My group s context was adult learners in Austin, TX primarily all from Mexico

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1 REFLECTION on Group Lesson My group s context was adult learners in Austin, TX primarily all from Mexico learning English. This is a high beginner class, and the focus in our lesson was past tense regular verbs using chore vocabulary. Reflecting back, I do not feel that the lesson as a whole went as well as I was anticipating. This mostly stemmed from misunderstanding the assignment and also improper lesson design. However, some elements in the lesson went well. Things that worked well were the variation of activities during the lesson. We had some perception activities, production activities, controlled practice, and communicative practice (although we ran out of time for some activities). We had clear grammar and vocabulary presentations, great pictures, good worksheets, and fun games. The pictures during the vocabulary section were large and clear, and then the target vocabulary was written on the board. The worksheets were on target with additional pictures and controlled activities. The mixed up sentence game was fun and helped the students additionally practice the vocabulary. And finally, the mingle activity was a perfect way to end the lesson by making the vocabulary and grammar personal to the students. In addition, we had a clear presentation of the vocabulary being studied at the beginning of the lesson. The students were actively engaged and the classroom was dynamic with the use of the charades game. This activity worked well because within the class we only had four students, but this activity would have to be modified to work in our actual context with the class being around 30 students. We could have perhaps just called on a few volunteers instead of having every student participate.

2 A thing I would have changed during the lesson is that I would have liked to give the students more opportunities for controlled and communicative practice. We had several activities that we had included in our lesson plan, but we had to skip over some activities because we ran out of time. Ideally, if I were to change the lesson, I would have taken out the pronunciation focus out of this lesson entirely, and saved it for another day. I would have really just focused on the vocabulary and grammar during the lesson and perhaps done more practice in another lesson as well. Students needed more time to practice and use the language, and this would have better reflected my teaching principles if it were done. My individual section was the grammar presentation, which I think went fairly well; although, I forgot to include some points I had prepared to make. Students we able to figure out the grammar on the board and predict how to make the past tense. The form was put on the board, and the students were given a copy of the rules that were in their book. This reflects my teaching philosophy of integrated focus on form as mentioned in Spada and Lightbrown (2008). Additionally, students were given sufficient time to understand the rules, and my use of the board was effective. I stuck to my teaching philosophy as I did not give long drawn out grammar explanations, but kept the instruction to a minimum. This directly reflects my philosophy of Proficiency-Oriented Instruction as stated in Horwitz (2008). Even though the students were not able to 100 percent accurately use the grammar during that lesson, the goal was to present them with the grammar and then continue to practice reinforcement that day and in future lessons. When evaluating the comments from other students, there are some mixed and conflicting opinions of the lesson. I do believe that I accomplished progress by teaching

3 to every student in the class through use of the board. Some comments were that there was too much teacher talk, while others felt if was the right amount. I believe that because I was presenting the grammar, it was necessary for me to be speaking in that part of the lesson. If I were to teach this as a whole lesson, students would have a lot more practice time and I would push for student output. So in regard to the whole lesson, the teacher talk would not have been and issue. I agree that because students were only viewing 15 minutes of my teaching, and it may have seemed like a lot. Other comments were that the group work went well, and I agree. I thought the activities I chose were useful and engaging to the students. And I was able to monitor the group work in an effective way. One thing that I did not anticipate from this lesson, was the amount of time it took for the students to complete the activity. In the actual context, I would have planned less and given the students more time to complete the worksheet and game. I thought that because the students were native speakers and people who already know English, they would not need long to complete the activity. I did not anticipate that these students would play needing a lot of time to complete the activity. This also comes from the inherit difficulty in planning a lesson that is in a pretend context. If I knew these learners, I would know how much time they needed for the activities and would have planned better accordingly. Another comment from my peers was that the lesson was not very well organized. I disagree with this comment, and felt that the lesson was clear, and other students also agreed that that grammar presentation was clear. I feel that the use of colored chalk would have helped add a visual dynamic of clarity. I normally work with a white board in

4 which I have access to different colors, so that was a limitation of the classroom I was in. Finally, I believe that I kept to my teaching philosophy in my limited use of error correction. Even though I heard some students make mistakes, it was not necessary to correct every error, and I also did not overtly correct their errors every time. As reiterated by Hadley (2001), I believe that this is important to keep up morale to this level of class. Working in a group had some advantages and also disadvantages for us. Some of the teachers were more experienced than others, and these teachers were able to plan the lesson and decide on the lesson design. Our group also understood the assignment as each teacher having to practice a different focus. So therefore, each teacher had a different task to do within the lesson, but I would never plan my lesson in this way in the actual context. I would have a warm-up, grammar presentation and lots of varied practice afterwards. I think our group did not feel like we could do this because some of the teachers would just be facilitating activities without a particular focus. However, if we had done this, then our lesson would have been stronger and more cohesive. Also, because some people in the group do not normally teach in this target, the group should have been more sensitive to this issue, and given more instruction and clearer directions in how to prepare and teach the different parts of the lesson. I feel like we tried to take on too many things, and this reflected negatively in the lesson. In accordance to Hadley (2001), students need time for varied practice in order to integrate new structures into their language. I would have loved to take out some of the teaching parts of the lesson to allow for more practice time and keep the lesson more studentfocused. Overall during this lesson, I was reminded that less is better, and it is important to keep things simple and clear.

5 References: Hadley, A. O. (2001). Teaching language in context (3rd ed.). Boston: Heinle and Heinle. Horwitz, E. K. (2008). Becoming a language teacher: A practical guide to second language learning and teaching. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc. Spada, N. & Lightbown, P. M. (2008). Form-focused instruction: Isolated or integrated? TESOL Quarterly, 42,