‘A Day in the Life’

Monday 10^th, October, 2011

Initial Thoughts: Using the Methodology Readings to Find My Classroom

I had all 4 of the low level grade 1 (referred to as ‘Apple’ from here on) classes today. In a break from recent practice I decided to give them a variation on the lesson I will use for the mid and high level classes. Usually, I would create an entirely separate lesson for the Apple classes. However, I now feel this is not a positive practice. In discussing the IRF structure in his literature review Xie notes that it is used excessively in low ability classes. He goes on to note that:

Across time the researchers found that this tightly-framed instructional discourse was largely accountable for creating inequalities in student opportunities to develop cognitively complex language skills, leading to the widening gap in achievement between low-track and high-track classes. (Xie, Page 24)

This is what I fear is happening when I make completely different lessons for my own low-track, low ability classes. Narrative inquiry teaches us that using terms such as ‘disadvantaged’ to describe learners is not neutral but is actually ‘embedded within sociocultural and sociohistorical notions of what it means to be disadvantaged … in a particular education system.’ (Johnson & Golombek, Page 5) Therefore my own diminished sense of expectations for my low level students is a major problem that alters my pedagogic intention when teaching them. I need to change this attitude. Obviously, I need to be conscious of their ability level but I think creating an ‘easy’ lesson for them is not helping them to develop. Xie argues convincingly that ‘discourse environments such as the IRF could have powerful impact on learners’ epistemologies, i.e. their ways of knowing, longitudinally changing the course of their development.’ (Xie, Page 23) I am coming to recognize that the basic, simplified lessons I create for the apple classes will, like the IRF structure Xie mentions, obviously affect my Apple students’ epistemologies and ways of knowing. The lessons I make them are contributing to and further entrenching the gulf between their ability and the mid level classes for example. I think I am lowering their expectations of language learning development when my pedagogic purpose should be to raise them.

The lesson the Apple students received today is about the regular past tense. My co-teacher tells me it is the first time they have encountered the concept. The regular past tense lesson I have prepared was prepared using the template from last week’s methodology assignment. It is intended for the mid and high level classes but as my classes were all cancelled and rescheduled last week I won’t get a chance to give it to them until the middle of this week. Before the first class today I was not 100% sure how I would adapt it for the Apple classes. I had a rough idea but expected and thought I would have to play it by ear and see how things developed.

The English Village, the Co-Teacher and Korean in (out) the Classroom

The classes today are all in the English village. This is the nicest class room I teach in. It has two large sliding whiteboards and a large flat screen TV. (See the attached photos) I arrived early for the first lesson to find that my co-teacher Kyuyun was already there. Kyuyun had thought she was teaching solo today so was surprised when I showed up. Sometime this happens, especially when the timetable and schedule has been chopped and changed so much. But generally I think sometimes the other teachers are not sure where I am meant to fit in their schedule

I asked Kyuyun if we could try giving the lesson without any Korean. She agreed saying she thought it was better that way too. I was nervous about asking and was relieved when she responded like this. During the lesson I noticed we both kept catching ourselves about to use Korean. I take this to be a good sign because in each case we would have to think of a way to explain in English. This was not without problems. In the first class I had real difficulty explaining the concept of ‘what did you do yesterday?’ But in conjunction with the grammar and pictures on my PowerPoint I think the concept eventually went over. I very deliberately tried to include a wide range of MIC and CI techniques today. Before class I looked over the handout from methodology class. I didn’t specifically aim to use a specific technique in a specific place. Instead, I just wanted to have them fresh in my mind throughout the classes. There were a couple of things which were helpful and which I had not really used explicitly before. The first, repeating at a slower rate, seems obvious but I had never consciously thought to myself ‘I need to slow this down’ before. It was very helpful, as was chunking. Again it seems obvious but I had never intentionally practiced breaking a long sentence up during choral repetition, for example. ‘Chunking’ sentences like ‘did you play computer games at the weekend?’ into 3 or 4 manageable chunks worked well today and got a good response from students.

Another result of taking Korean explanations out of the classroom was the increased use of modeling. In most classes I use modeling to a greater or lesser extent but today I really noticed how useful it could be as a tool to explain language conceptually. For instance, in explaining ‘What did you do yesterday?’, I first modeled with Kyuyun and then with a couple of individual students. This really helped convey the concept. Also, when we had to explain a game activity Kyuyun and I demonstrated together, modeling how to play and what language to use. Previously, my co-teachers would explain game rules a lot of the time. I am reservedly happy with this development. I hope in the coming weeks I can build on it. Without Korean as a crutch I hope other areas of my teaching practice will develop to compensate.

Another heartening development from today’s lessons was the sign of growth in my professional relationship with Kyuyun. We discussed a lot of things today in-between classes – Kyuyun was my co-teacher for all 4 classes. Amongst the things we talked about was the difficulty of applying theory in the classroom; the use of Korean in the classroom; activating schema; lowering the affective filter; and ways to teach low level classes. She gave some advice on teaching past tense and about using games. Furthermore, she even suggested we should plan a lesson together to incorporate a particular theory! This is great news. We are going to plan a lesson together for our low level grade 2 classes next week. I can’t overestimate how much of a breakthrough this is in terms of working with my co-teachers. This is the first time one of my co-teachers has ever suggested something like this. Kyuyun is young and eager and so I hope we can work together. I will blog about the results next week.

The Regular Past Tense – An Irregular Lesson

From the actual lessons today I got mixed results. I was eager to try and implement some new techniques from methodology class and arrived in school full of energy. My eagerness and enthusiasm gradually waned over the course of the day. It can be difficult to maintain energy levels sometimes especially when it is so hard to motivate the students. However, I’m very conscious that a teacher’s mood or attitude is a key factor in determining the classroom environment and the success or otherwise of classroom interactions. To this end I always try and bring positive energy into the classes. But now, not long after finishing my last class, I’m drained. Working in investments was never this exhausting.

I attempted to start all the classes the same way. As the students file in I greet them all happily with ‘good morning’ (or ‘good afternoon’). When they are all there I say it again and gesture for them to repeat. I write it on the board and we repeat it again. I next address Kyuyun and we say it to each other. Then I gesture for the students to say it to one another. Sometimes, I address an individual student or two. The same process is then followed for ‘how are you today?’ except I also model some possible answers. After this I write ‘what did you do yesterday?’ on the board. This was intended to be a schemata building ‘discussion’ (perhaps ‘exchange’ is a better word). I’m introducing the central concept of ‘doing things in the past’ and want to tie it to what they actually did recently to link it to their actual lived experience. They can and do already talk about what they did yesterday in Korean with their friends and this is the schema context I want to activate. I hope this little exchange provokes the students to tap into heir pre-existing knowledge of the concept (talking about what you did in the past) and therefore predict what they are going to learn in my English class. This is the theory at least. I check they know what ‘yesterday’ means by asking ‘what day is today?’ and working out ‘today’ is ‘Monday’ and so ‘Sunday’ was ‘yesterday’. I model the question with Kyuyun and write her answer on the board. I ask and gesture for the students to repeat first the question and then the answer. Then I ask and gesture for them to ask one another. Once they have done this I ask them again as a class ‘what did you do yesterday?’ When a student answers I ask if anyone else did the same thing or try and ask a follow up (really? What did you watch on TV? Running Man? What is Running Man? Did anyone else watch Running Man? Kyuyun did you watch Running man?) I think (someone please correct me if I am wrong) that I am using a lot of different MIC and CI techniques at this point (and dual coding?); I’m writing on the board, modeling with Kyuyun and students, using repetition, chunking, asking different questions. I feel like I’m throwing everything at these students to try and convey the idea. With other classes of a higher level it can be a lot smoother. I felt good about these exchanges though. However, despite all the things I’m doing to get responses from the students it is still essentially teacher dominated. Should I be happy about this or should I be concerned about excessive TTT? These kids just aren’t at a stage where they can sustain prolonged English exchanges so I don’t know what to do about the teacher talk here.

My description may give the impression this sequence of events all transpired smoothly and without fault. Not so. Sometimes I have to really focus on a pair of students to get them to even say ‘good morning’ to each other. I will have been asking the class to say ‘good morning’ to each other, notice two students just sitting there, go over to them smiling encouragement, repeating it, nodding all the while and eventually they will whisper it to each other quieter than a mouse sighing.

Having written some of their answers to ‘what did you do yesterday?’ on the board I next put the PowerPoint on. The section of the PowerPoint I want to use has a series of pictures and sentences that together explain how to make regular past tense verbs. In slide 1 for example there is the question - ‘did you cook dinner?’ I point and ask them what ‘cook’ means. I ask them what dinner means and I ask them what is in the picture. I model the question and have them repeat it. Then in slide 2 I prompt them for the answer whilst slide 3 shows the construction. At slide 4 I check the pronunciation. In slide 5 I go over everything using choral repetition, modeling with Kyuyun, asking the students to explain it to me, asking what the words mean again and getting the students to ask each other. There are 6 examples like this. This element of the class took significantly longer than I expected (or hoped). It took about 30 minutes of a 45 minute class. It also involved a lot of teacher talk. After reading Brown I’m also worried about using choral repetition. I used choral repetition throughout the lesson but now I’m worried this is basically just a ‘mechanical drill’ – ‘only one correct response from a student, and have no implied connection with reality’. (Brown, page 183) Have I ameliorated the mechanical aspect enough by situating the choral / mechanical repetition in their schema (and therefore also the students’ reality) and by mixing it with other techniques? I don’t know. Furthermore, this entire section of the lesson falls entirely on the ‘controlled technique’ side of the taxonomy Brown highlights – It is teacher-centered, manipulative and structured. Can I justify this by arguing it was necessary for them to learn the structure of regular past tense verb construction? I hope so. In the mid and high level classes this section should be covered relatively quickly and the following activities have a (relatively) diverse range of interactions incorporated into them. Unfortunately, because of the time spent explaining the examples and the central concept there wasn’t as much time for different activities today. In each class I had about 10 minutes to play with after finishing the examples. Instead of using the activities I have planned for the mid / high level classes I tried an activity from Saturday’s ICC class. (I didn’t use the mid / high level activities because they involve incorporating more sophisticated language). The ICC activity involved splitting the class into two teams – easily done when you only have 10 students (a luxury I don’t have with most of my other classes). One person from each team steps up to a whiteboard (conveniently there are two in this classroom.). I then show the rest of their teammates a word, a verb in the past tense form selected from the 6 we have studied, ‘cooked’ etc. Their teammates have to explain the word without saying the word itself, using Korean or spelling it. The first team to write it on the board gets a point. Overall it worked quite well. The students seemed to really enjoy it and several became quite animated. One of the main problems I did not anticipate was spelling. The student at the whiteboard might grasp what word their teammates were explaining but spell it incorrectly. To counteract this in subsequent classes before starting the game I would turn the PowerPoint off and elicit the spelling of each word from the students – writing them on the whiteboard then wiping them off to start the game. I regret not having given them Alphabet Organizers this lesson to record the new words. I am beginning to think I should use the Alphabet organizers in every class I have with my Apple students.

In another class I did try a simplified version of one of the mid / high level activities. Each student gets a small handout with 1 of 6 questions we have practiced in the class and several blank lines to write the names of other students. Using the whiteboard (on which I draw a copy of the handout) and modeling with Kyuyun and a couple of students I display how the activity should be completed. They are meant to ask their teammates their question and if someone says ‘yes’ write their name on a blank line. My idea is for the activity to be like a very small, very basic survey. It was tough. The students really needed to be led (pushed?) through it every step of the way. If I did this activity with them again I would take a handout myself, give one to Kyuyun and we would each sit with a different team and complete the activity with them instead of encouraging them to complete it themselves.

In the last couple of minutes of each class I asked the students each of the 6 questions. I addressed the class as a whole at first but then would ask an individual student to confirm an answer a different student gave. This was intended to ascertain if they had learned the T1 language.

Reflections and New Directions

As I sit here reflecting on these lessons and wondering where I can go from here I’m beginning to feel these were important classes. Or maybe what exploratory practice teaches us is that every lesson is important. Although Brown and Walsh rail against the Obstructive / Controlled model of Classroom Interaction I think ultimately I can justify it here. For one thing I don’t believe the lesson was entirely obstructive or controlled. The students got the opportunity to give their own answers and speak to one another. Importantly, these classes were an experiment to see if I could alter the way I teach low level students. Instead of stand alone lessons with no cumulative purpose or direction I see the lessons given today as the first in a unit to be developed in subsequent weeks. The next time I see these students we will connect to this lesson, revise today’s class and then do some activities that will hopefully move them a little ways along the obstructive / controlled continuum closer to the constructive / free end. I’m pretty sure this lesson conformed to the ‘preview, present, practice and produce’ model of activating schema and processing new information. The ‘preview’ stage where I activated schema was in asking ‘what did you do yesterday?’ at the top of the lesson. Whilst all 6 of the examples of regular past tense verb construction had a ‘present, practice and produce’ element. Should these elements be more distinctly separated? I’m not so sure if it matters necessarily. In terms of top / down processing I also feel I started with the forest, the big picture, the central concept (‘What did you do yesterday?) before moving onto meaning, then explaining the linguistic construction and although controlled the examples were interactive. Furthermore, the next lesson will afford these students greater opportunities for constructing knowledge and meaning, which Walsh says is one of the main pedagogic aims of a teacher, as they will bring this newly acquired schema with them.

I definitely still have a lot of work to do, still have a mountain to climb. When I think of all the different areas I need to work on it is difficult not to feel overwhelmed. I guess all that can be done is to try and make positive steps in the right direction. Today a couple of those steps were taken.

Slide Links:

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AbIoypnmSeEiZGQ4NG43dmNfMjFnN3Q0MnNnZw&hl=en_US

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AbIoypnmSeEiZGQ4NG43dmNfMTZmZjJ2NjVzMw&hl=en_US

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AbIoypnmSeEiZGQ4NG43dmNfMTFoYzRiZ21kZA&hl=en_US

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AbIoypnmSeEiZGQ4NG43dmNfNjQ0bjJzNGNk&hl=en_US
https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AbIoypnmSeEiZGQ4NG43dmNfMWNtZmRwYjd3&hl=en_US