Description of Practicum Experience
The setting for my practicum
was a speaking class with a focus on Canadian culture. Each class was two hours
long and consisted of fourteen to eighteen students from five different countries,
each with a different language base. The students were young adults at an
intermediate level of English and were concurrently taking reading and writing
courses. Midway through the eight week course, some of the students left to
return to their home countries and several new students joined the class. Most
of the students are eager to participate and are able to interact well with
each other.
I observed the class for 10 hours, twice a week, and then taught
for another ten hours, again twice a week. After each two-hour teaching
session, I met with my sponsor teacher to discuss my strengths and weaknesses
(with the exception of the first class, where only the faculty supervisor was
present.) My individual Teaching Speaking reflections can be viewed on the Home
page of my blog, by searching #teachingreflections. My Teaching Observation Report can be viewed as a separate page.
My
Strengths as a Teacher
Together
with my sponsor teacher, I have observed the following strengths:
- My lessons are well organized, with materials prepared and backup activities ready in case of extra time or technical problems. I use a variety of materials, including textbook, teacher-produced and web-based content.
- I allow appropriate amounts of time for the planned activities, and adapt when more or less time is needed.
- I am able to work with the available technology, and to cope with its limitations.
- I interact well with students, establishing a rapport, exhibiting patience and adapting to their needs.
- I am able to lead the students to participate, and to correct their behaviour when necessary.
- I anticipate possible areas of difficulty for students, and am prepared to reinforce and review these when needed.
- I make sure to spend time talking to each student individually during small group discussions, and I require each student to contribute during whole-class discussion by keeping track of their participation.
- I adapted my teaching methods according to suggestions made by my sponsor teacher (e.g. giving students specific questions to ask each other, modeling expected responses.)
Areas
for improvement
Both my sponsor teacher and I have identified the
following areas for improvement:
- I sometimes focus on the more capable students when eliciting responses.
- I am not aware of some students’ level of vocabulary and understanding, and I tend to use difficult vocabulary and unknown expressions.
- I don’t always allow enough time for students to respond or ask questions.
- I am sometimes not aware that some students are using their L1 when I am focused on another student or activity.
- I am not sure how to handle a student who is known to have difficulty speaking. I sometimes didn’t allow the student the opportunity to participate in a group.
- I need to be more insistent that all students participate in discussions.
- I need to make sure that all students are quiet and paying attention when I am speaking to the class. I should wait for them to focus on me instead of trying to talk over them.
- I do not always notice when students are off-task (e.g. using mobile phones for texting.)
- I have difficulty remembering unfamiliar names and putting the right names to the faces.
- I do not explain or model well some activities (e.g. taking turns at the whiteboard, taking notes during research or work times.)
My Focus for the Future
In order to address some areas of weakness in my
teaching, there are several actions I can take in the future. To be more aware
of my students’ language and cultural needs, I will pursue some web-based
research into the cultures of different countries of origin that represent the
typical make-up of the student population where I intend to teach. I will continue my coursework in the TESL
program, and pay particular attention to the skills I need to improve, such as
working with students at different levels language acquisition. This will also
involve additional review of the CLB standards and ongoing participation in ESL
professional activities, such as #LINCCHAT and
face-to-face conferences. I will need to develop some interesting classroom
activities that help me and the students remember each others’ names. I will
also develop some formative evaluation tools suitable to each class that I
teach and to my skills, that help me keep track of students’ participation and
progress. Finally, I will continue to monitor my development as a teacher, and review
my progress in improving my skills at the beginning and end of each semester of
teaching.
Reflection on Student Teacher Evaluation
The Student Teacher evaluation was administered using the
Survey feature of the Kahoot! online software application. The students were
instructed to use a nickname if they wished to submit their answers
anonymously. It should be noted that due to a slow transmission rate at the
time of conducting the survey, four of the questions have only twelve responses,
although there were thirteen students participating. In checking the raw data,
it was determined that this applied to a different student for each of the four
questions, with one exception, so that overall the data is reasonably valid.
Since the online survey allowed for multiple choice
responses only, an opportunity for an open-ended comment was administered by
giving the students a slip of paper to write their comment. The prompt for the
comment was written on the whiteboard in the classroom. The sponsor teacher
collected the papers so that the students could remain anonymous.
There were a total of eight survey questions. A list of
the survey questions and choices is attached as Appendix A. A summary of the
multiple choice results is attached as Appendix B. The comments are transcribed
in Appendix C.
Analysis of the data shows the following trends:
- All of the questions showed a majority of positive responses, with only one being less than 75% positive. (“I understand what the teacher wants me to do.”)
- The two questions with the most negative responses were about understanding what I was saying or asking students to do.
- One student had more negative than positive responses (4 out of 7), and one student had just under half of the responses negative (3 out of 7).
- Three students had all positive responses.
The most important indications from the comments are:
- Some students were concerned that I did not enforce the English-only rule well enough.
- Some students found it difficult to understand me.
- The overall student opinion of my teaching was positive.
Considering the students’ responses and opinions leads me
to think that overall, I have the ability to plan and conduct activities with
the students that are interesting and that provide positive learning
experiences. However, I may need to vary the size of groups to more than mixed
language pairs more often. I need to pay attention to speaking clearly at all
times and to think carefully about how to clearly explain what I want students
to do and what the expected results of their activities are. I also need to pay
attention to what students are doing when I am not interacting with them
directly.
Resources
Brown,
H.D. and Lee, Heekyeoung. (2015). Teaching
by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy (4th ed.). New
York: Pearson Education. pp 546-554.
Kahoot! (2018) Teacher Evaluation: Vicky Isliefson.
[user created interactive game using web-based software]. Retrieved from https://play.kahoot.it/#/?quizId=acca10f0-3e5a-4eea-a413-8496fcbd17e1.
APPENDIX A
APPENDIX B & C
#TESL0170
#teachingreflections
#evaluationfeedback
#CdnELT
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