Yeşim TUFAN

ELE 403 Practice Teaching I

3rd Teaching

The Reflection Paper Of My Third Teaching

14th of December, 2019

My third teaching was on the 12th of December, 2019. It was for 9th-grade A1 level
students. The language skills were reading, writing and speaking. The unit was “In My Free
Time” and the topic was “frequency adverbs; always, often, sometimes and never”. I designed
a lesson plan for two lesson hours with my friend. In the first lesson, my friend made her
teaching and in the last lesson, I made my teaching through the lesson plan we designed. This
reflection paper will be based on the points that went well and the points that I need to
improve myself.

In our lesson plan, the student should have read the text again and answered the true-
false questions at the end of the first lesson. In the last hour, I should have started the lesson
by discussing the questions with the students and giving the correct answers. The reason for
this was that my friend had a time issue, so this part was not done in the first lesson.
Therefore, I had to continue with this part in the last lesson. I wanted the students to read the
text again and answer the true-false questions. I said that the students who answered the
questions early could compare their answers with each other. I think that it is good because if
there were any mistakes made by the students who answered the questions early, I gave them
time to notice and correct their mistakes with student-student interaction. The teachers should
give the students an opportunity and a little time to correct themselves because the students
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can often correct themselves when they realize they’ve made a mistake (Budden, 2008). After
the students answered the true-false questions, I asked whether there was any volunteer to say
the answer to each question or not. If there was not any volunteer, I chose somebody
randomly from the class list. Then, before starting the speaking activity, I gave the homework.
The homework was that they would choose a person from their family and ask him or her
what his or her free time activities are and how often he or she does these activities. Then,
they would make a mini-poster about that. I gave them enough time to take notes about the
homework and I said that they were free to draw pictures and use colorful papers. I showed an
example of the homework via PPT and everybody looked into the example. As a result of
that, everybody understood what to do in the homework well. Then, I instructed the follow-up
activity that was a speaking activity. In this activity, the students worked with their peers.
They stood up and made two lines. I divided these two lines into two groups. One group was
in front of the board and the other group was in the back of the class. In the lines, the person
that was opposite them was their peer. At this point, there was chaos because the students did
not understand how to make a line and find their peers. Therefore, I had to arrange them.
Then, I showed a picture to them via PPT and I asked the activity’s name in the picture. After
that, they asked their peers three questions about the activity on PPT. The questions were how
often they do the activity in the picture, where they do this activity and who they do this
activity with. First, they asked these questions to their peers and then, their peers asked these
questions to them. When I clapped my hand, they stopped talking. Then, a person from a line
went back to his or her line so that their peers changed for the next picture. I showed them
another picture and it went on like this process. I warned them about not talking loudly and
not disturbing the other peers because all of them were able to hear their peers’ voices. Then, I
gave an example to make the activity more clear. I modeled the activity with my friend. After
that, the students started the activity. I saw that some students did not want to answer the
questions which their peers asked. Therefore, I tried to encourage them and I wanted their
peers to ask the questions again. I helped them to answer the questions so that I saw they
answered the questions easily, but they just needed a little encouragement. Also, I could not
use the last two pictures that I prepared for this activity, but I already prepared extra pictures
for this activity in case the activities that were before the follow-up activity were completed
early. Besides, I think that the true-false questions of the reading text had been answered in
the first lesson, I could have used the last two pictures in the follow-up activity. At the
beginning of the last lesson, I hesitated about the time issue because I had to make the reading

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activity that should have completed in the first lesson. Despite everything, all of the activities
were completed.
In conclusion, if I had a chance to change my teaching, I would change the
arrangement of the students in the follow-up activity because it was a little complex and there
was chaos because of that. Therefore, I had to arrange them. I should not have made the
complex arrangement. Also, some of the students do not like speaking activities, so I should
continue to make these students more courageous and willing to speak in these activities by
helping them so that they see that they can do it. Besides, if there is a game or an activity that
requires that the students stand up in a follow-up or post activity, I will continue to give the
homework before this activity. As a result, they can not lose their attention to listening to their
homework carefully. Also, I will continue to give some warnings before the activities,
especially a speaking activity or a game because I saw that it worked and nobody disturbed
each other during the follow-up activity. Besides, I think that my voice tone was good in this
teaching. I believe that I will be better in my next teaching if I pay attention to these points.

References

Budden, J. (2008). Error Correction. Retrieved from;

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/error-correction