My final two practicum hours occurred back-to-back on the same day. The first hour felt very normal for me as I was leading the students in the final activities for their last reading prior to their test. This first hour went well for the most part although I struggled with the timing of my activities and had to find a last-minute activity from the textbook for the students to do before their break. The final hour of my practicum was a uniquely stressful and educational experience for me. For the duration of my tenth and final practicum hour, I was observed and marked by one of my sponsor teacher’s coworkers. This on its own had me quite nervous as I had never met the teacher doing my final observation however what really made my final hour stressful for me was the fact that my sponsor teacher was not in the classroom at all for my final hour. The absence of my sponsor teacher was not something I had been expecting and caused me to be very nervous at the start of my tenth hour. Throughout this last hour, I led the students in various review activities as they had a test in their next class. Similarly to my ninth hour, I had issues with my timing in this portion of the class and ended the class five minutes early. Immediately after the students left for the day the observing teacher gave me a few brief comments regarding how I had done. The observing teacher informed me that I didn’t appear to be nervous while teaching and that while I had made a mistake while speaking with a student the way in which I handled that mistake was good. These comments really stuck with me and showed me that I should have more trust in myself and my capabilities as a teacher going forward.
Author: bellk (Page 1 of 2)
My eighth hour of teaching of teaching was one of the more impactful hours of my practicum. The class itself was focused primarily on preparing the students for their upcoming unit test and going over the skills needed for it. This hour was so impactful for me as I feel that this was the hour when a lot of my sponsor teachers advice clicked for me. Prior to this lesson my sponsor teacher was encouraging me to include both a wider array of activities as well as the purpose of my lesson. While I had been attempting to follow this advice in the past I feel that it wasn’t until this lesson that I finally understood how to articulate and identify what my purpose for a lesson was. This was also the lesson were I first branched out into more activities. Overall I felt like this lesson built my confidence with experimenting and trying new activities/assignments while also showing me how to identify my purpose and how important that purpose can be to a lesson plan.
My sixth and seventh hours of teaching happened back to back on the same day. For both of these hours, I led the students in a rotation of various station activities. For this day I chose to work with two readings from the student’s textbooks that they had yet to cover. Throughout the first hour, I split the class into four groups and had each group work on one station for fifteen minutes. At the end of the time each group swapped until all had completed each of the four stations. This first hour of the class had two activities per reading. The second hour of the class had only three stations. Due to this, the four initial groups were merged into two larger groups that rotated between the three stations. The activities in the second hour each pulled aspects, vocabulary, and answers from both of the assigned readings. Overall I feel that these two hours of teaching are the ones that made me begin to feel comfortable teaching. Prior to these two hours, I tended to feel uncomfortable in the teaching role however I noticed that as time progressed within these two hours I began to relax and felt more comfortable within my role. This comfortability stayed with me for the majority of my remaining hours of teaching.
For my fifth hour of teaching, I worked with the students on activities relating to a reading that was assigned to them as homework. This hour mainly consisted of activities from the student’s textbook. This hour was notable for me as when starting the class and asking the students about their weekends and if they had done the homework I found out that none of the students had completed the reading they had been assigned. Due to this, I had to change my lesson plan quickly and rework the activities I had planned for that day. This hour is notable for me as it was the first time I had to change my lesson plan beyond simply removing an activity we did not have time for. I was able to repurpose some parts of my lesson plan and have students read the story during class instead however for the duration of this class I felt that I was off my pace. I feel the most important thing this hour showed me was that I should never expect a class to go exactly as the lesson plan dictates.
My fourth hour of teaching took place on Valentine’s Day. This was also the first lesson that I created every aspect of by myself. My other experiences teaching prior to this were planned or partially planned by my sponsor teachers. Planning every aspect of this lesson from finding a reading for the students outside of the textbook to making the worksheets about that reading was an interesting experience for me. I feel that this hour, in particular, stands out to me as it is in my mind the first time I actually stepped into the role of a teacher. Throughout the class students were given the reading I found regarding Valentine’s Day and asked to answer some comprehension questions while reading. Following the comprehension questions students were given a timed task in which they had to certain words from the reading, before lastly ending with a crossword puzzle. Overall I feel that the class was a success, although I was incredibly nervous while actually teaching the class. I feel that the majority of my nervousness came from the comprehension questions activity. Although my sponsor teacher had reviewed every aspect of my lesson including the comprehension questions I felt very nervous about this activity as while walking around the classroom it seemed like many of the students were struggling with the questions asked. While going over the questions I later realized that this was not entirely the case and felt much more relaxed for the rest of the time I spent teaching that day. I think that the most important things I learned during this class were to trust the student’s abilities and to also feel comfortable challenging them.
For my third hour of teaching and onwards I was reassigned to ESAL 0370 an intermediate reading class. My third hour of teaching consisted primarily of vocabulary review. I planned two distinct activities for the class to review both recent and past vocabulary. The first activity that I planned and led the students in was a Kahoot consisting of vocabulary words from the student’s new and old readings. The Kahoot provided students with definitions of vocabulary words and tasked them with selecting the correct word. The Kahoot activity was the first activity of the class and took roughly 25 minutes from the start of class to the end of the Kahoot. Following the Kahoot, students were handed a worksheet with two activities for them to complete. Of these two activities one was partially designed by myself and the other was designed by my sponsor teacher. The activity that I partially designed was a matching activity tasking students with connecting vocabulary terms with their definitions. This activity focused primarily on their recently learned vocabulary. Upon the student’s completion of the activity, I tasked students with writing an answer on the board. Once all answers were written on the board I led the students in going over the answers. Overall this activity took ten minutes from the start to the end of going over the answers although it would have been much shorter if my sponsor teacher hadn’t told me to have the students write the answers on the board and then go over them. Following this, the students were assigned pages in their textbooks to work on in groups. When all students had finished their assigned pages I again led the class in going over their answers. Overall I feel like I learned many important things throughout this class. I specifically remember how shocked I was at how quickly the class completed the assigned matching activity and how relieved I was to have my sponsor teacher there to help me make the activity longer well still being a worthwhile experience for the students. Despite this, I feel that the most important thing I took away from this class in particular was the importance of and the difficulty of balancing activities for a class with ranging skill levels. Regardless of the students all being in the same class I distinctly felt at times that some of the students found the activities I planned to be too easy while at the same time, others were struggling with them.
For my in-class teaching hours, I was assigned to ESAL 0470, a high-level reading class. My first class had the students performing a rotation-based activity on their current readings. Three activities in total were planned. The class was then separated into smaller groups. Each group was told to complete their activity within ten minutes. After the allotted time was up, students were asked to rotate to another activity. This rotation of activities took roughly 40 minutes for each activity to be completed, with time allotted for rotating. After completing all of the activities, the students were given time to ask any questions that they had about the activities, which took around 10 minutes. Upon the completion of the questions, students were given a 10-minute break ending my first hour of teaching. The second hour of the class focused on reviewing the students skills and readings through textbook work. Overall this activity went well. The students understood the activities, and each group successfully completed all of the activities laid out for them. This activity showed me the importance of walking throughout the groups as they participated as I found that although many students had questions, only a few would raise their hands to ask. Had my sponsor teacher not ensured that I was walking around as well as walking around themselves, many students would have left with their questions still unanswered.
For my tenth hour of in-class observation, I sat in on ESAL 0370, an intermediate reading class. The classroom was set up with desks in groups of four spread around the room. The instructor began class by showing the students a brief video on the day’s topic. The topic of this class, in particular, was elderly people and specifically those over the age of 100. After watching the video, the students were given their reading assignment for the day and told the class’s objective was the pick out key components of the reading. After giving the students time to finish the reading, the teacher asked them various questions about it. The teacher asked direct questions from the reading as well as yes-no questions about the reading. Various language skills were incorporated throughout this lesson, the main one being reading however, the students speaking and listening skills were also incorporated through the use of videos and questions. The general atmosphere of the class was positive. Students seemed to find the video funny and enjoyed getting to speak about their own families and relatives who lived to be quite old. Students also seemed to enjoy researching their own countries and the live expectancies of people living there. I think the most helpful lesson I took away from this observation was how beneficial it could be to incorporate a personal aspect into lessons for the students.
For my ninth hour of observation, I observed another hour of online teaching. This time I observed an English class in South Korea. Although the video did not specify which level this class was, it is clear from the classroom that the video takes place in an elementary or middle school classroom. This class was interesting to me because it had two teachers which I had not previously seen in a class I was observing. The class started with the two teachers quickly reviewing a topic before introducing the class to the day’s topic. After introducing them to the topic, the teachers began by demonstrating a conversation and having the students repeat the conversation multiple times. This repeatedly continued with different conversations. The teachers checked the student’s understanding by selecting multiple random students to then repeat the conversation out loud. The main skill language skill used in this class was speaking however for some of the practice sentences, students were required to read them alone initially and then repeat them out loud. This worked the students reading skills into the activity as well. The teachers kept the students engaged throughout the activities by having them stand up, move around, work in groups, and by handing out tickets. These tickets would be given to students who participated and were to be handed back at the end of class. I thought that the tickets were an interesting way to measure the class’s participation at the end by seeing how many had been handed out throughout the class while also keeping students engaged and eager to participate.
For my eighth hour of observation, I did an hour of online observation. The video I used for my online observation was taken in an English class at Sapporo Nichidai High school. The classroom was set up very similarly to the classrooms that I performed in-person observations in with groups of four desks spread around the room. The video was a recording of when the class had a guest professor from the applied linguistics department at Otaru University. The professor came into the classroom, introduced himself to the students, and began speaking about the English program at Otaru University. The professor then handed out worksheets for the students to complete amongst their groups and asked the students questions about the worksheets to check their understanding. After all, the groups had completed the worksheets. The professor began to speak more in-depth about the English program at Otaru University. While speaking, the professor made sure to ask the students questions to keep them engaged and also to ensure that he was speaking in an understandable way for them. The general mood in the class seemed to be good as the guest professor would make jokes and incorporated humour into his presentation.