Reflective Summary
Reflecting
on my teaching experience at Sussex College, Kiribathgoda I define it as an
exciting and valuable professional opportunity that I experienced in my life.
Prior to the commencement of the teaching practicum, I was able to identify the
needs of students in each class by depending on the ideas and the assumptions
given by the English teachers in the school. Having pursued a TESL
undergraduate program at the University of Kelaniya for over three and half
years, I have received comprehensive education and training in English Language
Teaching. Thus, this internship presented a valuable opportunity for me to
apply the knowledge and skills I acquired during my academic tenure, thereby
enriching my teaching approach under guidance. Even though I assumed the role
of a teacher during my practicum, I felt a strong connection with the students
I was teaching. During my internship, I had to teach multiple grades from grade 1-10. Even though all the other subjects in this school are taught according to the national curriculum, there is a specific syllabus for the English language. The English text book called "Jump Aboard" is used to teach English for the primary grades from grade 1-10 and their there are specific English textbooks and workbooks for the upper grade students. My internship as a student teacher provided me with a deeply
meaningful and invaluable experience, emphasizing that teaching is an ongoing
journey of learning. Selecting Sussex College, Kiribathgoda for my internship
proved to be a wise decision. I was able to get a dedicated mentorship and an
infectious enthusiasm of the students I encountered. Assigned to teach multiple
classes from grade 1- 10, I found myself privilege to engage with diverse
students, encompassing differences in gender, nationality, and academic skills.
Reflecting on the lesson materials, instructional strategies, student’s
responses, and the personal growth I experienced throughout my practicum, I am
confident that my internship had laid a promising foundation for my future
career endeavors.
Nevertheless,
through the reflection of the practicum, analyzing both the effective and the
ineffective aspects of the lessons, reflecting on the materials and their
appropriateness with the teaching methods and also reflecting on the reactions of
the students to the lessons, it becomes evident how significant professional development
occurred during my experience as a an inexperience teacher.
Arikan
et al. (2008) states that “the quality which distinguishes ineffective teachers
from the effective ones is the latter’s ability to make the most boring course
interesting and important to the students” (p.43). During my time as a teacher,
I put effective classroom management strategies into practice. Considering that
it was my first time teaching, I believe I did a good job of fulfilling my
duties. In order to create a productive and orderly learning atmosphere, I
carefully planned and explained expectations to the pupils. Several things went
smoothly during the internship. There was clear engagement with the tasks and
the content from the students' active participation. High levels of student
participation and compliments on the relevancy of the material and the clarity
of my directions were favorable aspects of teaching. Incorporating interactive activities like group
activities, pair activities, and role- plays was an engaging and an interesting
experience for all the students from grade 1-10. I made an
effort to keep the students' enthusiasm in the learning process alive
throughout my teaching sessions by showing them my admiration for their efforts
through the expressions of appreciation such as “good”, “very good”, and
“great”. The use of gamification
increased the interaction and engagement of the students in all the classes.
For example, I used the game “pass the ball” to teach “Adjectives” to grade 7
students where they were given a toy and asked them to make a circle and pass
the toy by sharing an adjective to describe the toy. It was an interesting
experience for the learners. Moreover, I was able to build a good teacher-
student rapport by giving an opportunity for the students to ask questions
freely and to solve their doubts during the lessons. The teacher-talk time and
the student- talk time was balanced equally and the learning is a more student-
centered learning. Then, integrating multimedia resources like videos and
audios, other visual aids like flashcards, picture cards, posters, and charts
enhanced the students’ comprehension and retention of lessons.
However,
I encountered a challenge related to time management as one period only had 35 minutes.
Balancing content delivery with interactive activities took more time than
expected, necessitating pace adjustments to ensure key concepts were adequately
covered. Then, most of the students
from all the classes seem to be distracted when they were given individual
writing activities. Moreover, classroom management with the grade 9 and 10
classes was difficult as most of the students of those classes were not
attentive and listening during all the periods including the English period I
had to face another challenge as some
of the students struggled to stay focused, requiring me to have improved
classroom management skills to address varying student needs effectively. Moreover, I thought that I would
become more successful in my teaching if my lesson contents were divided into
small chunks instead of teaching all the concepts at one time hence, some
students are not competent enough to grasp some contents at once and they need
more time and practice to learn those concepts. To engage the audience
effectively, I employed a variety of teaching methods, such as group activities,
visual aids, and real-world examples. I learned the importance of flexibility
in adapting to unexpected challenges, particularly time constraints. In future
teaching, I aim to refine my time management skills, use a diverse range of
teaching methods, and focus on building a supportive and inclusive classroom community.
The lessons are primarily aimed to develop the
language skills of the students including reading, writing, speaking,
listening, grammar and vocabulary through reading comprehensions, writing
activities like essay writing and creative writing, listening activities,
speaking activities like impromptu speeches, prepared speeches and role-plays.
The efficiency of the students’ learning during my teaching practicum mainly
depended on the strengths and the weaknesses of materials and activities I utilized
for my lessons. The lesson plans were created by depending on the data gathered
through the needs analysis conducted by discussing with the English teachers in
the school. The intended learning outcomes of each lesson were designed
according to the Blooms’ Taxonomy. Lesson planning was done following a
structure where all the language skills of the students are enhanced and improved.
I applied an eclectic approach of teaching with the combination of different teaching
and learning methods such as behaviorism, task- based learning, constructivism,
and collaborative learning are used by applying positive and negative
reinforcement, giving enough tasks to apply the learnt elements, and providing
a more student- centered learning opportunity for students to construct their
own knowledge through appropriate scaffolding. The most prominent concepts that
I used when teaching were the ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development) and MKO (More
Knowledgeable Others) which comes under the socio- cultural theory by Vygotsky.
I used those two concept by scaffolding and giving students the opportunity to
construct their own knowledge by interacting with the more capable peers in the
class. For example, when the class was dividing in to groups for the group
activities, I used to mix the lower level students, average level students, and
higher level students together by giving them the opportunity to interact and
learn from each other. Furthermore, I was able to apply the
PPP (Presentation, Practice, Production) approach in my lesson planning
procedure. Through most of the lead-in activities, I allowed the students to
brainstorm and guess the lesson through eliciting. There, I only acted as the
facilitator and students became the central authority within the classroom. Arendas (1998, as cited in Qin & Wang, 2021),
delimits lead-in as “a technique by teachers at the beginning of a new lesson
or when presenting new knowledge to prepare students to learn and establish a
communicative link between the learners and the information about to be
presented”. Accordingly, I realized that the lead-in activities,
such as language games helped students activate their schemata, arouse
curiosity about the topic by piquing their interest in the subject, get pumped
up for the class, and explore their ideas before learning comprehensive
grammar. After completing the lead- in tasks, the students were directed to
complete the pre-tasks and the while-tasks to practice what they had learned. I
applied behaviorism in most of the tasks. Before starting the games, I reminded
the children of the incentives they would receive for finishing the given tasks
successfully. After each game, I encouraged the students to applaud for each
group who won the game as a means of peer support and encouragement. It was one
of my strategies in teaching that was used to motivate the students to actively
engage in the in-class activities. The post- tasks were there for the
production stage where the students had to apply their knowledge gained through
the previous tasks. In addition, I always attempted to make sure that my
students understood the instructions clearly. Throughout the group activities
and peer activities, I went to all the groups and students, monitored them
while reminding the remaining time that they had to complete the tasks. Most of
the time, I provided instructions for the group activities before dividing the
class in to groups because when the students go to their own groups, they start
to interact with their peers and might not listen to the instructions
carefully.
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Reflecting on the student’s reactions to the
lessons, most of the reactions were positive. When there were group activities,
the students from grade 1-8 showed active class participation and engagement by
saying “we really love to do group work”. Moreover, most of the students from
all most all the grades from 1-10 expressed their preference towards the game
and other interactive activities like watching video clips or listening to
audio clips during the lessons. They said “it was fun and interesting to do
games, to watch videos and listen to songs during the English language
lessons”. Even though the grade 09 and 10 students were distracted during the
writing and speaking activities, they seemed to be more engaged in the tasks
when the teacher was using games and other interactive visual and the auditory
aids when teaching.
The feedback from the two observation
sessions provided an invaluable opportunity for professional growth, enabling
correction of mistakes and critical reflection on lesson improvement. As a
student- teacher, skills such as situational thinking, adapting to unfamiliar
cultures and religious practices, understanding the unique needs and strengths
of students were emphasized. As a whole, the experience was refreshing and
enlightening contributing to my development as an educator.
Word Document of Reflective Summary
References
Qin,
Y., & Wang, P. (2021). How EFL Teachers Engage Students: A Multimodal
Analysis of
Pedagogic Discourse During Classroom
Lead-Ins. Frontiers in Psychology.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.793495
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