Assignment 4 CELTA

Assignment 3: Lessons from the Classroom Bobby (Vlad Grigoras)

Assignment 3: Lessons from the Classroom

Part one We have a good time during Booby’s lessons. He’s quite a funny guy, friendly and involved in his lessons. He is chatting with us both during the lessons and afterwards. He likes sharing his stories with us and I particularly like the pictures he shows us, it is interesting to find out about different cultures. I want to practice speaking and we did most of the time in his classes. I like that he gets involved in his teaching and corrects us when necessary. Sometimes the topics he chooses appear difficult to grasp and are not the most interesting such as the “human capital” topic. That wasn’t interesting and the text was too difficult. I couldn’t understand the language in that lesson and it was boring. It was good that I told him about this class because his next lesson was more interesting and I was keen to talk about the “slow city movement” with my colleagues. I enjoy working in pairs or groups as I can get a lot of speaking practice. This is my main purpose, to improve my speaking, pronunciation and vocabulary. Bobby’s explanations and corrections are fun most of the time and he makes them explicit with the use of realia or miming.

Part two a) Strength – planning. For the last few lessons (TP6,7) the planning improved a lot to give me a good flow and on spot reaction to different questions and activities during the lessons. Scripting the phonetics, definitions of key language items in the language analysis improved gave me more confidence. The students went home with a useful record of what they had learned. b) Strength- concept checking. The interaction pattern with the Ss through CCQs has improved a lot which makes it much easier to start a discussion with the students. Understanding the meaning and different contexts while planning can lead the lesson into an area where students are challenged and asked about their individual interpretation

Assignment 3: Lessons from the Classroom Bobby (Vlad Grigoras)

of language, feelings or perspective. It makes a big difference to take the student through such clarification. During the last reading lesson the Ss discussed the “slow city/food” concepts in detail to give them practice of the target language but also when checking their understanding of the text through the activities. c) Strength – board work. In the past TP’s I focused a lot on the board and make use of it throughout the class. I mainly started to deliver the target language, phonetics and leave it on the board so the Ss can take it home. Board management is helpful when eliciting from student as it establishes a good rapport. I used Venn diagrams for describing the concepts of “better city/better life”. I conclude with my overall feeling that I became more confident during the lessons due to good communication, rapport with Ss. Part three a) Top of the list is feedback. I realize how important is to go round a few minutes feedback session and clarify the key points of the lesson. The Ss want to work on all aspects of the language as pronunciation, rules, drilling, is an important conclusion after each lesson. In the past two lessons I went through short feedback sessions, but I want to allocate more time for this part. b) Timing. I really need to improve my timing. I tend to deliver all-rounded lessons focusing on all skills and language points. It is too much for 40 min sessions, so I need to work more on this. In the last lessons I hadn’t had time for the freer practice activity as I exploited other points of the lesson that appealed to the Ss. For the next TPs I will just stick to a clear and concise plan for 40 min. c) Monitoring. Ss find it very important to leave the classroom with solid understanding and practice of English. I didn’t manage to take notes during the last Reading lesson when I know how important it is for the feedback session. I couldn’t understand the writing of the Ss, but this is a skill to improve after constant practice. When listening to Ss speaking it was easier to spot errors, but it still needs development. Part four

Assignment 3: Lessons from the Classroom Bobby (Vlad Grigoras)

All lessons I watched had at least one interesting aspect. Starting from watching original activities or funny discussion for prediction to simply board work, I had three inspiring weeks until now. I really learned a lot from Jez’s instinctive good amount of energy in his classes. He always comes up with personal stories which lead through the whole session. On the other hand I noticed Arthur’s humor when introducing new topics or when taking a discussion to its next stage. I would like to make more use of these natural aspects that I’ve seen in their lessons, so genuine and engaging. Their clear aims and goals for the activities are so easy to pursue during the lessons. English classes can be as creative as possible and I could’ve seen my colleagues making good use of video material, power point, recordings. Chris’s lesson with the “hamburger” video was so creative. I liked the Ss engagement into the lesson; they paid so much attention to each part of the lesson. I want to use more video materials in my lessons. Part five What I want to improve/try I want to improve my overall understanding of grammar and language clarification stages.

How I will go about achieving this I want to try several different techniques to present language. Guided discovery is one of the techniques, but T/T/T and TBL also appeal to my manner of teaching.

Resources/support will I need