Video Lesson Reflection 1

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El3g57taeKs

• What is your general reflection on the lesson?

Overall, I really enjoyed watching this lesson. It was high energy throughout and the teacher kept the attention of the majority of the students for most of the time. I can see the methods and tactics that he uses and by keeping the lessons fast moving and open for the students to participate, it keeps the class engaged and excited for the activities. The last game especially had everyone's attention as it had become a competitive game where both teams wanted to gain points and win. It looked to me, like keeping everything going and also giving small verbal behaviour warnings was built in to the fast pace environment of the teacher's methods as well as the overall environment which had been created.

It was very entertaining and a positive experience to see the whole classroom engaged (even with some minor behaviour issues).

• What do you think are the strong sides of the lesson?

The fast pace of the lesson paired with the energetic approach of the teacher worked really well with this particular class as it was clear that it was a young and easily distracted class based on the necessary constant behaviour management through the lesson. The activities were rather short but effective in gaining the necessary response of vocabulary from the students. 

The activities were clearly well accepted and kept the class excited to answer the questions. This is especially seen in the 2nd activity when they played a team competitive game. The students seemed excited in scoring points, which, by extension, shows their interest and focus in the game. This meant that they were well engaged in the game and were excited to answer the questions. This is a great method as while the students are focused on gaining "points" for their team, they don't realise that they are gaining English abilities through thinking and guessing. Even if their answer is wrong, they had to come up with an answer. And with the fast pace of the game, they are not left bored or disappointed in guessing the answer incorrectly.

• What could have been done better?

While I do believe that his techniques were well suited to his class for this activity in particular, there appears to be quite a lot of behaviour management issue that this teacher may face in this classroom (based on the constant behaviour reinforcements that he has to do throughout the class). It poses the question whether this kind of fat paced activity is best suited for this class. While I acknowledge that this is only a short clip of his lessons, in this particular example, the type of lesson may enforce misbehaviour, especially if done constantly. This is, however, a rather difficult thing to measure as a counter argument to this is: if the lesson is not as high energy and high pace, the students would only get bored and distracted. So in that sense, his teaching style works really well.

The other downfall of this method is the degree of activity form all of the students. Some may choose not to participate or answer questions, which could widen a learning gap between the student's understanding and language. However, at this age this wouldn't be as big of an issue in comparison to older years as they are still learning by seeing and hearing in this kind of classroom.

One thing that I had noticed that seemed to pose an issue for the students, was that in the final activity. Both animal vocabulary as well as numbers were being used and the switch between the two seemed to form confusion among the students as they answered "is it lion" to a numbers question. They were unsure which one to guess as the teacher switched between the two. It is good that the teacher was trying to integrate previous lessons in a review style game, however it wasn't done as effectively as it could have been. Rather than separating numbers and animals, what he could have done was come up with an activity where the students had to count animals or relate animals and numbers in some other way.

• How does the teacher use visual aids?

The visual aids were used really well as a tool to support his teaching and activities. It is a great resource that can be easily misused. However, this teacher uses them really well in order to guide his students rather than make the tools do the teaching alone. Using image guides is really important a that age and learning stages that these students appear to be. Using images along with high energy activities and games is a great match that worked really well in this classroom.

Even with as small variety of visual aids that the teacher has (flash cards and a game board) he is able to make a good variety of interesting activities that everyone appears to enjoy and partake in. 

• What error correction strategies does the teacher apply?

Depending on the situation and what it is that needs to be corrected (be it the wrong animal or the wrong instruction) he asks the question again to show that he is still waiting to hear the correct answer. He doesn't single anyone out and, due to the pace of the lesson, the mistakes that a student has made are quickly forgotten as they have to focus on the next activity. As all of the activities appear to be open questions where anyone can participate (with the exception of a raised hand response) the errors are not dwelled upon and are gently corrected with a second question of "are you sure?" or "what's the animal?" These errors are dealt with really casually between the games.

In the last game, a common mistake that the students were making was saying "it is ___" rather than asking the question "is it ___?" as the teacher wanted them to. He doesn't correct everyone one at a time when they make the mistake and often lets it slide when he hears it. But instead he calls out the correct answer format as a whole to the students, essentially giving them a building block to remind them what the question format is.

"What is it?"

"It is....." 

In this way he is also encouraging the students to repeat and answer. It puts no pressure on any single student and looks at a problem that the class has as a whole.