Lesson Plan for a Upper-Intermediate Reading ESL Class (adults) with critical reflection

Class Objectives:-Introduce the discuss the idea of other planets and elicit examples of how different majors would connect

• -Define the idea of paraphrasing and connect it to TOEFL and university life
• -Paraphrasing sentences mill activity

Materials: permission slips, video, PPT, paragraphs, sentences, papers with paraphrased sentences, raccoon

Class Plan:

.Reflection

This is my reflective report about the class I was a guest teacher for on Tuesday, April 14^th. The class is an upper level reading (60) course at the Center for English as a Second Language (henceforth referred to as CESL). As a MA student in education, my department does not allow me to teach so I had a difficult time in finding a teaching context. Finally, I was able to connect with a CESL teacher and get permission to borrow her class for a few times in order to get my observations finished. The class I borrowed has between fifteen and seventeen students. The students all appear to be in their twenties; predominantly males from the Gulf region (about 10), the rest are Chinese females (2), Chinese males (2), and Gulf region females (2-3). The makeup of the class is very important because of gender and cultural roles in the different regions mean that some activities will flop if not adjusted for accordingly.

Before the first class I taught, I had a nice chat with the teacher where I learned about the class and some goals that the teacher has for the class; namely because of overwork she was unable to do as many interactive activities focusing on skills as she would like, therefore I tried to factor that into my plans. After an observation review with my advisor, I found that I needed to better scaffold and focus on the skills section of the chapter, rather than what the chapter was about. For the class on the 14^th, the chapter was about “Life on Other Planets” but the skill to be learned or used was paraphrasing. I, therefore, made the bulk of my activities about paraphrasing but the text was about space and life on other planets.

I got to the classroom as the former class left out and set up my own materials and wrote my name and the class objectives on the board. I am curious about whether anyone has any comments on my putting the rules and objectives up on the board. My three class rules are; English only, no electronics, and no sleeping. Since I had taught the day before, I did not write the rules on the board but elicited them from the students and asked for the rationale. These three rules are from my own observations and experience with working with CESL students in the past. Most students of English (and in fairness, of any other language) have a tendency to revert to their first language when around others who also speak that language and since the goal of CESL is to help students gain communicative competence, an English only (or mostly) environment is encouraged. Every teacher at CESL has their own strategy for reducing the amount of non-English in their class, my strategies are to bring attention to the ideal that it is an English-only class and during the class, if I hear non-English conversation (beyond a few words for clarification) I either request they speak English or as a mild joke say that I hear they are speaking English with an interesting accent. My second rule is part of CESL policy but every teacher will have their own ways of policing the classroom. For me, I tell the class at the beginning that if I see a phone or other electronic item, I will take it and sell it on Ebay to fund a vacation to Thailand. If I see a phone, I take it and put it on the front desk. At the end of class, I give it back with a polite request to not use it again. Finally, I have heard that some students will sleep in class, but it is rarely an issue in my classes. I try to make it clear that I want the students to speak, but I want them to speak in English. I also have been putting the class objectives on the board, but I do not know how much emphasis to place on them. I take the objectives from my lesson plan and grade the language so that students can understand them.

As the class started, I introduced myself, elicited my rules and stated the objectives. I then had to hand out and explain what permission slips were, due to this lesson being taped. One student declined to be filmed, but the rest were fine with it. This took longer than I had planned for, and along with some other activities taking longer, meant that I needed to scrap my last activity. However, as the activity was about contextualizing space and not on paraphrasing, I was fine with that. The first activity of the day was having students in pairs take turns watching a video (about space) and describing it to their partner who could not see it. I used a student volunteer and did a comprehension check, something that I am trying to focus on more in my teaching, to help make sure the students understood. After the video ended, I put the students into groups to discuss it.

I then used a PPT to explain what paraphrasing is and gave examples of how a sentence could be paraphrased, both well and poorly and the reasoning behind the poorly written ones. I tried to explain how the students would use paraphrasing in their lives, including the dreaded language test they must pass and in the university system. I took this time so that students could see WHY they needed to learn to use it. Then I put an original sentence on the board and asked the groups to paraphrase it, and out of the four groups, two did well and two had either inaccurate or sentences that were too similar and I tried to explain why those weren’t the best. Then I gave each group a paper with a paragraph about future space travel and three paraphrased paragraphs. Two of the paraphrases were incorrect; one was too similar and one was inaccurate. In groups they read the paragraphs and tried to decide which was which. One group had a very crafty student who whispered to his group mates “Just read the first sentence and see if that was correct or not” and I told him he was brilliant. However, this activity took the other groups far longer than I was expecting. The whole class got the first answer correct (able to sort out which paragraph was inaccurate) however there was some disagreement about whether the second or third paragraph was best and I tried to explain why the second was correct.The second activity had the students each get a sentence strip with and original sentence and a paper to paraphrase. They were to stand up and ask each other for the other sentences, then paraphrase. Overall, most did well with this, however if I were to run this activity again, I would have them simply work in groups.

In this class I was trying to work on my own teaching, especially in the areas of comprehension checks, better skills teaching, including more students in the dialogue, and anticipating problems and including the instructions on a PPT. Why I think I made progress in this areas, they need work. Another area I am questioning is whether to make a big deal if a shy student doesn’t want to speak. During the elicitation of my three rules (which is now the third time they have heard these) I was trying to call on students who didn’t usually speak. Most did well, but one student didn’t want to answer at all despite the class calling out the answer. I finally heard a mutter and decided to pretend I heard the answer because I didn’t want to embarrass her. If you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them.