Methodology - Class Reflection Week 5

 I wanted to try and evaluated a continued T – initiated dialogic with my 3^rd grade students this week as my module 1 paper research question reflects on what discourse i.e. monologic or dialogic, is best for young learners in the classroom. However , the 3^rd grade students have gone on a field trip so this was not possible. Furthermore, at my second job we have been wrapping up testing students input and output abilities. This was followed by English Movie day where the students get to relax after a big test. They did have to complete a comprehension sheet based on the movie, but this was still out of the field of monologic / dialogic ratio that I wanted to measure.

I have scheduled a strong dialogic lesson for Monday where the students have to look at a series of pictures and then describe what they see to their partner who has to redraw the image. The class is continuing to learn about adjectives this week, and I thought this may be a fun exercise for them to try.

I am shifting power back to the students and hoping that they don’t trash my lesson planning. I’m willing to give a more dialogic centered approach in the classroom a try, but if somebody gets stabbed with a pencil, I may have to rethink this whole concept. 

Methodology - homework week 3

Task 1A: Read Johnston Chapter 2: Answer Questions 1, 5, and 6.

Also- considering pages 32-35 ‘The dilemma of Voice in the Classroom’, have you had any experiences like Mary’s with a student or students who remind you of Young? Does this chapter shed a new or brighter light on those experiences? If yes, how?

1.) What rules for attendance and participation do you have in the classroom? What values underlie these rules? What oral messages might be sent by them? How else might the rules be set up?

I don’t check the attendance of my students, nor do I follow up with the parents why a student was absent. These tasks fall towards my Korean co-teachers. If a student does walk into the classroom late, I prefer that they just take their seat as quickly as possible and not interrupt the lesson. On occasion I have had to discipline students who walked in late, shouted a greeting to their friend, and then loudly made themselves at home while interrupting my whiteboard explanation.

As to participation in the lesson, I will try and get as many students to answer as possible. That said I won’t try and burst one of my own gaskets by forcing an introvert to give a extrovert answer. I have one student in my class who will not openly communicate in class other than to whisper in another student’s ear and have them speak for him. I have another student that refuses to speak English or Korean, but faithfully completes his written work. He isn’t being contrary, he is just painfully shy.

5.) Take a look at the course book you are currently using. How does it position the learners: to what extent does it encourage their active participation, and to what extent does it treat them merely as passive receivers of information?

The government text books used at my public school almost exclusively treat the students as passive learners. They watch short badly acted video clips of conversations and then repeat that dialogue. I am forced by policy to design a lesson relating to whatever pages the Korean teachers are in the textbook. That said, I never use the actual textbook itself.

My second job uses four different levels of the same brand textbook. “Everybody Up”.  It does a better job of getting the students involved on different levels. It has listen and point, vocabulary expansion, comprehensions, open questions, and structured sentence building exercises.

e.g.

 

6.) Think about the rules and regulations in force in your classroom that come from your department, school or institution, school district, state, and so on. Do you ever go against these rules? In what circumstances? Do you ever find your own values at odds with the values implicit in the rules you are obliged to follow? What happens in such situations?

As I previously mentioned in my blog, I’ve had school management change students report card grades without consulting me. I was expected to fall in line with vice-principals decision and not make waves. That same school also had a massive discipline problem with students disrespecting teachers. We were not allowed to hit, scold or raise our voices to students. Extra homework was simply ignored. So I introduced a detention system where I would (sometimes after physically fetching the student) detain the problem students in my classroom for the majority of their break time.

I did this alone for a year, and the following year all the other English teachers followed my example and we set up a schedule. In the second year the students complained in their end year surveys that they did not like detention. So management made a push to remove it. This combined with the report card fixing, and a request to relocate my homeroom to a classroom in the basement with no windows, prompted me to look for greener pastures.

More recently at my second job, I clashed head with the co-ordinater / manager of the program. The job involves working in a culture centre program that is made available to local neighborhood kids. They teach Spanish, Persian, Chinese and English (English being the largest program). I taught my beginner class (A Class) phonics in the first semester and most of those students can now sound out sentences.

As is the nature of things some students quit the program and management wanted to fill in the empty seats. So I was told to interview four new students. None of them know the alphabet. I explained that putting these kids in the second semester class now would leave them feeling frustrated as the other kids are already reading. I also pointed out that having these students attempt the new more advanced textbook would require the majority of the teachers’ attention in class to support them. In short, that it was just a dumb thing to do.

If you can’t sound out c-a-t, then reading “Do you like potatoes? Yes, I like potatoes” from the textbook is going to be a stretch. 

Nevertheless, the new additions were added to the roster. Three girls and one boy. They take up all our time, often grind the lesson to a halt, and the boy is prone to crying when he can’t understand something.

I thought of making a video of him weeping and emailing it to the manager, but we just patched up our relationship since last having words over this issue. I’m reluctant for us to start clawing at each other again.

I don’t blame the kids. They’re adorable. But I’m still bitter about how often teachers’ input is asked for then summarily ignored.

 Like comments on the weather.

M: Nice weather today isn’t it?

T: Well the weatherman predicted showers in the…

M: Yeah yeah go get me coffee.

Task 2B: Consider  the ACTFL proficiency guidelines.

Choose two of the classes you teach with you feel have different proficiency ranges. In other words one group is generally lower in all four skills areas than the others. Read the guidelines, and identity the ranges of each class in each skill, citing specific examples from both the guidelines and your classroom data/ observations / anecdotes. Write up your conclusions here, as briefly but completely as possible.

B class on Tuesdays and Thursdays 3:30pm to 5:00pm

D class on Tuesdays and Thursdays 5:00pm to 6:30pm.

	B Class
Speaking	Novice mid	“Teacha I dlink water?”
Writing	Novice high	“Mr. M good teacha. Play run game.”
Listening	Intermediate low	- students understand basic repetitive instruction e.g. show me your  homework.
Reading	Intermediate low	Extract from their class textbook: A camping trip. Hi everybody! I’m camping with my family. I like canoeing and fishing in the river. We always wear life jackets and helmets. I’m not good at canoeing, but it’s fun! - students understand the story if given some context.

	D Class
Speaking	Intermediate low	“Mr.M may I have a drink for water?”
Writing	Intermediate mid	Extract from most recent test – If your parents asked you to stay home and miss a party, so you could help them, would you do it? Why? S1 : I could help them because I have a two older sisters.         So my sisters will be help them. S2 : I’ll stay home because I will play computer game in the home. S3 : I will do it because I can go to the party next time.
Listening	Advanced low	Students can listen to a proposed argument to engage in basic debate
Reading	Advanced low	Extract from their class text book The water cycle has four parts. The first part is evaporation. When water is hot, it evaporates. This means it changes from a liquid into a gas called water vapor and moves into the air. - On their most recent reading test most students were able to complete this article relatively easily, only stumbling on words like ‘evaporation’, ‘condensation’ or ‘precipitation’.

Reflect on your module 1 paper. What aspects will you focus on in your paper?

I will cover a broad range of classroom interactions in my paper. The CI's I will focus on will be monologic / dialogic ratio, scaffolding and shifting from closed type to open type questions.

SLA - Analysis of Veronica's Story

Question 4: 

Give your subjects’ use of third person singular –s, what generalizations can you ake about other Korean Learners at your subjects proficiency level? What teaching approach / method / technique could you use to teach the third person singular –s.

Answer to question 4:

Veronica only used the third person singular sparingly throughout the transcript. Twice correctly, and once incorrectly by my count. 

e.g. 

S: She looks quite angry

S: Everyone looks like worried about her. (correct if you ignore the use of
'like' to aid description throughout the transcript)

S: And now she feel, how-do-you-say-like, scared.

Otherwise, she uses the present continuous almost exclusively to tell the story.

e.g:        S: She is locking the door.

                S: So Lilly is playing, like with the cat.

                S: She’s trying to get out.

                S: Yeah, so they’re saving now.

               

Most of my students at all age levels have problems with using the third person singular s. On reflection (I just did 80 speaking tests this past Monday and Tuesday) most of my younger learners drop the subject of their sentence and answer with a modified present continuous sentence.

e.g. I show the students a picture of a boy in a field with a soccer ball.

T: What can you tell me about this picture?

S1: Is playing.

S2: Is playing soccerball.

S3: Is soccering.

This modified present continuous form seems to be an easy fallback position through which most students can express themselves. With Koreans not often using subjects  in Hangul, it is easy to see that L1 influence creeping in.

A technique I could use to promote correct 3^rd person usage, would be to have the students take turns telling a story sentence by sentence. They would only be allowed to use the third person singular, and I would constantly remind them to try and visualize the protagonist as we advanced through the story.

SLA - The Retell Exercise with "Veronica"

Methodology - Class Reflection

September 17th 2013

This week I set out to teach my 3^rd graders about adjectives. This lesson supports the government textbook Lesson 10: It’s Big (Learning about adjectives)

Segment	What and How? Classroom Interactions	Medium	C.I. mode	Time min
Warm up and activity	Repetition	PowerPoint	T to SS – SS to T	5
	Assistance	White Board	T to SS – S to T	10
	Comprehension Check	Pair work	S to S	15
	Comprehension continued	PowerPoint Game	S answer individually	10

I started out with a similar plan to my previous warm up, but expanding it to cover a 40 minute class.

We started with a PPT to introduce the target language for the lesson, to try for early total participation. I taught this particular lesson eight times over the last two days. My co-teacher and I prefer to start with the PPT or a video to grab the Ss attention and settle them down.

From there we moved on to using the whiteboard to better explain the concept of adjectives.

The students picked up on the basic concept of using adjectives to describe nouns, and when prompted were able to give some example sentences. So far so good.

Moving on to the comprehension check stage, I had the students pair up in order to try step away from teacher dominated monologic classroom discourse and move towards the ‘Holy Grail’ of teacher assisted dialogic discourse.

The result? Failure. Resounding failure. Four out of Six classes completely bombed at this point, with only two classes turning out a successful interaction. I couldn’t even stand to try it again for the last two classes, as my patience was at an end.

Why? Perhaps the students are not used to my pushing so hard for S on S interaction. Now that the captain is not steering the ship, the sailors seem to think it the perfect time for a mutiny , and that we can just drift aimlessly through the English Channel. Students were not interested in trying to interact with each other in English unless I was standing over them and policing their actions. I had kids screaming out ‘Crazy! Crazy! Crazy!’, a particular adjective that Korean children really seem to latch onto. I had snot and tears, anarchy in the isles, cats and dogs living together, and one fight between two boys that ended with them losing their seats and having to stand facing the back wall for the rest of the lesson.

When my co-teacher lifted a questioning eyebrow at my continuously trying to force this particular type of interaction, I explained that I was trying to ‘create more opportunities of interaction’ for my students as is preached in the good methodology bible. She said that the kids were possibly too young, their skill level too mixed, and the number of students in class too high.

So If I take a deep breath and take a step back, what do I see?

 I see a sudden loss of classroom control.

Why?

The students are not used to me giving them the floor on quite this scale.

Can the problem be addressed?

Yes, I believe so. With gradual increase in dialogic discourse my students should start to get an idea of what I expect from them. This may require some carrot and stick action, but after watching Dan Pink’s video on the effects of rewards I’m hesitant to bring in the bribes just now. I might try reducing the time for the activity (it had the largest allotment of time for this particular lesson) until they are more used to having control of the floor.

We have no more lessons this week due to Chuseok holidays, so I will wait until next week to try and modify my interactions as per Long’s (1996) Interaction Hypothesis.  I must keep his main points in mind:

Interactional modification makes input comprehensible.

Comprehensible input promotes acquisition, therefore

Interactional modification promotes acquisition.

I am teacher. Hear me roar.

General Career Reflection:( Not the required Methodology reflection on class)

I realize that the more I reflect on this blog, the easier time I’ll have at the end of the program when I have to do the final presentation and report back on the changes I have undergone through this learning process. The more reflecting I do, the more material I’ll have to draw on. I didn't reflect last week, so I’m going to dig deep this week. Ye stand forewarned.

Tom spoke of teachers in the classroom probably getting into a comfort zone within their careers, in which they believe themselves to be proficient teachers. I could easily count myself in this category, I find as the years go by, that teaching elementary level English does just keep getting easier on some levels. With every year that goes by, I gain more experience teaching different grades and adding material to digital library. If you asked me to drop a two week plan for an English winter camp on your desk nine years ago, I’d need a new change of shorts. Nowadays, I’d just email you the plan as well as  the content within 30 minutes.

However, that brings me to something else I read recently in the coursework. Am I a teacher with nine years teaching experience, or am I a teacher with one year experience who has been teaching the same thing for nine years? Tough questions if I’m going to be honest with myself. I probably only really started to take teaching seriously after I decided to marry and stay in Korea. I stopped going to work in cargo shorts and T-shirts and started wearing suits. Only four years ago did I start bringing a laptop to work, and start trying to build up a library of effective teaching material.

I have also put myself in certain situations that were not conducive to my growth as a teacher. I worked for three years at a private elementary school where we had to teach seventeen new lessons a week. That required seventeen lesson plans a week that had to be uploaded to the internet for the parents’ perusal. This workload combined with another afternoon job (30 classes a week) that ended at 8:30pm left little time for quality lesson planning (forty-seven classes a week total).

After developing heart arrhythmia last year, I now work at a public elementary school where I teach nineteen classes a week, but it’s the same two lessons for one week. This means I only have to plan two lessons a week for that morning job, as opposed to seventeen lessons like the previous job. I have found that this extra time has improved the quality of my teaching by order of magnitude.

I’ve decided to take this step further still and quit my two jobs starting next year. I will apply for a full time public school job and teach the regular twenty three classes a week instead of my current thirty-five. This will give me time to be a better teacher and also time to focus on doing an MA TESOL degree should I choose to go down that road.

With regards to classroom interactions I am going to try and move away from monologic IRF (Initiating-Response-Feedback) and go to a more teacher initiated diologic classroom discourse. This will be harder to do with my 3^rd graders as opposed to my 6^th graders, but I will continue to try and create more opportunities for student interaction.

Looking at my transcript of my uploaded video lesson I have also noticed that almost all of my F – stage (feedback) interaction with my students is evaluative. “Good job. Well done.” This cues that we are done now done talking about the subject and are moving on. I suspect I do this not only with my young learners, but my older 6^th graders as well. While I appreciate the necessity for positive reinforcement, I must try to give more communicative feedback and try to keep the students talking.

The SLA section of the STG course is challenging me by sharpening my teaching tools. I find myself having to look up lexical definitions I had forgotten or simply never knew. The video narrative, scripting and word analysis also feels like a new set of power tools for my teacher tool belt. I had used these techniques once before in Ilsan, when tutoring a university student for a foreign university interview. At the time I felt like a teacher ninja using “Audacity” to record my pupil’s voice on my laptop to produce a transcript. Now, looking back I think my approach was rather basic. By simply analyzing the student’s place and manner of articulation, I could have gone a lot deeper to help him.

We've only just started with the ICC coursework, but I suspect that too will be a positive influence on my future classroom interactions. Dr. Bennett’s Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) rings true with my experience both in Ireland and Korea. I remember moving from the stages of denial, defense and minimization. Particularly in Ireland, as I lived on an isolated farmhouse, and let my weight drop to 59kgs. I remember moving to Korea, and instead of restarting the model, just moving on to the ethnorelative stages of acceptance and adaptation. I’m not at the integration stage just yet, but I’ll probably get there. Steady as she goes…

SLA: Analysis of Lisa's Phonological Contexts

Week 3: Sounds of Learner language

Identify two English sounds your interviewee had during the interview
(target feature A and B).

1. What new information have you obtained about your subjects IL phonology by listing the correct and incorrect productions? Are there phonological contexts in which A and B are produced more correctly then others?

Target feature A: r / l pronunciation

Lisa had no problems pronouncing the ‘r’ sound in her sentences at all. There was only one instance I could find where she mispronounced ‘l’ with an ‘r’ sound.

In line 25 of the transcript I typed out, Lisa says the teacher in the classroom ‘moved a rittle bit’.

However in lines 13, 27, and 34 she uses the ‘l’ sound with no problem.

13: started learning English

27: Not like nowadays

34: and then listen to English radio.

So it would seem that she starts to struggle when faced with a CVCC in the alveolar place of articulation (t sound). More specifically trying to start with the alveolar ‘l’ and move into the alveolar ‘t’.

It is here that Lisa mispronounces the alveolar ‘l’ and instead produces the palatal ‘r’ phoneme.

In other instances of using CVCC  where the vowel is followed with palatal (r), velar (k), and alveolar (s) phonemes, Lisa pronounces the words with no problems.

Target feature B: ‘ch’

In line 20 Lisa mispronounces the ‘ch’ sound , and then again in line 33. There seems to be an added vowel sound at the end of the word.

20: in which(ee) I could learn

33: I try to watch(ee) news

In both instances the ‘ch’ sound is at the end of the word. This mispronunciation could also be attributed to L1 influence due the way the words would be spelt in the Korean Hangul writing system.

Which = 윗치    and Watch = 왓치 . The last two characters 치 = chee sound in English.

However, in lines 21 and 24, when the ch sound ( in the palatal position) is produced at beginning or middle of the word, Lisa is able to complete the word with no problems.

21: chose a club activity

24: Listened to the teacher

This ends my analysis of the phonological contexts of the subjects target features.

SLA: Second Language Acquisition - Interview with 'Lisa'

September 6th, 2013
Answering the 'Richard and Lockhart' questions with regard to my warm up lesson.

1. What did you set out to teach?
I set out to teach the target sentences for the chapter in the textbook.

2. Were you able to accomplish your goals?
Yes, I was.

3. What teaching materials did you use? How effective were they?
I used the whiteboard, the classroom computer and TV to show a PPT, and a visual aid for cueing Ss.

4. What techniques did you use?
I used the classroom interactions of Assistance, Repetition and Comprehension Check.

5. What grouping arrangements did you use?
I had the students form into pairs for question and answer dialogue.

6. Was your lesson teacher dominated?
No, I think I got the Ss to do a fair amount of speaking and interacting.

7. What kind of teacher student interaction occurred?
I questioned Ss and then had them question me. Finally, they questioned each other.

8. Did anything amusing or unusual occur?
Four Ss interrupted my video to come and carry some boxes out of the classroom.

9. Did you have any problems with the lesson?
I taught that particular lesson six times. The first takes had some problems.

10. Did you do anything differently than usual?
Not really, no.

11. What kinds of decision did you employ?
I decided to execute my lesson plan.

12. Did you depart from your lesson plan? If so why?
No, I stuck with it.

13. What was the main accomplishment of the lesson?
The students learned the target language, had fun and I completed a STG assignment.

14. Which parts of the lesson were most successful?
The pairwork was a lot of fun for the students.

15. Which parts of the lesson were the least successful?
The T Q S section of the PPT. Some students gave the 'wrong' answer just to be contrary.

16. Would you teach the lesson differently if you taught it again?
I did. As I said I taught it six times.

17. Was your philosophy of teaching reflected in the lesson?
I suppose. That is how most of my young learner lessons go.

18. Did you discover anything new about your teaching?
I sometimes rush parts of a lesson due to boredom (on say the 4th time explaining something)

19. What changes do you think you should make in your teaching?
I should use groupwork more often.

Questions about the students

1. Did you teach all your students today?
No, I teach close to a thousand students. They see me once a week at my first job and twice a week at my second job.

2. Did students contribute actively to the lesson?
Yes.

3. How did you respond to different student needs?
I try and cater to the student needs on a case by case basis. But that is more at my second job. Honestly, at my first job, their faces are a blur.

4. Were students challenged by the lesson?
Most of them. There are a few ahead of the curve and a few behind. I create lessons for the majority.

5. What do you think students really learned from the lesson?
They went in the direction that the textbook wanted them to. School management chooses the textbooks, and I take my lead from that action.

6. What did they like most about the lesson?
I incorporate PPT learning games into my young learner lessons. They love that.

7. What didn't they respond well to?
They don't respond well to worksheets.

Questions to ask yourself as a language teacher?

1. What is the source of my ideas about language teaching?
How I was taught as a student (by my favorite teachers), and the ideas and concepts I've picked up in my local context.

2. Where am I in my professional development?
It's still early days for me. I've got a lot to learn.

3. How am I developing as a language teacher?
I keep gathering material related to my level of child development, and picking up more confidence with teaching elementary school students. I'm trying (with this STG course) to push my boundaries out further, to teach adults at university level.

4. What are my strengths as a language teacher?
I'm patient, friendly and genuinely love well behaved kids.

5. What are my limitations at present?
I work too much. I sacrifice lesson quality for money. I have a business degree and have limited advanced English language knowledge.

6. Are there any contradictions in my teaching?
I say it's important to let the students speak in class, but probably don't give them enough opportunity to do so.

7. How can I improve my language teaching?
By being open to new ideas from different sources.

8. How am I helping my students?
I always try to maintain a certain level of professionalism. I give a good effort.

9. What satisfaction does language teaching give me?
My previous job at a logistics company, had me checking endless sheets of order numbers and regularly lying to customers (by order of management) about the location of their goods. There was zero joy in any action I took on any given day. Teaching is much more emotionally rewarding.

Methodology: September 4th, 2013 - Warm Up Plan In Action

Here we have the video of my 10 minute warm up lesson plan in action. I tried uploading a bigger 130MB file but it wouldn't go through.
Thus I had to record again in a lower resolution, but I only taught that lesson plan once more this week.

Of course the students' homeroom teacher was replaced that very day, and the children only found out about it 5 minutes before I walked through the door. So desperately needing another recording, I was faced with a wall of crying children.

Bless their little hearts they wiped their noses and gave a good effort when asked. I feel like the lesson went  well, in that I used the classroom interactions I was aiming for. Blending  assistance with repetition and finishing with a comprehension check.

The students aren't really audible in the video, but I could hear their answers in the classroom. Please keep in mind that the material is very simple, as my students are only in 3rd grade and this is a public school. Like Sean, I teach close to 1000 students (two jobs) and can't remember their names. So you will hear me referring to students as 'young man' or by gesturing to them.

The material is strongly linked to the government issued textbook. It comes with a lot of multimedia CD's, which the students study with the Korean teacher on alternate days of the week. The students also study more grammar with the Korean teacher, and the foreign teachers are expected to make more fun, interactive lessons  focusing on making the students speak more in class.

Methodology - Warm Up Plan

Tuesday
September 3rd, 2013

Warm up plan for Lesson 9 'I Like Chicken'.
Grade 3

Segment	What and How? Classroom Interactions	Medium	C.I. mode	Time min
Warm up	Assistance	White Board	T to SS – S to T	3
	Repetition	PowerPoint	T to SS – SS to T	3
	Comprehension check	Pair work	S to S	4

·         Assistance : The forms of assistance that I will focus on in this class segment will be using the whiteboard, modeling, chunking and cueing.

·         Repetition: For repetition I will be looking to focus the students’ attention, gain control of the class, achieve total participation, encourage hesitant students, practice pronunciation and introduce new target language for the lesson.

·         Comprehension Check: For this last classroom interaction I will have students answer individually and then have students question other students.