Lauren Caldwell

C&T 491 DR. Cho and Annette Jardon

6/26/17

Week 5 Reflective Journal

This week was another eventful one, but on Sunday Naomi and I just sat in a caf for a

few hours and hammered out our lesson plan. Before this, we only had a vague idea that we

wanted to make a lesson plan about tongue twisters. We looked online and found a fun game

where the students make their own alliterations. We were really excited about this idea because

we love giving the girls a chance to use their creativity in our classes. And in doing so, we also

get to go over some English grammar with them. At the same time, we can work on their English

pronunciation by choosing English tongue twisters that include the specific sounds that a lot of

Korean people have trouble with. This also gave Naomi the chance to talk about her specialty,

linguistics.

On Monday, we taught last weeks caption contest lesson for the last times. The teaching

order had to be moved around a little bit because of Naomis condition and her not being able to

teach two lessons in a row. During one of the lessons we taught on Monday, Naomi did kind of

take over the lesson for the explanation. So when we were supposed to be switching off every

bullet point on the slide, she was reading all of them. But while we were switching gears, I

mentioned it to her on the side and she apologized and I lead the later part of the class. I think

this was a good example of how sometimes we step on each others feet during this practicum,

but the key to conflict resolution is to get it out in the open as soon as possible so that nobody

stews over it and makes the matter worse.

 On Tuesday, we started teaching our new lesson, which had a lot of hitches, which I will

go over in my lesson reflection at the end of this journal entry. Tuesday was especially

frustrating because of the second graders testing schedule. First, we were told that there would

be no second grade classes on Tuesday, then we were told that the first class would happen, but it

would only be 30 minutes long. THEN, after we were all set up in E2, Jamie came in and told us

that the class had been moved to room 203, and that they were waiting for us there. Room 203

happens to be on the fifth floor. So, we had to run up the stairs and get set up again, as quickly as

possible. We ran into a few hiccups in the setup because there was not a computer hooked up to

the TV, and then the sound wasnt working, and then we had to plug in the Ethernet cable in

order to show the videos. So, the lesson started a lot later than we had hoped, but the class

already had a good idea of what tongue twisters were, so that kind of saved us. One of the girls

even started saying Peter Piper when we mentioned tongue twisters. Unfortunately, because of

the delay and the shortened class period, we didnt get to our activity, but they seemed like they

enjoyed it anyway. It also probably helped that we gave them all prizes anyway.

I thought that Wednesday and Thursday went fine, with only minimal tweaking of the

lesson plan between classes. Just like with the last lesson we taught, I think that the lesson got

better and better every time we taught it. On Monday when we taught though, it was a little bit

more difficult to get the girls to get into it. Partially because they were expecting to be able to

self-study during that time, and partially because they were just so tired from studying for their

final exams, they just did not really have as much energy as we were hoping for. We had to tell

them at the beginning of every class to put everything that was not for the English conversation

class away so they would not be studying their notes the whole time instead of participating in

our lesson.
 Over the weekend, we had our excursion to Sokcho, which was a lot of fun. We went to

the beach and climbed Seorak mountain. The mountain was beautiful. We rode a cable car up it

and then hiked around. It was a lot of fun, but my legs still hurt when I walk around, and it is

now three days later. The hostel we stayed at was called Mr. Egg and it was super cute, but there

were a few things that I did not like about it. One was that the WiFi did not work in any of our

rooms, but my biggest qualm about Mr. Egg is that when I was climbing up to get into bed

(which was the top bunk), my bed fell through and I fell with it. It was not a huge deal, because

nobody got hurt, but someone very well could have. And, even though I was not hurt, I was

pretty shaken up after that. I dont know if I would recommend the office of study abroad

continuing to use Mr. Egg in the future.

Lesson Plan Reflection

1. What is your overall impression of the lesson? What part of the lesson do you think went

well? What part of the lesson do you wish had gone better?

I think that for the most part the lesson went well, and most things that went poorly were fixed

for the next lesson we did. The girls seemed to enjoy the content of the lesson, but having groups

of 4 made it so there were too many groups and we couldnt easily get around. Also, the students

in the back couldnt see so they didnt really understand what was going on. For the next lesson,

we went ahead and put the students in groups of 6. Also, because we chose to use the white

boards, many of the students were distracted by drawing of them. Another thing that could have

gone better was our time management, because both of us thought that the class ended at 10

after, when it actually got out at 20 after. So we had to scramble for something to do in the last

10 minutes.
2. Were the lesson objectives met by all students by the end of the lesson? How do you know?

Did some students achieve the objectives more fully than others?

I think the students in the front at least seemed to be very into the lesson, but because of the

number of groups, a lot of the groups at the back were not very engaged. That was difficult for us

to tell, because it was also very hard to move around the room, but Greg and Annette told us in

the end that the students in the back really couldnt see the board or understand what was going

on. So, I think the closer to the front the students were, the more fully they achieved the

objectives.

3. What kinds of errors were they making? How did you treat those errors? Was your treatment

effective in improving their use of that particular language form?

A lot of the errors they were making were leaving out a lot of as and thes, which I usually just

pointed out to them and they added them in. I am not sure if my correction really helped them in

the long run, or if it would be better if I had pointed out that there was something missing there,

and asked them what was missing, but I was already running around the room like a chicken with

its head cut off, so I just did not have time to correct them in a way that would stick.

4. What did you hope would take place during the information exchange activity? How did you

decide on this particular activity? Was it interesting for them? Did they use authentic language?

We wanted the students to have a chance to use their creativity again, since it went over so well

in our last lesson. Also, tongue twisters can be a very good way to improve the students

pronunciation. I think that it was interesting to them. While we were doing the game, they did

seem to enjoy it and they got very competitive. I am not sure how authentic tongue twisters are,

conversationally, but they are good for pronunciation and a very fun cultural activity.
5. Was this lesson that you selected easy or difficult for your students? What part of the lesson

was new for them? What part did they already know? How did you attempt to provide them with

i+1?

Some of this activity was easy for them because they already had an understanding of what

tongue twisters are in Korean, but for the challenge tongue twisters we chose ones that native

speaker Koreans specifically have difficulty with because the sounds in them dont exist in

Korean.

6. In general, what have been your greatest successes in teaching this group? What do you think

you need to know how to do better?

In general, our greatest success in teaching this group is that the class never lacks energy, we just

need to work on directing that energy in a productive way for our lesson. Overall, I think the

biggest issue we had in this lesson was time management. Because there are so many different

parts to this lesson, it was very difficult to get the timing down. We also should have

communicated better beforehand about what we should do about tie breakers and stuff like that

in our game.

7. How is your teacher presence (teacher voice, body language, eye contact, etc.)?

I think that I have to work on my teacher voice, but I do think that I have fairly good body

language. I think that because I was holding the microphone, I couldnt really do anything with

my hands. I also need to work on letting them practice before asking for volunteers to try the

tongue twisters.

8. How was your classroom management? Were students paying attention and engaged?
I think that with every class we teach, our classroom management gets a little bit better. A big

part of why the students were disengaged at the that we were taking the video, at least in the back

is that we had too many groups and so the groups in the back couldnt understand what was

going on, but after we made the groups bigger, classroom management got better.