Video Lesson Reflection 4
This lesson has really good examples of the types of activities that can be performed with young students of their age. Things like using real-life objects (in this case fruit) can be very beneficial to the student’s learning and memorizing of the vocabulary and items that are present. The students also seem to be very active in the lesson and want to use English and earn whenever possible.
The issue with this lesson, however, is how these items are used and how much English is being used in the class. It could have been an excellent lesson had more English been used. I can understand the teacher’s apprehension of using command words in English to the students, worried that they may not understand, but a lot of these commands are simple, can be paired with actions, and due to their common use, such as a command word of ‘one more time’ can be paired with a gesture and the students will understand what the teacher expects them to do. This only requires being able to simplify different sentences and commands into one or two words that, after being used in different situations, will be understood and remembered by all students. This is especially true with words like ‘sit down’, ‘stand up’, ‘one more time’, ‘repeat’, ‘everyone’, and so on. This would easily work in this class too as during the second part of this lesson, the students are taking initiative and doing the actions only when they hear them in English (before a Polish translation is given).
Another issue that can be seen is the order of questions that are being asked. A lot of times, students can infer the question from context, without actually knowing what a sentence means (and, in consequence, learn what the question means). For example, when showing a fruit, the most logical question would be “What is this?”, to which the students would answer “A banana”, yet instead this teacher chose to ask the less likely question of “What colour is it?” which seemed to confuse the students. (Not to mention the need to translate the colour question when the word colour is pronounced the same in both languages).
Overall, the situation of the lesson (the activities used in the lesson, the carpet space for the group games as well as the student’s interest in the class) would make for an ideal lesson if led properly. To do that, I would instead use TPR (Total physical response) as often as possible. Especially when asking questions. Action commands such as “sit down” or “stand up” can be paired with their respective actions, and being the teacher, the students will follow and copy what is being done and, as a result, will understand what those commands are. This is the same with the “What is it?” and “What colour is it?” questions. When asked in the correct order, and using the coloured squares behind her, it can be easy to elicit the answer from the students (as they seem to already know the correct colour vocabulary). At some points, the students are more interested and more likely to use English than Polish which shows great potential, however, this potential is being shut down by the teacher’s constant use of their L1 limiting the students and giving them an easy solution. This situation can be worrying as this may give the students an unfavourable disadvantage in their later years when their English lessons become more structured and formal. Being exposed to full English sentences at an early age would be very beneficial for them later on.
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