Methodology - Week 13 – Reflection

For this weeks reflection I put together some video I took of a lesson I taught my 3^rd grade classes. The target language was focused on articles of clothing and the imperative sentence “Put on your _______”. In order for the class to have meaning have use to the students, I organized color prints of a baby cartoon monkey that the students would have dress up. More specifically, the students would take turns commanding each other to add an article of clothing to the monkey.

We worked through the vocabulary first with a music video and range of PowerPoint(PPT) slides. The PPT slides also involved some fun recall games that I used to test the students memory of all the articles of clothing. The students (Ss) loved the games, and I feel this lowered their affective filter for improved TL recall.

I was hesitant to show another activity section in my reflection as the last one showed my class as being somewhat out of control. I don’t won’t to give the impression that I’m helpless the classroom and let all the students run riot all the time. I’m not and they don’t. I just wanted to illustrate the point that certain activities (like board games for example) are a particularly negative influence on general order in large public school classes.

However, with this exercise, when there was no competition in the activity i.e. no “you sink – so I can swim” mentality, the lesson was a lot calmer.  I’ll be the first to admit that the lesson was not as fun as some of my other PowerPoint game lessons, but more learning probably occurred with this competition free type activity. There was less cut throat competition, less pushing of the smartest kids on a team to answer all the questions, less screaming and crying about points or cheating. Given that about 90% of all my class game activities I have archived are competitive in nature, gives me pause for thought. I should probably start looking for less competitive sources of “edutainment” to add to my teaching files. 

ICC - Week 12 -Reflection

First a disclaimer. I have been butchering my set curriculum so as to insert and record these multiple STG assignments. For the most part my two employers have been graceful about the whole thing. I perceive a lack of patience for the intrusions however, and with end term tests next week, I couldn’t quite get away with another lesson devoted to ICC.

I did have to give an impromptu lesson on proverbs using material from the EBS website while an agent of theirs came to grade the class, and the merits of forming a partnership with my  employer company (SLI). So the best I could do this week was tweak the ‘Proverbs’ lesson to include proverbs from Korea and other places around the world.

We started by defining what a proverb is. Where they came from and to what purpose. I would perform some comprehension checks along the way to make sure the students were still with me. I modeled a lot of the sentences on the white board, and where possible I tried to get students to interact with each other in groups.

Students would try to come up with Korean proverbs, compare Korean proverbs with their western counterparts, and also to try to analyze other proverbs from around the world.

For example the proverb

“You never know your friends from your enemies until the ice breaks” – Eskimo proverb. 

We looked at why this could be identified as an Eskimo proverb and what different cultures focused on, as being important to them.

Another example would be the proverb

“Drawn wells have the sweetest water” – an Iranian proverb.

We spoke about what values this would indicate for those people. Their focus on hard work making a reward seem all the better, as well as the obvious focus on resources like water in a country where it is considered precious.

All in all, the cultural seen in the lesson was a mix of big C (Eskimo’s talk about ice a lot) and some small c elements (for Iranians hard work = sweeter reward).

We went on to do some worksheets where the students had to match some pictures to the appropriate pictures, and then discuss why they thought so in groups.

Finally, the students were given more worksheets where they had to write out other examples of the proverbs that they learned for the day.

For the proverb ‘one rotten apple spoils the barrel’ one group did give the answer of zombies. How one zombie would bite a human and then that human would turn and bite another person and spread the virus. I was a little worried that some of these proverbs may be too difficult for their proficiency level, but ultimately they displayed understanding with their answers. The girls in the class however, were extremely camera shy, and getting loud audible answers was tough.

In conclusion, given the limitations that I had to work with for the week (had to use specific EBS web material), I think I did a fair job of incorporating ICC elements into the lesson.  The students weren’t particularly thrilled to be learning about proverbs, but they participate when prompted. By constantly exposing my students to the big C and small c values and norms that these proverbs stem from, I can get them to develop cultural knowing and better understand what it is to be a citizen of the world.

Methodology – Week 11 – Blog Reflection (vocabulary focus)

For this weeks lesson I brought in the idea of using the snakes and ladders board game to change up my regular format a little bit. (I usually don’t use board games). This week’s target vocabulary is on the weather. So this week I went with two intro music videos (activating schema –TD), then a PowerPoint showing target language where Ss would have to hunt for specifics (TD/BU activity), leading into the snakes and ladders speaking game. (BU)

The students get into groups of four. Then split into two teams. One team rolls and the dice and lands on a weather picture. The students must then use that weather picture to form a short dialogue.

Team 1: How’s the weather?

Team 2: It’s windy.

Team 2: How’s the weather?

Team 1: It’s sunny.

In line with this week’s SLA reading Doughty, (1985) claims that Ss in smaller groups, or dyads will more effectively modify interaction further aiding second language acquisition. Although in this case the questions are closed display type questions. So all the students already know the answer by looking at the weather picture, and there is little negotiation for meaning.

 

Still, it is a student focused exercise where there is little T talk and the Ss are given more opportunity to speak. They are once again being given the floor in the classroom. I’ve been slowly slipping in more S on S talk time. I’ve been weaning them off of teacher focused lessons, and having them drink at the student conversation trough. They’re used to it at this point right? It’s been at least a solid two months of these new CI techniques in action. They practically teach themselves at this point right? Right?

Wrong. 

I taught this class nine times. I have eight other videos showing the same thing. Pandemonium.

Now I remember why I don’t play board games in class. The excitement of playing the game took priority over anything else. In most cases the students completely abandoned the target vocabulary to get on with the fun stuff (rolling the dice). All nine classes started off civilized and then quickly descended into madness.

Why? I have been giving them more S focused tasks, however for the last two weeks our lessons have been interrupted due to field trips and tests. So there has been a break from our routine. I’d like to think this is the only reason, but looking back at previous posts I see that these 3^rd and 4^th grade classes were never that fantastic at self control in the first place.

Dialogic discourse may be the holy grail of classroom interaction in linguistics, but I’m finding it extremely difficult to implement in a large, low level public school class. I have to raise the question, is dialogic discourse warranted if it promotes anarchy in the classroom? My principal walks around the school looking in windows to see if teachers are ‘doing their job’. If she had stuck her head in any of my classes this week (and she might have and I just missed it) there is the very real possibility that she would consider me a poor teacher (for the appearance of chaos in class).

Not all classes were as bad as the first, but they were still unruly enough to make me uncomfortable as a teacher. I got the sense that my Korean co-teacher felt the same way. As far as getting students to practice and produce the target vocabulary, I felt the S on S portion of the lesson was a failure. The focus was on winning the game, not producing the vocab.