I was observing online FT CLB 4 LINC class from November 10 - November 23, 2021. These classes run from Monday to Friday 9am - 2pm Edmonton time. I mostly attended morning classes between 9am - 10:30am, however, I also attended a couple of afternoon classes, during which students were reading a chapter book called “Breadwinner”.
Officially, the class consists of 10 students, but during my observation period there were 8 students attending the class. The students are from different backgrounds and all of them are new immigrants in Canada. Most of the students have families with children. My instructor told me that I got lucky to teach this group as a few of the students have educational backgrounds from their countries and, overall, their knowledge of English is good compared to previous groups.
All the topics covered by my teacher were very relevant to students’ life situations. We covered different topics such as Remembrance Day celebrations, Reading and understanding school emails, Parent-Teacher conferences. Most of the lessons had focus on speaking, writing and reading.
These are some of the learning objectives and outcomes I have noted:
Learning objectives: to introduce new vocabulary and practice it through various class and group activities; to introduce new grammar and make students use it in different activities; to introduce students to the main elements and punctuation rules of a paragraph and practice composing short paragraphs themselves; to learn to use the verbs like and dislike with gerund after them.
Learning outcomes: students will be able to ask and answer questions during parent-teacher conferences; students will be able to write a short paragraph using appropriate structure and punctuation; students will be able talk about things their children like and dislike doing at home and at school.
Best practices in presenting material:
The teacher prepares a new presentation for each lesson that contains lots of pictures. The first slide always shows the agenda for today’s lesson. I think it gives students a good overview of what they’ll be working on and can be used at the end of the lesson to see how much of it was accomplished.
I also liked the idea that the teacher always presents some information that is related to students’ lives. It can be news about a storm approaching the province, news from other provinces or news on some events happening in the city over the weekend. It always brings positive emotions and smiles to students’ faces.
Students’ English level is not very high, so the teacher was always speaking very clearly and when needed “talking” with her hands. For example, when she needed to explain the new word “connect”, she slowly moved her hands toward each other until they crossed.
Engaging students:
The teacher called everybody by their names. Some students would join the conference a bit early, so she would ask them questions about their weekend, children etc
Her tone of voice was always very polite. When she noticed that some of the students weren’t very active, she would call them by name and ask if everything was ok. She had a really good handle on the situation in class.
The teacher liked to ask one student to read the task. After that, she would ask another student to repeat what the student said.
All students got their fair share of participation in the class.
Responding to students’ questions:
The teacher would answer students’ questions right away in a very friendly manner. She always asked her students if they understood her. I noticed that the students were not afraid of asking questions.
If she noticed that a lot of students have the same question, she would pause the lesson and make sure that the students had their answers.
If the question was about something the student could answer himself, the teacher would ask them to do it and wait for their answers. For example, if the students come across an unknown word and want the teacher to tell them the meaning, she asked them to use their dictionaries and give her the answer.
Incorporating technology:
The teacher was using the online platform called Big Blue Button, which has an interactive whiteboard, tools, screenshare, shared notes and other functions.
The teacher also used audio recordings, Quizlet for creating flashcards and fun activity games, Kahoot and created polls in the BBB platform
The teacher also used Google Forms to create quizzes and reflections. I learned from Julie to assign points to my questions and have a score at the end of the quiz.
Classroom management:
This was my first time observing a group of ESL students, and I can say that I learned a lot from my teacher. Firstly, I want to say that the classroom was very well managed. The students knew the rules of the classroom very well. It is especially important when you do online teaching. For example, they all knew to raise their hand if they wanted to talk.
The teacher was very respectful with students and vice versa. The students called Julie “teacher”
The teacher always recognised some improvement her students made. SHe would say “I like to see less and less mistakes in… Good job!”
She was also consistent with her requirements for her students.
Error correction:
The main thing I learned from my instructor was that she didn’t correct every mistake her students made. When chatting with her students before the lesson, she didn’t correct any mistakes at all. I believe this is the reason why her students always want to share their news with her.
During reading exercises she also didn’t correct every mistake students made while reading. She waited until they finished reading and asked them questions that prompted students to use these words. That's when she corrected the mistakes.
I also noticed that my teacher always tried to look “behind” each mistake, asking herself “Why is this student making this mistake”?
During writing, the teacher didn’t just tell the students how to spell the word correctly. She asked the student to try and correct the mistake first. When students were working with Shared Notes, she asked students who made a mistake, find the correct spelling in other students’ writing.
Please find the link to the Observation Journal here.
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