ICC Reflection: Idioms with PK2 Class

In the past, I’ve used idiomatic expressions for emotions to teach creative responses to the standard “How are you?” This time, I wanted to introduce students to some new expressions and see if they could use what they understand about English and how they relate to the English-speaking culture to identify meanings of idiomatic expressions for emotion.

 The class featured in this video, PK2 Class, has been speaking English for several years, having grown up in an English kindergarten. Most of their skills are on an intermediate level. They can make full sentences, use multiple verb tenses when concentrating well, and converse on a variety of subjects. They LOVE learning jokes and practicing wordplay with new material. Our curriculum is usually very content-based and we have little time to depart from the very ambiguous culture of their textbook, but are often able to take moments to discuss differences between everyday life in Korea and the English speaking cultures of their teachers.

Students started off very energetic and relating to the material. They recalled past idioms they had learned and interacted well, remembering things like "I feel like a million dollar", having been taught monetary value in English already. Their recall of cultural material has grown a lot, so relatability is improving. I think I overdid the teacher talk a bit and could have, even at the beginning, elicited some similar expressions in Korean culture. The matching-expression-to- meaning activity seemed to be on their level, but their frustration with its difficulty proved me wrong. They, did however, engage well with trying to identify the origin meaning of the expression.  I found their comments on being unable to identify culturally with “feeling blue” very interesting. The small time allotted for this segment didn’t allow for follow-up discussions of similar Korean expression, but I hope to develop this further in our subsequent lesson to talk about why idioms are created in a culture.

ICC Idioms

This week, while reading our Harmer materials on pronunciation, I was surprised to find how little time I spend on such things, in comparison with what I assumed I normally do. Most of my classes are very content-based, with set vocabulary. Often Korean teachers stay a step ahead of the foreign teachers in order to pre-teach vocabulary in Korean-English. The reasoning for such, according to discussions with our director, is that students will be prepared and fully "understand" vocabuary and grammar concepts before review and production in our classes. I find, however, that students often leave a pre-taught lesson remembering little of the grammar and the vocabulary words' meanings even if they are able to reproduce the sounds of English pronunciation. During many lessons, I choose to work on vocabulary for only one or two words. After having students repeat vocabulary and begin the practice stage, pronunciation problems become apparent in context.

The lesson I was able to video this week is a phonics segment of Dolphin Class (second year kindergarteners), which I'm not sure counts as a pronunciation lesson. Nevertheless, I enjoyed watching the progression of the lesson and found it useful to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses in MIC.

Recently, I've been pleased with how much I remembered to allow students to dialogue and "interrupt" teacher talk, but when working on pronuciation, I find it difficult to carefully listen/ help students self-correct while they are trying to interact with the pronunciation itself. I'm easily distracted by many voices, especially if it's not a chorused answer. Asking young students to chorus a sound is difficult, because they need their own time to get their articulators and places of articulation in line and produce what's being asked of them. I found myself frustrated when they didn't seem to "know" which 'oo' sound was being asked about, but I realized later they were trying to carefully reproduce the sound itself. Matching their head knowledge with pronunciation ability was more difficult than I was able to sympathize with.

I think my MIC's are getting stronger, but I still find it difficult to balance making things comprehensible with overdoing my explanation and not allowing them to negotiate meaning.

I also should have allowed them to identify and mark the sounds in their books in SILENCE instead of playing their song, the sounds of which could confuse them as they worked on their task. Production of pronunciation work still baffles me. How to help them "own" a sound other than just repetition, hearing and saying it in context....?

This week’s phone difficulties have been resolved, but I didn’t have the opportunity to video my vocabulary sections of teaching time. Usually I feel comfortable teaching vocabulary, and find my interests in storytelling and reading an asset to my MIC techniques. Perhaps it was arrogance, but I expected to “need” to learn less about vocabulary teaching than teaching other areas of proficiency; of course, I found that to be manifestly untrue. In a time-crunch situation, which is USUALLY the situation in our 40-minute curriculum-driven classes, I often spend less actual time teaching vocabulary and try to find ways to make words vibrant in order for students to remember easily.

In one particular second-year kindergarten class, conversation teachers are supporting Korean teachers by teaching out of a Phonics 4 book. We teach songs and writing/reading/listening activities that build understanding of high-level phonics for Korean aged eight-year-olds. One unfortunate part of this curriculum is the book’s usage of relatively obscure words to teach phonics blends. How many beginner EFL learners will know the word “hare” or verb “bear” at age eight? The lesson , a –are/-ere/-air/-ear focused lesson, included dozens of such words that would be a new experience for most native-English speakers. Of course, those students would be more likely to grasp concepts quickly since explanation of could be made easy through using OTHER familiar words to explain unknowns.

In my case, I try to cut frustration by playing a “freeze” game when learning new phonics words. Since this is less than HALF of my 40 minute lesson’s objective (I teach from an additional conversation book) I must manage time and move quickly. Since my objective for the phonics section is two-fold –1)  to teach the phonics blends, assisting students in recognizing and distinguishing spellings and usages while 2)  making unfamiliar vocabulary familiar – I need to move quickly. I usually feel a bit hampered by time and unable to do many comprehension checks.

On this occasion, we sang the “Catch the Bear” song for the book unit, and I used the blackboard to elicit student answers for words with our featured phonics blends. We made lists of words from the song, and words they remembered from other sources. Some students gave wrong answers based on spelling similarity, so we compared and corrected those together. Next, I played the book CD and asked the students to follow along, pointing to the words and repeating pronunciation. When they reached an unfamiliar word, they shouted “FREEZE!” and I’d stop the CD and we’d discuss the word. I used the blackboard to draw certain concepts and compare spellings, such as in AIR- sounding and EER-sounding    “-ear” words. When we encountered a word that could be made comprehensible by physical demonstration, I’d ask them questions like, “Do you have fair hair?” and have them compare classmates’ and teachers’ hair, or demonstrate “stare” to each other.

Time was short, but even so, I could feel and see my students lagging and tiring from too much input. I thought a lot about what the readings suggested for keeping lists short, and I think in succeeding lessons, I’ll break study of the weekly word list into several days, even though students will encounter some of those words in daily writing/listening activities. Sheer volume of input doesn’t help them absorb. If I do daily comprehension check for vocabulary and recycle phonics word vocabulary during a two-minute quiz time or some such activity, I might be able to help them retain learned words. 

Microteaching The Presentation Stage

Approaching microteaching a novice lesson to twenty-  and thirty-somethings is always a fun and confusing task. I think I’m beginning to get the hang of imagining that my classmates are much younger than they are (sometimes easier than I’d imagined ;-)  ) One problem I have is that since my classmates don’t know my class, even though they might be told the ACTFL level, they are often acting in a different ZPD than my students. It means getting “output” on a different level and having sometimes less classroom interaction/need for creative correction to work with than I usually do.

Watching this video, I think my MIC techniques are becoming more consistent both in the classroom and in the microteaching setting, as I learn how to best suit my actions to aid students’ understanding. I’m getting better at eliciting answers through scaffolding and gesture to minimize teacher talk (as I did when working at the whiteboard). However, often when I’m directing students to learn new TLC, creating dialogue questions that are comprehensible is difficult. When this class is faced with a teacher telling them how to ask a student another question, there are often TOO MANY pronouns involved for their comprehension level. I think my whiteboard use, in this lesson as in others, might have been a bit more detailed to help them compare and understand the variations in grammar.  Also, as with the situation of the word clue, I often take for granted that my students know a vocabulary word I myself might not have taught them. In these cases, I still need a lot of work on how to efficiently teach subsidiary words (meta words?) without preteaching too much and getting away from a TDBU format.

I’m still unhappy with my amount of teacher talk during both directions and in general.  Here I tried to allow students to “fill-in-the blanks” to help create instructions, but I’m still goal-oriented so that fell a bit flat. For example, when I gave instructions for the “clue” activity, my teacher talk including the fill-in-the-blanks speech pattern,  but still used many lines of teacher talk.  In the real classroom, as can be seen with my previous videos, my real students are eager to speak but often it needs to be guided so that it’s comprehensible and constructive for all involved. Often there’s just a lot of noise and chatter permeating our purposeful dialogue. While I want all students to talk with each other and be involved, a high percent will still be tempted to scaffold each other IN KOREAN in more detailed groupwork.  I think I should have found a way to get students doing T>S>S>T a bit more for the sake of output. Also, to my dismay, while my face is animated and I would hope encouraging of interaction, my t-talk is more evaluative than communicative, especially while doing comprehension checks. Definitely something to work on.

A previous peer review mentioned that I moved around very little and remained static in the classroom. I found that this microteaching showed a bit of improvement, but I still find my own voice and gesture less helpful than I would hope for. The classroom is large, and mine in school is a bit smaller - so I THINK I manage to move around closer to students and use the space more creatively to make input comprehensible.

Overall, I'm glad to see SOME progress since my last microteaching, but am looking forward to the day when I'm not constantly cringing at some awkward MIC technique or whiteboard usage mistake! 

Watch the awkwardness here:

Microteaching: Presentation 

Listening Skills...whose?

Today ‘s goal was teaching talking about future goals using the new phrase “What do you want to be?” We were reviewing job title vocabulary and learning additional new jobs, as well as practicing listening skills via a listening activity. This proved more challenging for my students than I expected.

For one thing, my pacing for a lesson still leaves a lot to be desired. I tend to rush certain things, packing in too much teacher talk at once, as I did here, especially when giving instructions for the second stage of the listening…or simply pausing and moving too slowly when giving instructions. My MIC techniques are slowly improving (I’ve still modulated my pronunciation and speed perhaps too much, as can be seen here). That being said, I’ve noticed that using more gestures and pausing more often after a word (as I did in the first minute of the video) to allow my students to guess what’s coming gives them confidence and let’s them help construct, if not meaning, the instructions themselves. They seem to have more confidence.

Speaking of confidence, though, I noticed my students’ confidence flagged later on after they didn’t understand part of what I had assumed had been part of their pre-knowledge. In setting up the second part of the listening activity, I had neglected to check their comprehension of “clue” , one of the words they NEEDED to know before using the handout. And, since I loaded my instructions with too much teacher talk and not enough checking of their comprehension (I was hurrying because I hadn’t told them to prepare a pencil), I didn’t understand the extent of their confusion.

One struggle I’m having is with pre-teaching or not pre-teaching words in a listening exercise. In reading, obviously students can derive meaning from context to some extent. But in listening, negotiating meaning is more difficult. Even if students can work together in groupwork or pairwork to scaffold others’ lack of understanding, they often get hung up on one misunderstood or unknown word while listening and that affects the whole of their listening comprehension. With this class ofyoung learners, I feel like I should have pre-taught EVERY WORD they could possibly have missed. What’s ideal?

Overcompensation: Needs and The Novice

This week I've focused more on MIC techniques. Watching myself in class and on video and discussing my teacher talk with my peers has yielded the impression that I need to SPEAK MORE SLOWLY and NOT ASSUME too much on the part of my students' comprehension. In a classroom of multiple levels, this is especially important. One of my students complained to a Korean teacher that he couldn't understand me well. So...in light of these issues, I decided to focus more on overt MIC techniques, particularly  gesture and slowing down my speech.

However, after viewing the video, I'm wondering if this is overkill. I've always feared talking down to my students and while watching this I wondered if I've overbalanced myself yet again. While I felt a small sense of pride in my increased attention to detailed gesture , I sound almost robotic sometimes. Will over-enunciation harm my students' own flow and pronunciation?

One overcompensation result of DETAILING my TT is once again increasing TT itself. I neglected getting closer to the 1:1 Teacher-Student sentence ratio. Notice ahen I give instructions, I try comprehension checks but don't allow the students to construct meaning, something they can do in easily predictable assignments.

One thing I hope to learn in future Methodology classes is classroom management. Throughout the class my student, Sky, who interrupts sometimes if he doesn't comprehend clearly but sometimes just to gain attention, tried disrupting us. My response, direct correction, might have an effect; however, I'm looking for more constructive ways to direct his interest back to the lesson. I noticed during the video that during groupwork/pairwork I skipped several opportunities to interact with him and possibly assist his interest in the material. Honestly, I think I was just avoiding the belligerance I'm often met with when I attempt to reach out to him. It pains me if I feel like I can't "reach" someone...

Hopefully part of my future development as a teacher will include much more constructive classroom management.

What started out as a good idea (perhaps) for whiteboard use trailed off into wasted time…

This week I set out to teach one of my early middle school classes a reading assignment.  My focus was reading for gist and comprehension. Target language included new “chores” vocabulary and recycled simple future tense grammar structures. As often happens in this class of energetic talkers in early evening  if I’m not careful with my lesson plan and every detail of CI , I allowed myself to get tired and we de-railed a bit. We were unable to fully complete comprehension checks for material and do my planned vocabulary activity.

I have been attempting to make use of whiteboard more often and used that for “schema” activation. In fact, we spent too much time on whiteboard because there was some difficulty with vocabulary I hadn’t pre-taught. I allowed students to discuss it a bit but wasted too much time in this area.

 I tried to be more conscious of initiating SàS moves, but in watching the video, still found myself using too much Teacher Talk in explaining/clarifying vocabulary. One noticeable MIC problem I’ve found through this and my previous video is not doing repetition and rephrasing of THE RIGHT THING. Instead of rephrasing student answers (the redundancy and frequency of which action I noticed before) I might rephrase my own instruction or sentence for clarity. Sometimes I move quickly from one idea to the next in an attempt to allow the students in this class to dialogue.

My biggest problems with the lesson so far were not PLANNING transitions well. We got bogged down by my attempts to let EVERYONE who raised his or her hand have dialogue time. Also, I tried to explain and elicit TOO much and both mine and the students’ energy –which was high at the beginning of the lesson—flagged.  Students were challenged by new vocabulary called up during the SCHEMA activation, but lost interest in the reading piece because we over-discussed in the preview.

On a positive note, I think I’m allowing students more time to talk :-p