Reflection of ICC lesson; preview and presentation stages
Preview stage
I’ve thrown up two images of my extended family at different years. With regards to making a communicative classroom and improving the quality of classroom life, this seems to have worked. I’ve shown the students my family, introduced my brothers and myself. All of which had great effect on the students; the resultant laughing and jokes are not quite picked up on the movie.
1:55 allocation of pairs – “what’s the topic” I rephrase latter, “when do they have get-togethers?” In my mind I had gone through this lesson more than a half dozen times, but there my train of imagination doesn’t quite make the station. I should have pre-scripted the instructions, it’s saves on the pauses. Sure, pausing to think is better than gabbing off and sending your TTT/ STT ratios to very poor exchanges. But even if I don’t recall all of the script, I’m on the track anyways.
2:50 the students are set a task to think of holidays and festivals. No timing set, instead I monitor.
3:50 Feedback to task, I have the students swap pairs and talk some more. Rolling up my sleeves, I watch with baited breath.
4:39 I repeat again my instructions. I should have set instructions first, and then checked that they understood the instructions. Bad habits! Note to self: Chunk instructions. Set instructions, check. Get up, move. Talk.
5:28 I call a stop to the holidays and festivals discussion. Interesting to hear that papero day is considered a holiday. It take a few seconds to call the class ‘to order’ but I think this method would work efficiently only in a small group. Larger groups in my experience needs more time.
Presentation stage
5:44 I begin the presentation stage. I show the students slides of different festivals from different countries, but I don’t pose the question, “What do they have?” in any of them. I lead the students through the context “you’ve got your plate”, this plus dual-coded with eating action. I haven’t said this with any great volume, though the slide is somewhat self-evident, I’d have to say it more prominently in the future.
8:39 the students having known what I want from the previous slides, tell me what I want to know with me just pointing at the parts of the image. Great. To increase communicative levels, I could have asked one student in the pair to ask what food do you see? Once this routine is setup, it would simply be a matter of choosing a student to ask. Will keep this in mind for future lessons. Lots of talking ‘sideways’ to the students. Not at them, but not exactly to them. I am looking at the image though. My role in this situation is to lead the students through the slides. In preparation for the isolation stage “they have/ eat”.
9:10 much better at presenting the slide. Set the context strongly, dual-coding and a nice strong voice. All evidence that practice does make perfect, and that a rehearsal before hand, just to get these little moments right, would be worth it. The alternative is thinking through it, though I must say that the second method is prone to distraction!
9:36 though it’s not actually my plate or my photo, I am able to personalize the replies to the students by saying “it’s my home” and they from there the students gather it’s “in New Zealand”.
The students are definitely fired up and in the ball park with regards to the topic. The style of teaching is very much a teacher fronted class, though with the teacher talking less, he becomes a facilitator instead. The setting of routines would enable the students to take control of some of the lesson in that they can ask some of the preset questions. My style of teaching in this class is one that is leading, but not that intrusive. The setting of the tone of the class starting from the first two slides is a good move, lending to a good atmosphere in the class and amongst the students that, presumably know each other. From the first two slides, the students are able to construct a general framework and then a more specific one as the slides progressed. I did not use the whiteboard, but had I moved onto the isolation stage I would have. Writing of the target language would be written onto the board and then used from there. To elicit I used images of the relevant festivals I wanted to focus on later.
Student talk and involvement: I’ve made a conscious move to speak as little as possible and to turn over or give the students as much chance to speak as possible. Pairwork, and elicitation lead to most if not all the students speaking, some more than others.
There were times where I thought that the TTT/ STT ratios were excellent, the students talking more than I had. Though at the instruction setting stages the TTT ratio goes right up. Two sentences from the teacher should be followed by a comprehension check. That would make that stage all the much clearer for the students.
As far as communicative TT versus evaluative talk goes there is a definite tilt towards communicative talk. It all starts from the mood set at the beginning of the class. Throughout the preview stage, I’ve tried to speak very little, and in the presentation stage I’ve spoken even less. I hadn’t need to say much more than what’s this, and not say yes/ no but ‘this is chicken’. The student is not felt bad about the wrong response but has reflected on the fact that this is how is it is in New Zealand. I feel that if it were a Korean student they would not reflect as much as our simulated students I taught here.
A slant on ICC
With regards to the four compass points of Knowing (how, about, why and self) I’ve covered simply the about and perhaps inferred the how. In eliciting the foods that the respective festivals or holidays use in their celebrations I’ve indirectly shown the students the what of the celebrations through food (re: turkey versus chicken). I would cover more about the “what and how do they” later on in the lesson. Once the slides have run their course, I would then highlight the ‘about’ stage in isolating the language. They have/ eat… From this stage would go onto the knowing about by having initially the pairs read about, and then draw the foods they had read about. This lesson.
Overall, the students have learnt a little about different festivals from each other and, from the slide show I had shown. As far as ICC the initial parts of the lesson have touched superficially on cultural knowings but sets up well, in my opinion the rest of the lesson that is to come. I should also add that the whole lesson could not be possibly covered in the given 50 minutes of an after school class but two lessons. the remaining time perhaps could be used eating chicken in mock observance of a Christmas dinner.
