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.

Week eighth

I’ve begun to incorporate name plates in the sessions with students that I tutor for the College Now program. I often work with four students each week, a group size that lends itself to instructor/student dynamics. I stand in front of the students and attempt to find common issues within their writing (all the students work on expository essays). The name plates serve a practical purpose, allowing me to call on students without the gruffness of pointing to them. There is an intimacy created when names are exchanged that I found allows students to feel that a relationship has been established which necessitates their participation. They come for tutoring sometimes of their own volition, but sometimes their instructor sends them. My reestablishment of the intimacy that they find in their classroom allows for the space that we occupy to take on familiar features, and in so doing also the etiquette that comes with that familiar space. There is also an authority that comes with asking students to write their names down, which translates to their feeling a sense of order to the session that keeps them attentive. What’s important of course is what follows the request. But this simple acts as a strong opening for the two hours that I am with them.