Reflection on my last class of the week

Introduction:

Today I taught a grade 5 class. There were 26 students in the class. The class objective was to do a review on the past simple tense by playing a board game. Essentially when they land on a square they are given a past tense word. Heads they move 1 space and say a sentence using the word. Tails they move 2 spaces and write a sentence using the word. Whoever makes it around the board the most times is the winner. The idea behind the game was to encourage students to speak and interact with their partners instead of with the teacher. Before the game began a teacher dominated IRF monologic review took place to both explain the game, practice reading for the game and to go over regular and irregular past tense verbs before the game.

Procedure:

The board was used to write down examples of words with the 3 different -ed sounds under [d], [t], and [id]. Students were asked to think of 2 more examples of each and write them down. This was done to give every student a chance to answer or show that they still needed more practice. After 2 minutes it was noticed that only about half the students had completed the activity. I told them they had one more minute to finish and began to assist the students who had barely started.
At this point I realized I should have given them a word bank to work with because the students had a hard time thinking of regular verbs. My goal to have them work independently instead of as a class did not allow them to be passive, but it was too difficult for some students.
Upon reflecting on the task I realized I also could have told the students who were finished to help those around them who hadn't. A few had already begun to do so. I also should have had some of them go to the board and write there answers down in the appropriate columns.
Another task involved writing down 10 irregular verbs on the board. 5 were written down in present tense and 5 in past tense. The students were told if they were in the left column they were present and in the right past. They were to copy the chart in their notebook and complete it. They were given 3 minutes. After 2 minutes I began to notice that most students were done. When the 3 minutes was up, I had volunteers come up and write the words on the board to fill in the chart.
This review took about 10 minutes total.
My coworker first explained how to play the game entirely in Korean. I then briefly explain in English as mentioned above. I asked 4 comprehension questions. How many spaces if heads? Tails? When do we speak? When do we write? Lots of hands shot up during this questioning and all the answers were right. I assumed enough students knew so when the game would begin, I wouldn't have to re-explain to so many students individually. Just in case they forgot I later wrote down "heads+1=speak, tails+2=write" on the board. There was no confusion.
Before the board game was handed out I selected a few student randomly to answer questions as I pointed to tiles on the board game. There was a large picture of the boardgame on the TV monitor so all the students could see. I picked 5 students to say a sentence and 3 students to write a sentence. This meant there were now 3 sample sentences on the board to allow students to make their own sentences. As they wrote sentences I encouraged them to all use a different subject every time and an object that was unique to the verb. I didn't want 3 sentences like "I _____, yesterday. They had to add something after the verb and before yesterday. I told them that if they wrote a sentence that was the same as a previous sentence, it didn't count. This was done with an attempt to encourage them to try. Explaining and practicing the game took about 10 minutes total.
It was now game time. They had about 15 minutes of class time left to play. As they played I walked around monitoring and assisting the students. I also pointed out errors in their sentences.

Reflection:

The lesson wasn't so teacher dominated compared to usual. About 60% of the class time, students were either working in pairs or independently. For a beginner class at public school, this is more than I usually get. I do want to increase the amount to about 75% especially for review sections, but I'm quite not there yet. My plan is to provide quick students with more tasks to complete while the slower ones work away so they don't just sit around causing trouble. As mentioned earlier having them write their work on the board while others finish is a good idea. Although I will have to figure out how to prevent slower students from just copying off the board. I think while explaining the game lowering the amount of teacher time will be difficult. I didn't think the explanation in Korean was necessary because the game was so easy to figure out. I told my coworker this. All the students had a chance to contribute actively during the initial review and while playing the review game. Only a few had a chance to participate while I was explaining the game.
Most of the students were challenged during the game. Writing sentences is hard even for the students who perform above class average. Also the more advanced students are encouraged to write more complex sentences because variation was required. They would also help their struggling partners to get the games moving. Games are a great motivation to get young students more active. They really liked playing the games.
When it comes down to thinking about what the students really learned, it's difficult to say. They were already familiar with everything taught and as I was monitoring they all seemed to be able to make basic past tense sentences when pushed. They didn't respond well to being requested to come up with their own examples of past verbs. They responded better when the verbs were provided and they were asked to manipulate them. They are well programmed to take tests. I need to do my best to change this.

During the class I didn't change my plans too much. I had already thought a lot about how the same class was taught previous times and began with that in mind. Unfortunately I did miss some things like providing examples for regular verbs that were unclassified. My goal was to have students classify verbs, not list them. I used the board, the TV, notebooks, and a handout. There was individual work for writing and pair work for speaking. I still have a problem getting students to pronounce some [t] sound ended 'ed' verbs. I'm at a loss. They seem to like saying [id] instead as in [watchid]. We practice over and over again and they can say the sound if repeating it, but they will often read it like that or say it like that unless they have just heard it modeled correctly. I think it's L1 transfer and the lack of hard endings in Korean. They have a general habit of changing ~T to  ~duh. I can't break it. I try to get them to say [watch] [t] faster and faster until it blends and they can do it, but 2 minutes later they are back. This is a source of great frustration for me as even my coworkers and brightest students regularly make these mistakes.

The game was certainly the most successful part of the lesson. Games are great to motivate young students and take the attention away from the teacher. The game was redesigned to use a coin from the original game which was a Korean traditional game called Yut Nori. It was played in previous classes and students preferred to play it the traditional way instead of the English way. Also the 4 sticks are very noisy. I just quickly wrote in the words using a template and dropped the use of pictures. The problem with pictures is they aren't always obvious.

The funnest moment of the week didn't happen during this class. It happened during a grade 3 class when we were practicing the alphabet. I am really working on extending my wait times for the young students. They simply need more time to answer. I asked the question what comes after U. 3 seconds later no one had answered. Then my co-teacher answered V! She thought I forgot! I explained to her that the alphabet is programmed into me and I was giving them more time to think. When the students aren't singing the alphabet song they have trouble. I think we will practice going backwards and forwards so they know their alphabet inside and out. I also reminded my coworker to avoid answering display questions from the sideline as she is not there to learn what they are learning.

My limitations continue to be finding games which are very difficult for the students to sabotage while continuing having fun. In the case of this game, they had fun and used English. The fact that they had to write things down made it obvious that they were using English when I wasn't standing right beside them. I really need to develop group reading and speaking games like this for the younger students. They get so carried away with the games they can forget they are there to learn. My philosophy of learning is that it should be as fun as possible while using target language in a variety of ways for the young students. I think this game reflected that well as they read words, and spoke and wrote sentences. I'm helping to show them that learning a language isn't just about studying, it can be fun while doing it.

Another problem is in asking referential questions. I want to give my students more of a voice. When I asked them about their field trip on Wednesday answers were not forthcoming. I had to be extremely specific to the point where one word answers were possible before I would get a response. I definitely need to warm them up towards this or change my tactics. Maybe I will make them write down a couple sentences or make it into some sort of game.

My next goal is to work on the other parts of a lesson. I still find at the beginning of a unit, my classes tend to be teacher dominated. My plan is to quickly figure out which students already know the material at this stage and have them show off their skills by helping weaker students. I think a show of hands can do it. They can partner up with someone who didn't raise their hand and complete a task together.

I am definitely reducing the amount of teach talk time while making that time more interactive. Again my limitations are with the preview part of the lesson at the moment. The practice parts still need more work as well. Production stage is fine as long as I carefully think out the activities. There have been no recent disasters and I hope it remains that way. Movement and activeness with the younger students, writing with the older students is a good recipe so far.

Next week I will try and reflect on either a grade 6 and a grade 4 lesson. It will be filmed and I will take a closer look at classroom discourse. I also want to work on asking more personalized referential-type questions. my goal is to have them answer open ended referential questions by using more than a word or a sentence. If I can get more than 3 hands up per class next week I will be pleased with my progress.