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.
I too have trouble remembering names. Sometimes it helps to keep them in the same seats or make some kind of word-play game out of their names. But with close to a thousand (pretty much a small town), there's probably no solution.
ReplyDeleteDo you do lots of pair work with this level? I'm amazed at how well they took to the task - I tried pair work in one of my classes today (same level, 3rd grade yeah?) and it was a struggle.
ReplyDeleteWe do try and get the students in pair work or group work. However, for myself, I only do it when the material in the textbook is especially conducive to creating a fun speaking lesson. Honestly, on reflection, I probably don't create pair work / group work as much as I should.
DeleteHey - good to get off to a quick start. For the future, I think you can fairly easily simply upload a lower resolution of your video, rather than rerecording (Windows Movie Maker allows this, for example).
ReplyDeleteWhen you get a chance, can you dig a bit deeper into your use of CIs (which ones, why, which were more successful than others, etc?), and try not to worry about what level of effort your students gave, or implicitly apologizing for level of material or any other factors -- none of us are making a claim to be a 'great' teacher, or even a 'good' one. We're all just teachers using video as a tool for improving our teaching practice through reflection. This necessarily means we accept that we screw up all the time, or at least can always find something to improve. So -- it's more important to look at what we've got for that purpose, OK?
Understood.
ReplyDeleteWith regard to the CIs I ended up with a few blooper recordings, which I think I'll save as they might be useful down the road.
First the Assistance section of the warm up.
I started with writing key sentences from the chapter on the whiteboard. In my first unpublished video I write on the board with my back to the students for too long. At the time I was aware of doing it, but didn't think it was an issue. On review of the video I saw that it was a little awkward, and so that needed to change.
The chunking of the sentences went well, as did modeling sentences for the students. I thought I may throw in some cueing, but the students got the sentences easily and it wasn't really necessary except at later stages in the T Q S section.
I intended for the PPT to be the repetitive section of the lesson, but really most of the repetition was done on the whiteboard.
When we did start the PPT and got past the early repetition of sentences, I did hit a snag with the T Q S section.
I was expecting to put up a food I figured the children thought was undesirable and then get a unified answer. However, some kids like bondegi (fried silk worm larvae) and on a few occasions I got mixed noise as an answer.
On watching an earlier unpublished video, my wife (a kindergarten teacher) noted that my lesson wasn't very interactive and a little dull. So she gave me the O / X stick to prompt students to give a 'correct' unified response. This helped with some attention seekers in class who would scream out the wrong answer just to be contrary. I can't say them giving a jumbled answer was wrong, but it did feel like a smoother, more interactive lesson when using the prop.
I was also hesitant to add vocabulary like the word 'bondegi', and use a romanized version of the Korean word in English class. However, in the end I decided to use it, as I thought it brought a level of personalization to the lesson by bringing in a food from their own culture.
For the final Comprehension checks, I went with
Ss answering individually and then S Questioning S.
This ties in with the CIs answering and asking questions (pairwork).
I thought this went very well. As Evan mentioned in the above comments, the children took to it quickly and had a good time using the target sentences.
All in all, I thought the lesson plan and execution a success. I also picked up on some classroom mannerisms (bad) that I should avoid in future (don't speak with my back to the students for too long, don't tower over children when engaging them in one on one conversation, crouch down to their level, don't speak in a monotone voice even if you're exhausted from the previous nights unreasonable STG homework load).
There ya go!
ReplyDelete