On Friday I observed Gulcan's lesson of speaking. The students were supposed to make complaints to the school manager about some problems they had at school. Generally speaking, it went quite well. She gave a clear instruction of the steps of the activity and she made an example with a student. She gave a time limit for the activity, too. While students were speaking, she monitored them and helped them when necessary. And at the end of the activity, she got feedbacks by nominating two pairs to do their activity in front of the class. The only problem was that she corrected almost all of the mistakes on the spot while students are speaking. I thought it might have been a little discouraging for the students. It could have been better if she corrected the most common mistakes at the end of the class.
28 Ocak 2013 Pazartesi
On Friday I observed Gulcan's lesson of speaking. The students were supposed to make complaints to the school manager about some problems they had at school. Generally speaking, it went quite well. She gave a clear instruction of the steps of the activity and she made an example with a student. She gave a time limit for the activity, too. While students were speaking, she monitored them and helped them when necessary. And at the end of the activity, she got feedbacks by nominating two pairs to do their activity in front of the class. The only problem was that she corrected almost all of the mistakes on the spot while students are speaking. I thought it might have been a little discouraging for the students. It could have been better if she corrected the most common mistakes at the end of the class.
23 Ocak 2013 Çarşamba
At the first week of our second-module training, ı had a chance to observe Merve Işık's lesson. ıt was a reading-based lesson. the objectives that I had determined were 'What are T's roles in a classroom' and 'Do the students check theirown progress?'
there was no behavior to observe about the second objective; that's why, ı will mention the results of the first one. I had taken some notes before the lesson: a teacher has a great many roles such as instructor, presenter, actor, organizer, arranger, prompter etc. Merve performed enough of those roles for a reading class. she was a prompter, resourc, helper and facilitator during the class. And the responsiblities were put into practise relevantly; I mean they fit the purpose of the exercises.
Sedef KONUK
there was no behavior to observe about the second objective; that's why, ı will mention the results of the first one. I had taken some notes before the lesson: a teacher has a great many roles such as instructor, presenter, actor, organizer, arranger, prompter etc. Merve performed enough of those roles for a reading class. she was a prompter, resourc, helper and facilitator during the class. And the responsiblities were put into practise relevantly; I mean they fit the purpose of the exercises.
Sedef KONUK
22 Ocak 2013 Salı
Observation on Learner Autonomy
We had a chance to observe Berrin's class while she was teaching the future tenses. It was a fun class. Yet, learner-autonomy wise... Well, it didn't exist. I have to agree with everything Faruk's said. No teacher can break a solid habit formed over 12 years just in a couple of months. Students struggle; teachers struggle. Berrin kept pushing the students to do things on their own, without asking for her help. However, there's a certain point to which you can push someone. Basically, all I learnt was that, it's a long, bumpy, dusty, roughed up road; yet there's light at the end of it. I think.
21 Ocak 2013 Pazartesi
REFLECTION 2
Today I had a chance to observe my colleague Merve's class. My focus for this week was vocabulary, grammar and reading. For vocabulary teaching, I asked the question 'which techniques are used in vocabulary teaching as an objective. The topic of the day was animals and the teacher used visual aids (powerpoint presentation) to present the topic. There were some unknown animal names for students so with the help of visual aids, Merve could easily make students comprehend the words. she used verbal explanation to clarify some of the unknown words. So with the help of visual aids and contextualizing, she could provide comprehensible input for the students. For grammar teaching, I decided to look for inductive / deductive teaching and contextualizing again. they talked about guessing structures ( can't be, possible, likely to...). I can say that they were taught in contextualizing to some extent because they took some exapmle sentences from the listening passage and they put ithem into catagories as possible, not possible, certain. I also had the aim of looking pre reading stage but this hour they didn't deal with reading. from the meeting, the most important awareness for me was the one with listening part. Teacher Figen asked us whether the teacher asked for the reason or clue i mean the justifrication for the answers in listening part and we said no. At that moment I thought about my previous lessons and I realized that almost no time did I ask my students to justify thier answers for listening. I have always done this for reading, but not for listening. Thus I can clearly say that this is the most valuable benefit of the today's meeting for me, which I'm planning to for my real teaching time.
Today I had a chance to observe my colleague Merve's class. My focus for this week was vocabulary, grammar and reading. For vocabulary teaching, I asked the question 'which techniques are used in vocabulary teaching as an objective. The topic of the day was animals and the teacher used visual aids (powerpoint presentation) to present the topic. There were some unknown animal names for students so with the help of visual aids, Merve could easily make students comprehend the words. she used verbal explanation to clarify some of the unknown words. So with the help of visual aids and contextualizing, she could provide comprehensible input for the students. For grammar teaching, I decided to look for inductive / deductive teaching and contextualizing again. they talked about guessing structures ( can't be, possible, likely to...). I can say that they were taught in contextualizing to some extent because they took some exapmle sentences from the listening passage and they put ithem into catagories as possible, not possible, certain. I also had the aim of looking pre reading stage but this hour they didn't deal with reading. from the meeting, the most important awareness for me was the one with listening part. Teacher Figen asked us whether the teacher asked for the reason or clue i mean the justifrication for the answers in listening part and we said no. At that moment I thought about my previous lessons and I realized that almost no time did I ask my students to justify thier answers for listening. I have always done this for reading, but not for listening. Thus I can clearly say that this is the most valuable benefit of the today's meeting for me, which I'm planning to for my real teaching time.
18 Ocak 2013 Cuma
Reflection (for Birsen, Gökhan, Doğukan, Hilal and Numan)
Of the various skills covered in this observation, which do you feel you would most like to consider further in relation to your own teaching?
16 Ocak 2013 Çarşamba
Observation & Reflection
I observed Sedef's class for my first task. After reading the related chapters, I decided on two objectives to observe. ' what kind of roles does the teacher have in the classroom?' was my first objective. these are the roles of the teacher below:
Lastly, I realized the importance of motivation, feedback and organizer as a role once more!
I observed Sedef's class for my first task. After reading the related chapters, I decided on two objectives to observe. ' what kind of roles does the teacher have in the classroom?' was my first objective. these are the roles of the teacher below:
- resource: she helped with unknown words( to tell literature, she use hyponym technique - authors, novels...)
- initiator: she gave examples from her own high school years first to encourage them
- monitoring: she monitored the classroom during self study task.
- controller: she was really alert and not lem students to deal with off task behaviors.
- organizer: her instructions were clear and there was no confusion about what to do in class activities.
Lastly, I realized the importance of motivation, feedback and organizer as a role once more!
20 Kasım 2012 Salı
Kamile's and Gülcan's classes
Here are the links for Kamile's and Gülcan's classes.
https://vimeo.com/53938127
https://vimeo.com/53935103
Kamile: Reflection (20.11.2012)
Kamile: Reflection (20.11.2012)
It was a tiring day. I was with my worse class who were chatting in turkish all the time. This really makes me demotivated. After we covered the reading text in the course book we had a true-false activity about the reading text.Later, we dealt with our new grammar topic ''gerunds& infinitives''. As you all know it is a confusing subject for the students.I provided them with examples to make the topic clear.After I explained the topic clearly I think they understood it. Then, we had a quiz. It was a bit difficult for me to try to attract my students' attention to the lesson because of my terrible toothache:(
19 Kasım 2012 Pazartesi
ISIK - REFLECTION (19/11/12)
Today the classes started in a positive way and i can say that it went same all day. I wore red today and my students told me that i looked nice and this created somehow energy in the classroom atmosphere. I felt motivated and they felt inspired, it was weird it was as if the power of red affected all of us :) we did speaking a lot, but i realized that the same activity could work in one class and not work in another class. With my main class, i haven't been able to do speaking a lot, most of them are passive receivers, but with other class, we havew been ablo to speak more. Another interesting thing happened today was that during the break one of the students came totell me that some of the students in class really bother him since they talked a lot and they distract his attention to the lesson, he asked me to warn them more. However, the problem is I warn them almost every 30seconds sometimes and i am not sure what else i can do. i just feel like Fatih Terim, what can i do sometimes? :)
Today the classes started in a positive way and i can say that it went same all day. I wore red today and my students told me that i looked nice and this created somehow energy in the classroom atmosphere. I felt motivated and they felt inspired, it was weird it was as if the power of red affected all of us :) we did speaking a lot, but i realized that the same activity could work in one class and not work in another class. With my main class, i haven't been able to do speaking a lot, most of them are passive receivers, but with other class, we havew been ablo to speak more. Another interesting thing happened today was that during the break one of the students came totell me that some of the students in class really bother him since they talked a lot and they distract his attention to the lesson, he asked me to warn them more. However, the problem is I warn them almost every 30seconds sometimes and i am not sure what else i can do. i just feel like Fatih Terim, what can i do sometimes? :)
Kamile: Reflection (19.11.2012)
Kamile: Reflection (19.11.2012)
Today was really different. I had a video class today and my students were quite different during the recording. Actually, they asked me the reason why we recorded the class and I told them that as they made me unhappy I wanted a recording and they believed that!! They decided to be hardworking students. They were much more silent and participative than normal so we had a satisfactory lesson. After the video class they continued to be energetic.Of course, I had some students sleeping as normal but it was not a big problem.Actually, today's only problem was by terrible toothache so İt was a difficult day for me.
When it comes to the classes we studied on a reading about which I provided pictures and a video for my students.We had lots of speaking activity about the topic of the reading because the topic was really enjoyable and appropriate for disscussion...
Sedef: Reflection_9
Today I had a problem with one of my students. Actually that was not a big deal but still made me unhappy. The topic was 'appearance' and the vocabulary included some adjectives such as blonde, fat, overweight, slim etc. or some nouns like beard, moustache etc. One student in the classroom always complains of some things. I was trying to teach the vocabulary making the students in the classroom stand up and I showed their hair, eyes etc. (curly, wavy...) I heard him saying what we will do with this information, it doesn't have any use for us. He also wanted me to hear it. This was not the first attitude of him towards me and the lesson. He demotivates both me and the other students in the classroom. I couldn't know how to react. This was the only problem and it was OK for the other lessons.
18 Kasım 2012 Pazar
16.11.12
So... Got a headband, Allison's sunglasses, and a backpack and walked into class. My students flipped! One thumbs up for getting their attention. The unit was Travel Partners, so I taught them some vocab like "backpacker" and stuff, then we studied the comparatives, using some not so much fun travel vocab, comparing transportation, accommodation and what not. Then I gave them some more fun statements to compare (such as "coming to school and going out with your boy/girlfriend) which went quite well. I'd just put on my sunglasses (well, Allison's sunglasses) and shout "HELLO!" to get their attention. Helped a lot really. Aaaaand another really good thing (thanks to Merve) was the coffee ticket competition activity. Merve gave me these statements (like London's population: something something, Paris' population: something something. And there was the adjective the students were supposed to use: crowded), there were 10 of them. We formed 7 groups of 4, each group got 10 statements, and they were supposed to write full sentences with no mistakes for each statement, and stick them on the board. After they were done writing and sticking, we went over the sentences one by one, at each mistake moving onto another group. We had two winner teams. They had so much fun, all of them were taking pictures of the board after we were done going over the grammar points.
The downer of the day was that it's really difficult to keep up with the book and teach all the grammar points, still struggling with that. And the computers in the classes aren't working so well, took ages to do a couple of listening activities. All in all, it wasn't an awful day. And they were in a good mood because their writing exams went well (so they thought at least).
The downer of the day was that it's really difficult to keep up with the book and teach all the grammar points, still struggling with that. And the computers in the classes aren't working so well, took ages to do a couple of listening activities. All in all, it wasn't an awful day. And they were in a good mood because their writing exams went well (so they thought at least).
17 Kasım 2012 Cumartesi
Kamile: Reflection (16.11.2012)
Kamile: Reflection (16.11.2012)
It was a really tiring day. After the exam my students are generally too distracted and it was difficult to keep trying to teach them something.In the first two hours I was with one of my classes and we studied on writing. I provided them with an example of application letter and CV. After they had an idea about an application letter I wanted them to apply for a job by writing an application letter as a homework. In the last three hours I was with my other class who were as distracted as the others.In this class I provided some new vocabularies about relationships and feelings. Then we had a reading text with questions and event-ordering activity. During the whole lessons I had just two students who tried to learn something, which was really annoying.Some of the others were sleeping and some were chatting. I think as they had easy MMTs they started to feel much more relaxed. I really don't know what to do with such careless and unrespectful students. I feel really tired of having such classes...
16 Kasım 2012 Cuma
Sedef: Reflection_8
Today, we covered superlative forms and giving directions. The students were really attentive and interested in the lesson. We could listen to the dialogues in the coursebook. Then we had fun while practising the phrases used when asked 'Can you tell me the way to ...? ' I told them to choose someone in the classroom and then an object. the student gave the directions for the other student to find the object in the classroom. It was really funny because some students changed the activity a little bit and made his/her friend stand up, go around the classroom by giving directions and sit down the same place without making any objects found :)
The computer was working well, my students were participative in the activities so I was content with the lessons today.
The computer was working well, my students were participative in the activities so I was content with the lessons today.
15 Kasım 2012 Perşembe
Week of November 12th
Hello all! Sorry I have been a bad blogger, things have been so busy. I would like to talk about my Monday and Wednesday classes this week which went well although I had to play "mean teacher" a few times. All in all, Monday went well. We started a new unit on film and music which are two things very near and dear to me, so I like this unit thus far. On Monday we focused on reading and it was a very long passage for the students. It was about the behaviors of British teens when talking about downloading music, movies, going to the cinema and listening to the radio. Although my students are very bright, they sometimes answer questions simply based on whether or not they see the same words written in the question in the text. I have been trying to get them to focus more on critical thinking and decided to devote more time to the reading activity than usual. I think this worked out very well because even though we had to read parts of the text several times, it forced them to find the crucial information. I have repeat students, and sometimes you can just see the lack of enthusiasm in their faces. It makes me sad because they are so intelligent, but just frustrated. Overall, Monday was a successful class. I am still having trouble with a particularly chatty row in my class, but they facilitate a lot of conversation within the class as a whole so I try to focus their chattiness into productivity. Wednesday was a good series of classes. We talked about Glastonbury and Woodstock and completed an activity in which they had to fill in the lyrics for the song "Woodstock." I showed them pictures of my dad when he was in his "hippie phase" (see attached photo) and they all thought this was hysterical. I really love the times when I can just talk to my students conversationally. That sounds redundant, but there is such a difference between talking to them as a teacher and talking to them as a friendly mentor who really has the time and energy to listen about their lives and be able to give them insight into things they are interested in. Whenever I include personal things like photos of my family or home it really creates a whole new layer to the classroom that I really enjoy. Anywho, I kind of got off track there, but I enjoyed Wednesdays lesson for this reason is my main point! I had to take away some break time because of talking, but overall a good day. Let's see what Friday has in store for me!
13/11/12
Today was also an average day. The only issue was in a writing exercise. Again, we had plenty of time, so we could practice writing for the exam. I had my students write from the DVD portion of the book. They all wrote a paragraph or two and then they corrected their own. I wrote the criteria for corrections on the board. I wanted them to remember to correct their own writings and look at their own previous writing mistakes and remembering their faults so they can check them as they complete the exam. Thinking back, I should have had them complete the "checking" list, but they were writing as I completed the list.
I had them check their own, and then I mixed up their papers and had them check each others . This was a good idea, as I differentiated or intentionally gave certain papers to certain students. I tried to pair up a weak student with a more advanced one, that way the advanced student could effectively correct the weaker's and the weaker student could see a good example. This worked well with most. I should have insisted that students corrected more. Some didn't correct much, if at all. We just had to complete more of the book than time allowed, so we couldn't fully milk the exercise like I would have wanted. I think it did help, however, and they hopefully will do well on the writing exam.
I had them check their own, and then I mixed up their papers and had them check each others . This was a good idea, as I differentiated or intentionally gave certain papers to certain students. I tried to pair up a weak student with a more advanced one, that way the advanced student could effectively correct the weaker's and the weaker student could see a good example. This worked well with most. I should have insisted that students corrected more. Some didn't correct much, if at all. We just had to complete more of the book than time allowed, so we couldn't fully milk the exercise like I would have wanted. I think it did help, however, and they hopefully will do well on the writing exam.
12/11/12 Allison
Today was an average day. Nothing good, nothing bad... I was observed by Dilek and my "around the world" game went extremely well. The students were good sports. The only issue was timing; it took awhile to complete the lesson today, but we had enough time, so no worries!
14 Kasım 2012 Çarşamba
Sedef: Reflection_7
There wasn't anything special today. In the first lesson, I announced their last quizzes' results. I indicated that I was not content with them. I somehow warned them about the wrting exam because of the mistakes that I noticed on their papers.
Then we covered DVD part of 6th unit; the students always enjoyed watching these DVDs; however, it was a nightmare today due to the big problems with computer. Despite all the difficulties, we managed to work on the video. Then we started the new unit. The students were interested in the topic which is 'Holidays'. It was an appropriate topic to make the sts talk to each other. the underlying grammar structure was comparative. After practising on the structure, I made them work in pairs and compare their hometowns and Eskişehir. They were eager to make this comparison because they all have some ideas about Eskişehir in their minds. Lastly, they worked in pairs again and prepared a conversation about one of their holidays and they had some questions as guides in their coursebook. They also compared the holiday resort and the city/town in which they live. Then we role played it. The conversations were perfect. I told to the sts sitting and watching to take notes of their friends' mistakes to be shared after each role play. They were really careful not to miss any mistakes.
Then we covered DVD part of 6th unit; the students always enjoyed watching these DVDs; however, it was a nightmare today due to the big problems with computer. Despite all the difficulties, we managed to work on the video. Then we started the new unit. The students were interested in the topic which is 'Holidays'. It was an appropriate topic to make the sts talk to each other. the underlying grammar structure was comparative. After practising on the structure, I made them work in pairs and compare their hometowns and Eskişehir. They were eager to make this comparison because they all have some ideas about Eskişehir in their minds. Lastly, they worked in pairs again and prepared a conversation about one of their holidays and they had some questions as guides in their coursebook. They also compared the holiday resort and the city/town in which they live. Then we role played it. The conversations were perfect. I told to the sts sitting and watching to take notes of their friends' mistakes to be shared after each role play. They were really careful not to miss any mistakes.
Kamile: Reflection (14.11.2012)
Today was less tiring than Monday and Tuesday. In the first hour I announced the results of their seventh quiz. After we went over the answers of the quiz and we had a feedback session. We spend time to solve their problems on the grammar subjects ''past simple and present perfect''. Then, we did speaking activity about the jobs. As they had already been presented some job offers in the newspaper, I wanted them to ask for some information about these jobs. Meanwhile, I provided them with the topic of making polite requests. I gave them some information about 'noun clauses'.Later, we had a pair work in which they wrote a dialogue to apply for a job and later on they act out it. Then, we had a writing session as a practice for mid module test 2. I presented them the linkers of sequence, the linkers of addition and the linkers of contrast to be used in their writings.They practised on writing with frequent feedbacks. In the last hour we had a quiz and that was the end of the classes.
In the afternoon we had a meeting with our trainers. It went well. Actually, during these meeting I sometimes felt really unfamiliar with the things spoken because of my 'different' students...
13 Kasım 2012 Salı
Merve: Reflection #4 (13.11.12)
Today was really tiring because of the technical difficulties : I always had to make quick decisions, change the plan because the software didn't work. It distracted my students attention from the activity and it was difficult to motivate them again and again. I know I should anticipate such problems beforehand, however the server is too moody! It works well one second, and when I turn back it shuts down.
Today in both classes, we covered the third section of unit 6. The section provided us with a lot of opportunity to practice past simple. Yesterday my students were quite succesful in producing written workusing past simple, and today they produced spoken language using past simple. I think only in this unit the coursebook gives detailed activities and explanation about one grammar topic. Some parts were overlapping and I wasn't successful in adapting them: therefore I felt as I did what the book said to me today. So, I was bored after a while and so were my students. However, today we produced language, and except for some drawbacks, it was a great chance to use the newly learned grammar point.
Today in both classes, we covered the third section of unit 6. The section provided us with a lot of opportunity to practice past simple. Yesterday my students were quite succesful in producing written workusing past simple, and today they produced spoken language using past simple. I think only in this unit the coursebook gives detailed activities and explanation about one grammar topic. Some parts were overlapping and I wasn't successful in adapting them: therefore I felt as I did what the book said to me today. So, I was bored after a while and so were my students. However, today we produced language, and except for some drawbacks, it was a great chance to use the newly learned grammar point.
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