every student
- ability to grade tasks according to unexpected difficulties
- ability to evaluate whether a task will be successful/too easy or difficult for the class I am teaching at the moment
- language awareness
- clarity of exposition of language on board – good check questions
-
All these positive points arise from the following:

- feedback during my Tesol course (Brighton 2007), where both the students and my peers would give me positive response with regards to my interpersonal skills: every time I am observed this is the first comment that I receive.
- Having been a language student myself, I think I understand what will work and what won’t, and I am very receptive to different problems connected with type of learners or different L1; thanks to this I can usually judge at once if an activity will successful or not, and I can find a way to grade tasks according to the level or to the students. At the same time, if my judgement fails me and the tasks proves to be too difficult or too easy, I am very flexible and very good at improvising (the best example of this is my last observation during the TESOL course when the listening task had proved to be too complicated, so I improvised the rest of the lesson helping the students step by step).
- Language awareness is the result of a deep and thorough study of the language for more than ten years, through middle and high school until the completion of my degree in English language and literature. It is another frequent comment in the feedbacks I have received since starting teaching ESOL; in the school I used to work to I got a reputation of being very methodical, thorough and clear when teaching the grammar, so much so that students started going to the DOS to ask to be put in my class even though the level would prove to be too low for them (I normally taught pre-intermediate then).

Weaknesses – reasons – research and action plan

1. Time and classroom management: I could be a more effective teacher if I could use time efficiently.

1.1. When? Feedback from diagnostic observation showed a tendency to rush the activities, not allowing enough time for pair-work, although having if I had had more than two students I believe I could have done better. I am aware that I struggle with the idea that silence is necessary during the lesson for the students to “digest” the information that they have received so far or to concentrate on the task before producing the target language with confidence (Krashen’s input stage). This issue also relates to classroom management, i.e. my lack of confidence on what to do in situations when a pair finishes the tasks earlier than the other students, and I cannot decide on the best course of action (giving the pair extra work? Let them relax? Stop the activity and start feedback?)
1.2. Research: peer observation with a specific questionnaire that will focus on the areas I need to analyse (see appendix), with reference to the other points mentioned later.
1.3. Action: observation of more experienced teachers in my school (to be arranged – probably during the week of November 23rd) – focused study and research of management techniques from articles and books (REFERENCE!)

2. Board work: I could be a more effective teacher if I could apply my awareness of the language to every aspect of it in my teaching.
2.1. When? Feedback from diagnostic observation praised my awareness of the language, which is one of my strengths, and at the same time focused on the way the language could have been presented in a more thorough way, by including form and pronunciation (in that case, features of connected speech as it was relevant to the listening and speaking activity that followed). I am also aware that I don’t always provide enough examples on the board which could help a faster understanding of the target language, getting stuck on the context of the lesson: this could lead (especially at lower levels) to the use of the language only in specific contexts (e.g., when I taught modals of obligations in my pre-intermediate class, we got stuck on “must” and “mustn’t”, and my students replaced the latter with “can’t” even when the best choice would have mustn’t).
2.1.1. Research: students’ questionnaires focusing on students’ acquisition of the language (see appendix) – peer observation to get data on my use of the board (see also point 2.2.1.1)
2.1.2. Actions: observation of more experienced teachers in my school as per point above. Find articles which can help me with the organisation of board work in my lesson plans – at the same time, start focusing on lesson planning which must include a board-plan for reference during the lesson.
2.2. Board work: I could be a more effective teacher if I were more responsive to random vocabulary that comes up during the lesson.
2.2.1. When? Feedback from diagnostic observation; I have also noticed that sometimes I don’t give much consideration to words that come up during a group discussion or while pairs are working on a task and I am going around the class: this is due, I believe, to a series of factors, including the insistence, during my TESOL course, that only relevant words (i.e., related to the topic of the lesson) should go on the board; another factor is confusion between the words that I sometime pre-teach in a lesson (and which arguably should be 3, or 4, or no more than 6 according to different theories), and random words which could be useful for future lessons, or simply interesting for the students.
2.2.1.1. Research: students’ questionnaires focusing on what they have learnt during the lesson, to get data on what they found interesting or relevant, and compare it to what my objectives were before the lesson (see appendix). Peer observation (including point 2.1.1 above).
2.2.1.2. Action: see point 2.1.2.

3. Instructions: I could be a more effective teacher if my instructions were clearer.
3.1. When? I often notice that I have to repeat instructions twice, or that, after the task has started, some student asks what they have to do; this can simply be lack of attention when the instructions were given, but I am aware that my delivery is not always clear. It is also a point that came up a few times during my TESOL course; I am aware that, sometimes due to lack of preparation time, the task is not even clear to me, or that I haven’t verbalised it, thus it is still more of a general idea of what the students will have to do.
3.1.1. Research: peer observation.
3.1.2. Action: peer observation; experimenting different activities that require use of instructions to get more practice; find articles or books that can help me with this area.


Deadline for research

The deadline I have set myself is December 11th, which will give me enough time to collect data and start working specifically to improve in all these areas.

Diagnostic observation and a blinding headache

...This should be enough to say how it went...
Allegedly due to a chocolate overdose, I woke up with a really bad headache; sum it to the stress of being observed; with the stress of having no clue of what I was going to teach in my PM lesson; with the drop in temperatures (but god willing no rain yet..keep your fingers crossed); with the mounting anger at the thought that annoying old teacher has taken my seat, and annoying old teacher number 2 is back from his holiday so has (justly) claimed his seat back, therefore yours truly is currently seat-less, well, put all this together and you have the explanation of my headache.
All considered, though, it didn't go that bad: I had backup stuff, because once again I had miscalculated the times (how could I? It was all going well, and all of a sudden I still had 30 minutes to go instead of the 15 I had planned!), but this shows the ability of thinking ahead to possible emergencies and having a plan B ready at hand; my grammar explanation didn't take as long as I expected, because the guys had a clear idea of what was going on, and no problems whatsoever, although in the end they didn't really use the target language as my objective clearly stated in the lesson plan... Oh, well.
Ultimately, things that I would change in this lesson plan: I'd have a better board-work. But honestly, there was a good one in my mind, and my mind wasn't functioning because of the flicking headache! So, action plan: prepare a written board-work for this kind of stuff, just in case migraine strikes again.

Mid-week and I am exhausted...

Tuesday, AM lesson

Considerably better than Monday's, thanks to more details and a deeper look into the book (which sucks). Back-up material proved to be useful to fill in some gaps, although we actually ended five minutes earlier, but being a short course, the students being tired as they go out every single night, and because they couldn't be bothered, it was ok.

Action plan: more preparation needed, again. Timing needs more consideration, as they tend to finish earlier than I plan.

Tuesday, PM lesson

A grammar lesson, mostly because I wanted to use the same material used in the AM class. It was good revision for one of the students, some new stuff for the other two, and due to a small board, it was also a bit confusing as I couldn't write everything that I wanted.
Funnily enough, on the questionnaire that I gave them at the end of the lesson, one of the students wrote the following (bear in mind that the class is made of three students): "The exercise was a bit difficult because we were three - pairwork would have been better"...DUH!

Action: I should start considering a plan for my boardwork, as it is usually clear in my head, but there are such things as TINY boards where my amount of clear spidergrams and stuff doesn't really fit...

Wednesday, AM lesson

Carefully planned, including the vocabulary that I intended to teach which was taken from another book, and I had a close look at the grammar, just in case something strange would come up. We started off with a game to revise the articles, really, which they really appreciated, and then off we went with vocabulary and discussion, a quick listening, more discussion to practise the vocabulary, a look at the grammar and a quick practice of that again. Finally, a bit of discussion using an activity from another book, so they could use the vocabulary learnt in the first part of the lesson, and have some fun discussing the people in the picture I had given them.
Generally a positive lesson, getting better and better. I wish I had more students, though, as having only 3 (and next week they will come down to 2) means being 100% involved in their work, rather than supervising it, and a lot more back-up because the feedback is always shorter.

Action plan: keep on organising in more details, back-up stuff still very useful.

Wednesday, PM lesson

Only two out of 3, of which one is the hyper girl with short attention span...We ended up chatting, with her leading the conversation, the other guy occasionally contributing, but he had a good time too as we laughed a lot and we practiced pronunciation in a discreet way... His comment was positive, at the end of the lesson, as he complained that "my jaw is aching for all the laughing". I take it as a good thing.

Action plan: none, really, as I had a complete lesson plan ready to use and we just got carried away by other things, as it happens sometimes, but it was good practice.

Trying to keep a PD journal - part one

...where PD, of course, stands for Professional Development, a part of the course which is not assessed and we don't necessarily need to pass, but the pressure to produce a good piece of work is there all the time...
So, here is a small summary of today's lessons, and considering how it was Monday, first day with a new class, new students coming to my afternoon class, and a long and tiring weekend on my shoulders (longer and almost more tiring than the whole week, but let's not talk about it), considering all this, I think I did quite well.
So, this is the first of many reflections which will be duly labelled as "Teaching Journal" - this is only an experiment, I plan to be more detailed and specific with a bit of time...

Monday 12th, AM LESSON – Level: S 3.2

The class is upper-intermediate and has been here for a week, with another teacher. The book used is Elevator, and the previous teacher hasn’t used it much (she didn’t like it). I had a quick look at it, but not very thorough. About 45 minutes before the beginning of the class, I decided what I wanted to teach, studied the unit in details, checked the first listening and decided that it wasn’t good, and made some alterations to the unit itself; I also prepared some back-up material in case the class was stronger than expected and I had time to fill in.
Being the first day I aimed at a general view and understanding of the level, including an evaluation of the type of students, in order to be able to create more specific lessons for the next three weeks (two of the three students will be here for a month).
The lesson went generally well, although the reading was probably a bit too scattered and unfocused, and so were the two language points following it, which I didn’t explore in depth (the first, compound nouns, had no explanation whatsoever and I had prepared extra material to cover the area properly, the grammar point about articles was not necessary as I noticed that that students could master articles pretty well – maybe we could do some quick revision later in the week, but spending more than 20 minutes on it would be unnecessary). The language point I presented wasn’t very clear, mostly because I hadn’t prepared it properly, and didn’t have it very clear in my mind – and the extra material for explanation wasn’t very helpful either. The speaking activity went very well and I was able to push the students for more language.
In the second part we did a quick listening, which followed and was followed by a speaking activity – the listening was half improvised but went well, although it was too easy for the class; I tend to blame the book in this case, as it seems to include very long listening with no specific language point and not very interesting either. The speaking activity that followed was from another book, and it was an activity that I had already practised with a previous class, so I was more prepared and could lead the discussion well.
Generally the lesson went well: the atmosphere was good, the students satisfied and cooperative, my performance, albeit based on improvisation, was good.
Negative aspects: improvising shouldn’t be the rule – I allow it only because it was the first day with the class, and because I was new with the book.
Action plan: study the book in depth, and prepare more thoroughly for the next lesson.

Monday, 12th, PM LESSON – Level: S 2

It’s a class I’ve had for three weeks, this is the fourth, and there was a new student. In total they were only 3, which made pair work impossible – I had to be part of the activity myself, although that was calculated beforehand.
The lesson was based on listening and speaking, the topic was food and lifestyle: the choice of the topic was based on being the first day with a new student, being the first day of the week, and it was well timed as the morning teacher had done body parts, which could be linked to my topic.
The listening was half improvised, as I realised that the two activities on the plan wouldn’t need a second listening (it was a very easy one again, as it came from an upper-intermediate book): therefore I stopped the tape to allow the students to compare the first part of the questions, before resuming the listening for the second part of the activity, before playing the recording one more time after they had compared, to revise vocabulary and warm up to the speaking.
The speaking went well although it was a bit repetitive, but on second thought it was useful as I could see that my student (who was doing the exercise with me) needed some help with the same questions that I had asked her before, so it was good revision of question forms, and conversation at the right level for all the class.
Generally the lesson went well, again because of a good atmosphere, and because I was more relaxed, being a class I’ve been with for a while.
Negative aspects: I should have listened to the whole recording beforehand (not just to a part of it); maybe I could have organised the listening activity in a different way to make it more challenging.
Action plan: prepare more thoroughly for the next lesson.