Standard 6~8

Lesson Plan

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kQn3XkYDrcAeZ8zbXlJqYLL8qmLxWuWUQS3clJwnDVQ/edit?usp=sharing

Reflection

I designed an interview assessment, peer review as formative assessment and presentation to the foreigner as the summative assessment. These are my first attempts to conduct them.

My video starts from an interview assessment. I learned this assessment from a teacher taught in Module 6. I found that this assessment is a great opportunity for students to reflect their learning. In my past teaching experience, I always teach new content to students and have never left time for students to reflect on their learning and examine the areas they need to improve. During the interview, I can check students’ individual difficulties and guide them through differentiation. Not only that, since students are assessed through individual interviews, they are more serious on their learning tasks.

I also attempted to conduct the peer review assessment. My original design was that students have to review their shoulder partner and then other groups of students. Due to the time constraint, I canceled  reviewing the other group. Since most teachers rarely conduct peer review in my teaching context, students and I weren’t familiar with the process. I spent some time guiding them which was time-consuming. If I can do it again, I would take at least 50 minutes to completely conduct a peer review session. I also found that students need to review others' products and they can master their learning. I also deeply feel the effectiveness of peer review from my program, in which cohort peers review others’ teaching and learn something from their peers.

For the presentation assessment, I used to consider whether students present in front of a class or present like an exhibition. Both of these are dilemmas, because presenting in front of the class, students may feel anxious and could be even demotivated, they probably did not enjoy the ownership of their learning. If I design an exhibition presentation, where students stand beside their work to present, students would visit without any guidance which would make it chaotic. Lastly, I decided that both the foreigner and I visit and assess each student one by one, while other students take advantage of that time to practice. The result showed that it seemed like I made a good decision.

I also designed a rubric and made it in Google Form, which lets me assess students more efficiently. I hold a tablet while students are presenting their work. I was able to click the Google Form to record the result of the assessment, and then I can immediately show them their scores. The best was that their learning result can be automatically organized visually, shown with a bar chart.   

I designed and planned to meet students’ needs surveyed in the first class. Most students want to learn how to fly a drone, explore their curiosity and express their learning in English. I think I have done it well to meet their needs. Despite the beginning of the semester, students were not engaged and felt struggles with speaking English. I overcame those difficulties and attempted to implement various instructional and assessment strategies including vocabulary assessment, multiple choice, performance checklist, observation.. and so on. Particularly, I was attempting to invite a foreigner to visit my classroom, hopefully this could create an authentic English speaking environment. It is a fact that my teaching strategies have received positive outcomes. Students were more engaged and were more willing to open their mouths to speak English. In fact, I did a lot of preparation before the class. For example, I had an online meeting with him to discuss the procedure of the lesson, students’ needs, and prompt questions. With the hard work of preparation, I fortunately received positive feedback, and even some students asked for the foreigner to come again since they have never taken such a meaningful lesson. A few students said this was the first time they talked to foreigners. “It was really interesting!” they said. I was shocked and surprised at the effect of the activity. With the impact, I think that students are on track with my expectations and I can design more English speaking activities in an authentic and interactive way.    

In terms of PBL, I was thinking that I will implement a PBL in clinical practice to sharpen and assess what I learned from another institute. After the classes were taught in the previous weeks, I think this is not actually project-based learning because I still lack lessons for students to further investigate and discuss to gain deeper understanding of their chosen projects. Time limitation could be the most challenging part of implementing PBL. Through this valuable experience, I learned that having students do project-based learning in English as a second language is much more difficult than implementing it in native language. Students must overcome language barriers and get used to different instructional strategies from the teacher. It was really more than I expected.  I hope I will earn a certificate from the University of Pennsylvania after studying the TEACH NOW program and get more professional teaching strategies of PBL.