Reflection for a Lesson on December 1st, 2021

I have been teaching online classes at Gonzaga ESL Outreach Community (GECO)

program for more than one year. Even though I have language teaching experiences, teaching in

the adult language class is different from teaching an in-person class for college-level students.

By reviewing a video and materials, my strengths contained scaffolding learning experiences

with comprehension questions and using technology to encourage students to communicate in

small groups. On the other hand, I need to improve my speech pace and flexibility in the

classroom.

This lesson was day 3 for Q skills, Unit 3 Reading #2. In this unit, students have read two

articles about informational technology. They finished reading an article about the driverless car

previously. In reading #2, students read an article about technology in the classroom. On day 1,

students previewed a topic of reading by brainstorming about the educational technology in the

class based on their experiences. Students reviewed the article from paragraphs #1 - #5 on day 2,

and they continued to read from paragraphs #6 - # 10 on day 3. To review reading #2 deeply,

students also discussed three questions with small groups. They actively participated in the small

group conversation and shared their opinions; I also walked around the classroom to clarify the

questions and provide additional questions to facilitate their discussions. At the end of the class,

students summarize the advantage and disadvantages of using technology in the classroom. They

worked on this task independently, so teachers talked with each student to support their writing

task by giving them feedback.

Writing is a productive skill to express and tell a writer's ideas to readers. In this ELCT

049/059 Reading & Writing class, students have practiced paragraph writing from session 1, and

they have focused on writing essays in session 2 to prepare for academic programs. Since most
students need to prepare for undergraduate classes, it required me to consider all possibilities to

scaffold their writing experiences to improve their writing skills. Thus, I focused on scaffolding

students' writing experiences through a series of lessons when I created lesson plans for reading

#2. For example, students practiced paraphrasing short sentences on day 2. It allowed students to

review some strategies of paraphrasing and restate sentences by using their own words. On day

3, I provided review activities before summarizing. Comparing paraphrasing and summarizing

also gave students similarities and differences between two essential writing skills. In addition,

discussion questions helped students understand the content in the reading and identify the main

ideas and supporting details, which they used in summarizing the activity. These scaffolded

experiences became their linguistic resources; students can access them when they struggle with

expressing ideas in English.

Indeed, students looked at ideas on the whiteboard or previous slideshows inf the process

of producing English.

If I had another chance to teach this class, I would like to improve two things. First, I

need to consider my speech pace throughout a lesson. I understand that my English has accents

based on my primary language. However, even though my English potentially functions as a

language model for students in this classroom, my sound was sometimes unclear and muffled.

Since this class was at the intermediate level, students could understand my instructions and

questions. Yet, I need to speak at a slow pace when I give the instructions in the class. Secondly,

I need to improve flexibility in the classroom. Teaching an in-person class required me to

respond flexibly when students have questions. Compared to the online courses, students

frequently asked a variety of questions in-person class. It indicates that I need to prepare not only

for the content in the textbook but also for other knowledge, such as English grammar, cultural
and linguistic backgrounds, or my own experiences. Students asked more questions when I

walked around the classroom during the activity, so it was unpredictable events in the class.

Questioning is essential communication between students and teachers. When students ask

questions, it is a starting point to create a meaningful interaction. Thus, I should consider

preparing to respond to students' questions in the class.

It was an exceptional experience to create a lesson plan through one unit with two

different reading materials. In this lesson, I learned the importance of scaffolding through the

series of lesson plans because it helped students be confident in producing the target language. I

believe their scaffolded learning experiences become their resources to express their ideas in

English. It also gained student-talk time more than teacher-talk time during the class. Therefore,

I will continue to explore teaching approaches that support students learning by scaffolding their

experiences.