Grace's causerie

Self reflection

gracechen1208 — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 13:54:34 +0000

Teacher: Grace

Date: 2008. 5. 27

Teaching materials: San-min Book 2 Unit 7

Opening

How did the teacher start the lesson? Did the teacher state the intended lesson objectives clearly? Did the teacher keep students informed of lesson procedures and activities in the beginning?

The teacher didn’t really inform students of the lesson objectives or procedure

1. Greetings

2. Warm-up (reading) activity: Worksheet: A Man or A Woman?

Body

List of main learning activities in the time order. Identify the sequence (sub-activities) and mark the patterns of interaction in each learning activity.

1. Activity 1: Q&A (A man or a woman?)

2. Activity 2: Q&A (What kind of person do you like? What kind of woman do you like? How to avoid gender stereotypes?)

3. Activity 3: textbook P. 110 (individual reading / Q&A)

¨ Sequencing (such as presentation, practice, production or pre-reading, while- reading, post reading)

Reading, Q&A,

¨ Patterns of interaction (teacher-led /individual work / pair work / group work)
Individual reading, teacher-led Q& A sessions (there’s a lot of interaction in the sessions),

Pacing: time allocated to each learning activity; time management
Time management is OK.

Closure

How did the teacher end the lesson? Was there any evaluation of the lesson? Did the teacher give any summary of the lesson or assignment to the students?

1. Conclusion: We should reduce the misunderstanding between males and females.

2. Homework: Finding examples of gender stereotypes from our daily lives.

Feedback Qs

1. How do you find my presentation?

2. Please give some suggestions for me to improve my presentation.

You look confident in the presentation.

There seems to be a pattern in your teaching: reading–Q&A. You can try to integrate different types learning activities into your teaching.

Mind the pronunciations of the following words:

n characteristics

n stereotypes

My reflection is to say is one thing to do is another. The two class observations I offered a lot of opinions. When I am teaching, I am so nervous to present this presentation. I can sense teaching is not an easy thing. When I walk to the center of the platform, my brain is blank and dull. I can’t remember what sayings I express in this presentation. In original plan of guessing activity, I should say students discuss with their groups, but in my presentation, I said give you five minutes to think about who is the man and who is the woman? All because of my anxiety, some plans could not into practice. Besides, I will devote myself to improve my pronunciation and tone. I think I am so lucky to draw this interested and popular lesson. The wars of Man and woman always put on the stage in our daily life. They really have a lot of differences. The issue of the gender could arouse students’ motivation to take part in these activities. I thought that teach senior high school students could apply high level cognition. They had independent and creative opinions. So I made use of my real experiences into the worksheet and tried to connect the text, not just present the reading of the text. In this activity, I didn’t pay attention to grammar teaching, just focus on students’ ideas and thought. Through this guessing and discussion, I wanted them to experience the gender stereotype in natural. I didn’t consider the whole lesson plan carefully so that I presented a lot of interactions in my performance. I thought I could improve the plan , add different teaching methods to enrich my teaching and informed my teaching procedures and objectives to my students before i go through the sequencing. No matter the result was bad or good, I really got a treasonable experience, because I had an opportunity to teach in a formal circumstance. It is not only a presentation like I made before but also a practical experience of the work.

Vivid Class Observation

gracechen1208 — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:46:07 +0000

First grader/Lesson：The luncheon

Opening

1. Greeting and ask students’ their performance about the election of chairman?

→ I think teacher concern their students and build a good relationship to them.

2. Ask question about the topic, what comes to your mind when I say luncheon? After asking questions about 2-3 seconds, she points the key student to reply.

→ Her class management is great, she can control the key students, and let them follow her rules.

Body

Worksheet activity:

1. First time, Listen the type and try to write down the missing words in the paragraph.

2. Second time, she wants students read aloud with the type.

3.Check answers and emphasize the important points

→She controls the process of the activity very well and get over the response of students.

Closure

Go through the story in book, and list the key concept and idea on board.

→ she reviews the whole teaching and gives students the key points to help them realize.

Feedback

She is an experienced teacher. She presents the teaching in a perfect order. She has the steps to go through the work sheet and lesson. She is good at concerning the key students and has the ability to catch students’ attention. She always smiles to students without nervous and impatient.

Second grader/Body language

Opening

1. Ask students what is non verbal?

2. Show pictures by computer; make use of students’ picture to arouse class motivation.

→Showing familiar pictures of their friends to arouse their motivation is a pretty good idea. I think Teacher’s voice is too small, so that the behind students have no active attitude to take part in her asking.

Body

Worksheet activity:

1. Play a type, want students to catch the main ideas and write down on the paper. Encourage students make a sentence by them, not just copy.

2. Teacher goes around the whole seat to help students. And she checks answers by her ppt and calls students write down on board.

→ I think want every students to catch the main ideas of the lesson is too difficult and some students are waiting to copy teacher’s answer. I think teacher can use peer work or group work. When students have the ability to use their language to catch main ideas, teachers can change the ways flexibly. Besides, I think her ppt go too fast, some students not finish the copy.

Closure

Play the film” Mr. Bean”

→I think the subtitle can use English not present Chinese. I think this is not a good closure, this can use in the opening.

Feedback

She is a hard working teacher. She prepares a lot of teaching materials to give their students feel interesting. I like her creative idea about computer using.

Scientific school—Lishan

gracechen1208 — Fri, 16 May 2008 11:00:35 +0000

Before I visited Lishan, I heard that the school image of Lishan emphasized science education and nurture students’ humanistic cultivation. I remembered my senior high school teacher said” Lishan is a new and potential school; I want my child to study in there. So I thought this school should be great. My first visiting Lishan was handing my midterm report, at one time I thought this was not a school, I figured this was a scenic spot.

As to my second time to Lishan, I still lose my way. I liked Lishan was decorated in bright green. There were a lot of plants and flowers in school. These could soften school environment and relief atmosphere. Besides, every building had a hallway or gallery to connect each other, it constructed a whole.

Reflection and sharing

gracechen1208 — Sun, 04 May 2008 16:00:15 +0000

Last Tuesday, I felt disappointed and depression about our performance. I thought that we paid attention to creative or different presentation. We didn’t concern on fluency of procedure and adaptability of arrangement carefully. Besides, we were lack of practice and coordinate each other. So, many times we felt awkward and no response from the audience when reaction is expected. Thank for the advice which Alice and classmate give us, those are helpful and clear up our thinking. I will keep improving.

Today I find out a very interesting reading on unit seven. I make a t-chart on unit seven. It makes me to memorize the book “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus－Book of Days: 365 Inspirations to Enrich Your Relationships” which written by John Gray. Men and women are really from different worlds and have different thinking. Today I find out an interesting website from Japanese(http://maker.usoko.net/nounai/), I want to share everyone, it offers the brain test on line, you just fill into your name and press enter, your brain will appear. I fill into 陳冠希, inside his brain of elements are amazing me……it really accurate!

Real Class Observation

gracechen1208 — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 17:53:42 +0000

◎Learner:8^th graders. ◎Lesson objectives：Correct the answer of handout, explain the key point and present sentence patterns.◎Teaching materials：Lecture, blackboard, textbook,handout

Opening……10mins

◎Check homework ◎Point out the mistake of their behavior.

Body……30mins

◎Point out key points of handout, take notes and read aloud. ◎Have a quiz.◎Explain sentence pattern in textbook

Closure……5mins

◎ Review the textbook content ◎Remind students of next time have a quiz

Feedback

1. She presents a real situation in daily class. Her class management is great. She couples hardness with softness to deal with students’ affairs. She counsels students on their bad attitude for ten minutes. Teacher take students’ attitude seriously, In this class, students have good discipline. She can control class order. She wants them to realize good personality is the most important in their life. She is good at controlling the focal person to avoid ripple effect. 2. When she explains the sentence pattern or grammar concept, she can give examples which are closed to student’s life. Learners are easy to understand how to use it. 3. Her teaching method is lecture. That is traditional method but very common in real situation. Teacher has to deal with too many chores in class. It is impossible to present multiple activities in every class. 4. She is lack of eye contact to everyone. She doesn’t go around the whole class, she pays attention to the middle line and the front students. Just see some students response teacher’s questions. 5. On the certain parts, she is not sure her teaching scheduled progress in this class, if possible maybe she can write a simple journal to remind herself.

Impression on Long Men

gracechen1208 — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 17:20:28 +0000

In April fool’s Day we visited Long Men junior high school. Even though it was a rainy day (even though I was under the pressure to interview principals and worry my master thesis), being here I amazed its technological and friendly facilities. School environment and architecture combined education with aesthetics. The junior high school students under the period of storm, an open and humanized space could help them not only widen their eyesight and mind but also make them relax and take away their pressure. In order to building a multi-capable student, their school vision was centered on students and made sure each student get equal learning resources and concern Besides, their school management was emphasized teacher’s profession to enhance teaching quality. Ben guided us to visit the school. He was a great teacher and had plentiful teaching experience. Through his vivid and clear explanation, we realized the history of school, the meaning of decoration and the good use of space.

We are good friends

gracechen1208 — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 08:28:12 +0000

In February, my uncle went abroad to Nanjing, his dogs Dinner and PiPi came to visit my house for a month. During a month, I got along with them, they got friendly with me. I treated them very well, especially for PiPi. Because of her sweet acting and consideration, I always caressed her hair. At one time, I caressed her she soon fell asleep and began to snore. When they went back home, I felt a little sadness. Recently, I don’t know what happened？One after another, a golden retriever , an indigenous dog and a maltest lie down in front of me, when I come closer.My aunt said cheerfully” Grace, congratulations to you, my dogs spread their friendly flavors for you. Now every dogs think you are their good friends.” (I think in my mind.)Oh! Come on, Aunt! I think your dogs spread their pheromone to me, every dogs may think we are family！

Lesson plan for effective teaching

gracechen1208 — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 17:26:09 +0000

Lesson plan is a dreaded part of instruction that most teachers detest at school. But it actually provides a guide for managing the teaching and learning. Lesson plan involves much more than making arbitrary decisions about “what I’m going to teach today.” Many activities precede the process of designing and implementing a lesson plan. I try to make a lesson plan by myself, it’s not easy to give consideration every parts of teaching.Lesson plan by Grace

Reflection of the second class

gracechen1208 — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 16:36:38 +0000

ICT gives learners methods to learn more flexibly, and teachers a chance to utilize that flexibility to offer a more varied service to learners. Lessons can be made available for access at any time. Teacher should make use of ICT but couldn’t believe that it was a best way for learners. The second class, Alice not only showed us her teaching experiences and ideas but also introduced us web2.0 tools. Those all amazed me. I enjoyed in ICT lesson. After class, I considered that how to switch and create those to my class. In fact, I was very depressed to teach a group of students in reinforcement class. Students in that class couldn’t reach the average level but also had low motivation to learn. They always said,” Come on Grace, my previous teachers and parents all give up us, would you please not to be a meddler, Ok?” The first time I heard that saying, I couldn’t resist crying on that moment. I cried for why their parents and teachers considered they were useless, they were just elementary school students? So I treated them like a dear friend, I knew that they consulted my face forcing themselves to finish my works. They were not sincerely to learning. From the second class, however, I could hold on.

Understanding is the most important to teaching

gracechen1208 — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 09:48:57 +0000

In my own teaching experiences of elementary schools, I rather understand students than how to teach students. Teacher must have a clear- eyed view of who they are, what their expectations are and how they are instructed.Below are my teaching strategies:

‧Creating an Effective and Warm Learning Climate：The first thing is teacher should always believe every individual is unique and treat every student fairly. Never give up building up relationship between them and consider every student’s background, behavior and personality.

‧Using Multiple Teaching Methods：In order to arouse their learning motivation, elementary teachers always find lots of games and activities for children. I think teacher has to consider course content, class preparation, and learner difference.