Examine the taxonomy of techniques provided on pages 185-186 in your
textbook. Choose one that you did *not* use in your mini-lesson, and
discuss how you could have incorporated that into your lesson in an
effective way. Discuss details
and why you think it would work well in your lesson.
(Additional comments on this post no longer earn points. Please choose a more recent entry).
(Additional comments on this post no longer earn points. Please choose a more recent entry).
I think we could have incorporated the Information transfer technique into our lesson also (which can also be made into a game). For example, the teacher would pick one student (without telling the class who she/he picked), and then describe what that student is wearing, while the class fills in their prepared diagram (or makes a list), and then tries to identify which student the teacher is describing. I think this would be something fun, maybe if there is extra time at the end of the class, and that way they will be able to identify a person by the description of their clothes (our lesson was about clothes-vocabulary). It will help the students remember the new terms, but at the same time apply them (with a motivation to win the game possibly too).
ReplyDeleteOne of the free techniques we could have used was an interview. After our discussion of Valentine’s Day and customs practiced in the United States, in a paired exercise, one partner would ask the other partner what they will do for Valentine’s Day tomorrow. First, teachers would model the exercise. “What will you do tomorrow for Valentine’s Day?” “I’m going to make my Valentine a card and then cook dinner for him.” Partners are encouraged to be creative with their answers. After the interview, to check for comprehension, students are encouraged to tell the class what their partner will do for Valentine’s Day. I think it helps students get to know each other better when they share information. It also helps them think about the cultural aspects of Valentine’s Day and what kind of fun activities they can do to participate.
ReplyDeleteJarrod Duarte
ReplyDeleteI think we could have incorporated more of the semi-controlled technique of brainstorming and I will actually allow for more of it in my lesson plan. For example, what kind of things can a person do “beautifully, rudely” etc as well as the reverse, how can we describe how someone “sings, dances, walks, talks” etc. In addition I would have added the Cued narrative/Dialogue technique as well by having each group of students creating a story using pictures, and another group having to tell that story by using adverbs. For example, there is a picture of a little boy getting an F on a test and he is walking home from school with the test in is hand, and the next picture would be the boy giving his test to his mom while crying – and the story could be Little Johhny slowly walked home from school, he was worried about his mom being mad about the bad grade – Little Johnny sadly gave his test to his mom who angrily shouted at him that he needed to study harder.
I think that the Cued Narrative would be applicable and closed-ended enough to work well in my lesson.
Jarrod Duarte
I think I will use drama/skit technique in the demo lesson. Since the topic is weather and we’ve reviewed some adjectives to describe the different weather and different temperatures, students can use such words as sunny, windy, cloudy and rainy as well as cold, hot, warm and cool to make simple sentences. And the activity is about planning to visit a city in America based on the weather map, which give students a good topic to talk about. After the small group discussion, I will let each small group (3-4 people) prepare a skit about weather and travelling, and then come in the front of the class to show their skits. Their dialogues should include the weather information today and the weather of the American city they want to go. I think drama/skit would work well in the demo lesson because students need to give some effective output after receiving many inputs and drama/skit is a good way to show their creativity and a good way to examine how much they’ve learned.
ReplyDeleteA different technique that we could have used for our class lesson was brainstorming. Instead of doing our activity in pairs, we could have engaged the entire class in a brainstorming session about what they would like to have at the Valentine's party scheduled for the next day. We would have written all the responses down on the board, and then have the class as a whole prioritize which items would be best for the party as well as which items had a partitive attached to it. The class could then have generated a common list for use at the grocery store later. The one difficulty that I see with this is that not all students might want to participate, so the teacher has to 'control' the class and make sure that each student has a chance to give input. Also, since in brainstorming there are no explicit prompts or explanations, the teacher has to be sure that the class really understands the focus of the lesson from the brainstorming activity itself.
ReplyDeleteI think Melody and I could have incorporated problem solving into our lesson about giving commands (with a focus on prepositions). After demonstrating the meaning of our selected prepositions and practicing them with the class, we could divide student up into pairs and give them ‘problems’ to solve. For example, one student in each pair could be given a sheet of paper with a picture of a chair and several items around it. There would be 3 or 4 common classroom items such as books, pencils, shoes, water bottles, etc that in the picture are on, under, or next to the chair. The student with the paper would give directions to the other student until they had recreated the scene in the pictures.
ReplyDeleteFor example:
“Put the book on the chair.”
“Put the pencil on the book.”
“Put the shoe under the chair.”
“You stand next to the chair and hold the water bottle above the chair.”
Adding this activity to our lesson would make it more interactive and give students a chance to demonstrate their knowledge of the meaning of certain prepositions (while cementing it in their minds) and practice giving/following commands. It would also give us an opportunity to observe students and check their comprehension.
Our lesson lacked a lot of things, but for my part I should have done the worm-up technique instead of just presenting it orally. I think reviewing the audio samples, asking for comprehension feedback from the students and discussing the difficulties of understanding non- native speakers of English would have made our lesson more informative. This activity would have prepared the students to the main activity, and clarify the objective of the lesson. Also, that would have provided a chance for evaluating students’ comprehension. I really thought that we have to present just one activity. This is why I did not practically present the worm-up. Imagining and describing the worm up make me regret not incorporating it to the lesson.
ReplyDeleteThe activity in the mini lesson lacked a bit more student interaction. I’m thinking that a little student generated story telling might have been effective to add to the lesson plan.
ReplyDeleteWhile the activity was very simple in converting adjectives into adverbs there wasn’t that real world element to it. In the real world you’re not presented with an adjective to then convert it into an adverb. If I had to do it over again I would have taken some of the adjectives and adverbs from the activity part of the lesson and would have given the students an opportunity to generate a short paragraph that told a short story. I think that would have given an opportunity for the students to use the words in the activity in a challenging and creative manner as well as practicing their listening skills as they listened to the ways other students used adjectives and adverbs. I think that would have made the activity more communicative.
Our mini-lesson lacked a lot of semi-controlled and free techniques and included a lot, and probably too many, controlled techniques. There are several techniques we could have successfully implemented to make our mini-lesson better.
ReplyDeleteHowever, one technique in particular that we could have incorporated was the information exchange, a semi-controlled technique. When using the pronouns “this” “that” and “these” “those” and using them within questions, “What’s this? What’s that?” there could have been some sort of two-way communication between the students as an information-gap exercise. We could have provided an end goal of sorts (identifying objects, for example) that either a student or group of students had to work together to achieve. For example, a group of students could have worked together to build an object of some kind. If there were two students in a group, Student A and Student B, then one student would give commands (student A) while the other carried out with the commands (student B). For example, in order for the object to be built, Student A would give commands to Student B utilizing the new vocabulary (put THAT on top of THAT. Put THIS on top of THAT, THESE need to be over by THOSE, etc) until the end goal is reached. This would have been a relatively easy activity to carry out in any class level and a fun and creative way to teach the this/that/these/those pronouns. It would have forced the students to use the pronouns in a direct approach and in a real life situation.
I think our lesson could have benefited from a free technique like A Propos, basically just having a class discussion based in real life. I controlled the output the class was giving a lot by asking very simple one-word answer questions like "It's cold outside, does anyone know what season it is?" Instead more genuine output from students could be sought through asking more open-ended questions in the hopes of sparking conversation and real dialogue. One way to incorporate this technique is to ask questions like "What is the weather like today?" "Did you have to do anything special because of the weather?" instead of stating outright that it's cold, and that people have to wear certain clothes when it is cold. The free technique, problem solving, could have been employed as well, in a game like Norma said, or maybe have students work in groups to dress a person, and they have to ask for the appropriate article of clothing. For example, students have a picture of a person and a weather condition, and must ask the group leader for a coat or hat if the person on the paper is missing this item. This way students are forced to recall the names of articles of clothing and also have to use some creative thinking.
ReplyDeleteOne technique we could have used in our mini-lesson was meaningful drill. This is when students choose how to respond in a given situation by choosing a correct response from a set of responses. This is applicable since our lesson focused on a given situation – shopping – and taught how to respond and initiate with a salesperson to secure the desired information to make an informed purchase. While our mini-lesson gave a role play demonstration and had students role play a shopping situation, our lesson lacked substantial analysis and teaching of the material so that students would understand how to translate a role play demonstration into dialoguing for themselves. This meaningful drill would give us the structure to walk them through relevant vocabulary and how to ask certain questions in the context of a dialogue and then help them put these concepts together by choosing the answer or question that best fits the given situation. This would be a helpful bridge between role play demonstration and their own role play, supplying them with a range of phrases and training them to use the right phrase when they need it.
ReplyDeleteI would have like to have included a narration by the students where they explained directions between to places they visit frequently in real life: for example, How to get from home to class, or from work to the grocery store. I think the made-up map was necessary for explanation and practice, but I think it would be great to transition into a more realistic and familiar context. This would probably have been a short written assignment with a few students volunteering to read their narration out loud, but obviously it would be best if it were a small class where each student could give directions between two familiar points.
ReplyDeleteKailey Watson
Stefani Goode
ReplyDeleteI didn't use a full role-play demonstration. Sure my partner and I demonstrated the rules for the activity briefly, but I think doing a role-play would have been more effective. I would keep the activity the same gap-fill task but I would add a second activity that would be a role play. For the role-play demonstration I would probably like to have one or two students volunteer for a "Simon Says"-type activity. Since the demo was on the imperative having the class give the volunteer a script of directions to act out would be fun because the students get speaking and listening practice and they would get to use little script cards so they would get reading practice as well. Acting it out would also help students apply visual cues to the verbal ones. Or even supplying students with a dialogue to act out that is all imperatives would still accomplish the same. I would like to include this somehow in my lesson plan. If not for this lesson the next one.
A language-teaching technique that I did not use in my mini-lesson was probably content explanation. Although the handout we created seemed pretty self-explanatory, we neglected to really focus on the teaching of the grammar of the use of the imperative. Perhaps comparing the imperative to the infinitive would have helped. Or forcing the students to create an imperative sentence from a non-imperative sentence would have been better for assessing their use of the imperative.
ReplyDeleteWe could have used the information exchange technique with our weather maps. For example, we could use two different maps, A and B. Map A would have weather information for half of the cities but lack information for the other half, and vice versa. Then student A could ask student B something like, "What is the weather like in Los Angeles today?" Student B would then say something like, "It's warm and cloudy," which Student A could write in the blank. Then students could continue into the weather activity done in class, talking about the cities they would like to visit based on the weather. This would work well with our lesson because they are helping each other construct the worksheet they are going to need for the next activity. Additionally, it will give them practice asking about the weather, not just describing it.
ReplyDelete-Debby Adams
In hindsight, I realize that I did not ask the students what the emails involved in our activity meant. I believe that would be classified as content explanation. Not only was it important to pick out the elements of formality/informality, but also to know what the point of the email was to begin with. Without that, I can now see where my activity lost sight of meaning. The way to add that would be simply to ask, “What is the message of these two emails?” Maybe, I could have just said before the activity began, “In both emails, the employee is telling the boss…” I believe that could be helpful to the student.
ReplyDeleteMy lesson with Elizabeth could definitely have gone smoother, however I believe we could have incorporated some cued dialogue. Instead of having students just give a few random commands off the cuff, we could have had an activity that had the students produce the preposition Elizabeth and I acted out. For example, Elizabeth puts the water bottle under the table and I ask the students “Where is the water bottle?” and other similar questions. This would help to solidify student comprehension, perhaps give them a memory to refer back to when attempting to use English in everyday life, and give them an opportunity to practice forming the words before being placed in a situation where they have to produce them for the first time on their own. It also gives us as instructors the chance to see who our participators are, and who needs a little more coaching.
ReplyDeleteMelody Bree
I think that we could have incorporated a time for brain storming in our lesson. Since our "class" was for people who were polishing up their english we should have elicited examples that they would use in their life. They would also get practice using their vocabulary and practicing speaking outloud. We could have done this by asking the "students" to give some questions that they use with others after we had finished going over the material.
ReplyDeleteIn my mini-lesson, I could have done a somewhat revised or upgraded role-play; I think this could be called a simulation or a drama. During the mini lesson, I and Jonathan, in a team-teaching between native and non-native English teachers, showed a role-play as not only an example for further students’ role-play but also a teaching material to explain key expressions. After then, students did their own role-play with their partner. Although it was free acting, there were some restrictions that students could not do creative and meaningful role-play. Thus, I want to give an assignment that they make a video clip acting like a real customer and a sales clerk. Because these days many students use smart phones or digital cameras, they can record their acting easily. Moreover, it will motivate students more, and they can choose more various products that make their role-play more interested. Frankly speaking, it may be a little bit difficult to do in the mini lesson, but I really want to make students do this activity, if I have a chance to teach students with this lesson plan.
ReplyDelete