Week 2: 40 Minutes of Video Observations EFL Class in Korea With Jake Broe
At the beginning of the class, Mr. Broe asked the students how they were doing. Almost all the students said “fine”. Mr. Broe then went on to ask if any of the students are feeling very good or feeling different. I found this to be a great technique because it allows for students to test their English skills and express differently from the classroom norm. This is a great way to start a conversation and to prepare students for the upcoming English lesson.
The classroom was quite large for an English class, however, it seemed that despite how large the classroom was, all the students were eager to learn. The instructor used presentations, video dialogue and textbooks to communicate the lesson objectives. Students are being exposed to many different forms of English through visuals, dialogues, reading, writing, speaking, and understanding. After listening to the dialogue, fill in the blank activities were used to have students complete the sentences. This is a great technique to use as it tests a student’s understanding and listening comprehension. This is a tactic I would like to use in my classroom.
I found that Mr. Broe talked very fast when he was presenting to the students about his vacation. My observations from this class seemed to be that the students were more advanced in their English skills with reading, writing and listening compared to Tanya’s English class.
Songs, games, and practicing with partners encouraged all classmates to participate in the lesson and practice the conversations outlined in the textbook. When students engaged in the lesson and actively participated in answering the questions correctly students would receive a token ticket.
I found some of the lessons to be rather scattered and hard to follow. There was a lot more group work than individual work. If I were to change this lesson, I would have it more structured and organized. I would target individual activities for each student to practice their understanding and communication rather than doing consecutive group work.
20 Minutes of Video Observation EFL Grade Six Class in China
This lesson focused on holidays. Students were presented with a photo and they were asked what the photo represented and how to spell the location of the photo. This activity engaged all students and tested their ability to pronounce, understand, speak, and spell. The professor had a great way of explaining English terms such as skyscraper to her students. The lesson plan was very well organized and structured, the PowerPoint presentation was clear with visuals and words describing the image. The students were actively engaged in the lesson as the teacher asked the students what the image was representing and how to spell each word related to the image. This is a lesson plan I would like to bring into my classroom as it’s easy to comprehend and tests a variety of English skills.