Working with Patrisia

I worked with Patrisia a couple of times after she determined that she would benefit from additional assistance. She was not someone who would participate in class unless called upon, and she was equally as hesitant to ask in class about things that she did not understand. For her the opportunity to work with me allowed for a review of material that we were covering throughout the course, from parts of speech to more complex structures like phrases and clauses. The ability to ask me questions without the fear of being judged by her classmates gave Patrisia a comfortable space where concerns could be addressed and where learning could be had.

Certainly she became more confident and that confidence carried over into the classroom. Her performance improved though it certainly cannot be attributed to the tutoring primarily. I believe it was more a combination of additional assistance that became built into the test and classroom, and the new can-do attitude that she brought to the learning grammar. I just had to show her that this was not hard and that there was a logic to things and that it was a matter of her believing in herself and her ability.

Hours for Tutoring and Workshops

I gave a workshop 4 times to a total of 4 (different) students. They were each an hour or so long. I met Patrisia twice outside of class for a total of 4 hours approximately.

Final Reflection

When you say that modeling the right academic habits is important for new learners to the college setting, it did not register with me . Not until, anyway, I was sitting in class and one of the students, upon noticing that you were a couple of minutes late, stated "if she wants us to be on time then she should be too." This was when I got what it really means to be consistent in the kind of presentation and expectations that one has for students. If I intend to hold students to standards, it is not right for me to compromise those standards for my own benefit. How can students possibly see me with any credibility or for that matter how can they really buy into the performance I want from them if my suggestions for them are only for them? These students need to understand why it is important to do what I ask of them, and if I don’t follow the same rules, then it is difficult to stress the gravity of my statements.

Though the student was making a jest, it does have truth and when I enter my future classroom, how I present myself and how that matches how I expect them to present themselves will be on my mind.

12th Week

It is very interesting to see the progress that has been made by certain (actually by many) of the students in the class. After the first test, and the failed grades marked in red in the excel sheet which you sent, I thought that we would have many students who would fail the class. Many came into this course not prepared for not just advanced grammar, but for the basics. And I guess from the initial result and from my observation, I assumed the worst for the students. That was a mistake on my part. I would have been more than ready just to continue on with what I was doing and not take a second look at how I was delivering my information. I would have attributed failure to them. Now I see however that we need to adjust and make sure that if we see students struggling, we work to help them both through conferencing but also through adjustment of the lesson plan and of the assessment. This is not to say that we should make the information less comprehensive but that maybe students need more support—more modeling, more explanation—and that is most certainly reasonable. And it has clearly resulted in a very good end to the semester for many of these students.

My Response to Your March 31 Lesson and Self-Criticism

Garri, One of your strengths is that you do not hesitate to be self-critical. This is truly the best way for you to learn as teacher.

Your ppt. slides were nicely prepared. I could see that you put a lot of time into creating them. Good work!

Your explanations were clear. Your examples were well chosen. Only one example was a bit more complicated than it needed to be (it may have had an objective complement).

However, you offered too much new information in too short a time span without a break for students to practice doing some work on their own and in groups. You had told me that you would stop after about 40 minutes and let students do some sort of exercise on verbals. That was a very good plan and you should have stuck with it. This is one of the hardest lessons for new teachers to learn: to create a plan (timed out with activities) and then stick with that actual plan. It's an importnat teaching skill to learn.

Also, your students need a "time out" from being presented new information. Especially new grammar items.

What you need to do is to pay more attention to students as learners and less attention to the concepts that you are explaining. You need to look closely at students' faces and think about what they are experiencing. Do any students show signs of fatigue? Boredom? Tuning out? That is a sure sign that you need to stop and let students do some individual or group activity. Remember that teaching is a rhetorical activity in which audience is a crucially important element.

In the last 20 minutes, several students looked tired and looked as if they had had enough of grammar.

You are right that some students to not speak voluntarily in class. This is why i handed you the roster of names for you to use to call on students by name. If you are still learning their names, you can use that roster to match a name to a face. If you call on a student just one time -- that student will be more likely to volunteer to speak in the near future. By calling on a student, if you do it in a friendly and inviting tone, you are extending an invitation that is often needed and wanted by students who are shy or hesitant about their knowledge. Women can be especially hesitant about speaking in public. Even today, many women have been groomed from childhood to be "good girls" who listen and are polite and speak only when spoken to.

You can call on students in a non-threatening manner and let them off the hook if they don't know an answer. More importantly, you can ask questions that any student can respond to in order to draw all students into the circle of conversation. You should always call on students by name if at all possible. In so doing, you let students know that you see them as individuals and you care enough to learn their names and speak to them by name.

Also, it's a good idea to ask students to produce new sentences of their own in order to let them practice using verbals and other new grammar items. Production is a very good way for students to be active language learners.

To get students more actively involved, you can ask students to write on the board often and regularly in order to "share" that front of the room desk and blackboard space with students. That is a power space that is often "owned" by the teacher, who is the fountain of knowledge for students who are receiving knowledge. You can turn that idea upside down by moving your own self to the back of the room and moving students to the front of the room where they present a sentence and explain an analysis or something else. Let students into that power space.


Garri, there were several very successful aspects of your lesson: your ppt. slides were clear and well constructed, your explanations were clear, and for the most part your examples were clear. There was one sentence that was too complex for this lesson and should have been left out. That was the sentence that you asked me about ("have we covered objective complements?"). I would have erased that sentence from the slide altogether.

The bottom line is this: what students are doing as learners in a class is crucially important. Keep your eyes on students always. Pay attention to what they say and don't say, what they are doing, and to their body language. And if you see that students need to take a break, stop the class and give them a break of some kind. Adults really need to switch activities about every 20 minutes.

I am very positively impressed by your own self-criticism and I think you are right on target.

I do want to see you paying more attention to student learning experiences (and acting on what you observe) and less attention to your own explanations and presentation.

Your lessons are improving as you go along, and you are learning about teaching and learning. That is the most important part of this experience, not your actual performances in the class. Good work overall.

Barbara

Self-Assessment for March 31st Lesson

Self-Assessment Questions: Please comment on the following areas:

1. Your presentation of concepts in areas of verbals. What worked well? Where is improvement needed?

Verbals are difficult to teach, partly because students often go back to what they feel comfortable with, and that is calling anything that sounds like a verb, a verb. I made sure that students first were given a grounding in the terms---gerunds, infinitives, and participles—before moving forward with a discussion of the phrases that have these verbals as headwords. I should have limited how much time I spent asking students what they know about these terms. Unlike other lessons where brainstorming worked well, this time it seemed to confuse students and lead to questions that required visuals which would come later on in the lesson. The one positive is the increase of student participation; at least students are willing to voice their confusion, which allows me to answer questions that are probably running through many of their minds.

2. The homework assignment. What worked well? Where is improvement needed?

There was no homework. I think it would have been helpful to include a worksheet that students could take home. This would have given them an opportunity to review the material we had worked on in class. This is particularly true considering that the next time I taught they took a quiz on these same ideas. Some bridging gap would have been nice.

3. Your communications with students: What worked well? What areas need improvement?

Students participated. I, however, was off in terms of my enthusiasm for the subject. I did not feel well and my mind was slow to respond and navigate the logic that required of my presentation. This slow-down changed the tempo of the class, which while it did not produce a noticeable change in response from the students, certainly made me uncomfortable of how the session was moving. I am hoping that this won’t happen again, but I guess I have to accept that as a teacher I might not always be feeling 100% come class time, but as long as I make use of 100% of what I got, I’ll be fine.

4. Additional materials that you might have prepared for this lesson. Would you prepare any additional materials if you could teach this class again? What would they be?

Yes, I would have provided an exercise on verbals. I had it with me but I spent the lesson reviewing concepts and answering questions, which did not let us get to group work.

5. Student learning: How can you judge student learning during this session? Could anything be added to the lesson to help you assess your students' learning? Or to help them assess their learning?

Students were participating (though not all). It seems that there are a group of students that participate every class, and some that participate moderately. Some participate only when they are confused, and others sit quietly always. I guess the only way to reach those last students is to do group work, but whenever so far I have been introducing new material and that has forced me to spend time on making sure the concepts are clear. I could provide worksheets that they can take home, but I want to incorporate in-class work, where students can build of each other in learning. Group work seems easier when I am reviewing concepts that we have gone over instead of when I am introducing new things. I need to find a balance. .

6. Overall assessment of the class: How would you evaluate your lesson overall? Which areas are you most satisfied with? Which areas are you least satisfied with?

This was an off lesson. I did not feel that it was a step backwards in terms of my ability to effectively explain concepts to students. Thankfully I was able to further review the ideas during April 7^th class.

Week ninth

In creating the quiz, I followed the two previous ones that the class had taken. I provided what I thought was enough information for students to answer the questions, and included notes that would obviate the students' search for terms during the quiz. The directions were step-by-step, with intention to not confuse and to provide clarity in my expectations for their response. And in terms of content, sentences were kept short and simple to allow students to focus on the terms being assessed, and not to be thrown off by additional variables.

Yet there were problems with the quiz. Some of it came from students feeling confused by what they were supposed to do. Even with directions, they required--as one student suggested after the quiz was done--a model in each section that would make it clear visually what was required of them. Some students were thrown of by language: one student particularly pointed to the word "modify." Though we have used this term before, it seems to not be prevalent enough in our instruction to have been internalized by her (and most likely others). The worst problem was that my effort to make things simple was mistranslated by some students as an attempt at "tricking them," that the answer was something other than the obvious one before them (I guess that problem will manifest on a quiz regardless of my efforts).

It was very interesting hearing from the students after the quiz. There comments, particularly modeling, is something I will bring to future assessments.