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Culture Lesson Reflection

Khadiga A. AboBakr
Department of Education, University of Scranton
ESLS 503: Intro to English Language Learner
Prof. Scott Reilly
March 25, 2022
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The most difficult part of my lesson was to ensure that it is delivered as a lesson, not a

presentation. I have given several presentations about Egypt before, and I used to leave some

room at the end of my presentation to assess the audience’s knowledge using Kahoot. However,

in my lesson, the hardest part was to design the same content from the perspective of a teacher

who is in class and who should make sure to activate students’ prior knowledge as well as

implement multiple formative assessments during the entire lesson. Another difficult part of my

lesson plan was to create an interactive activity that can be completed by all students prior to

presenting the content. For example, I refrained from utilizing a KWL chart because I knew that

some students might have little to no prior knowledge about Egypt. Therefore, it took me a long

time to eventually select the anticipation guide as a strategy because it requires all students to

participate equally before and after the lesson.

In a 30-minute time frame, I believe I was able to create sufficient interaction. For

example, when students were completing the before- and after-lesson columns of the anticipation

guide, they were asked to share answers in pairs, which provided them with an opportunity to

discuss their own thoughts about Egypt before and after the lesson. They have encountered, as

well, a few statements for which they were not sure what the answer was, which fostered their

curiosity and interest and motivated them to listen carefully during the lesson to be able to

answer the questions correctly in the after-lesson column. In addition, throughout the lesson, I

made sure to maintain the teacher-student interactions by asking a few questions while

presenting the content such as a) what dominates the landscape in Egypt? b) where do most

Egyptians live? and c) what did you notice about life in the countryside in the video? Similarly, I

have made sure to assess students’ comprehension throughout the entire lesson by asking them to

answer a question as a reflection to each segment of the lesson such as a) do you think it is easy
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to reach a proficient level in Arabic? and b) how likely is it for Egyptian students to suffer from a

culture shock when they come to the US? In addition, I made sure to provide some room for the

student-student interactions, which was clearly implemented when students were required, at the

end of the lesson, to answer, in groups, two questions that assess their awareness of the cultural

and educational differences between Egypt and the United States. Therefore, by continuously

maintaining a two-way conversation, providing different opportunities for student-student and

teacher-student interactions, and regularly assessing students’ comprehension, I believe I have

achieved sufficient interaction in this 30-minute lesson. However, if I were to re-teach the same

lesson again in a normal class period, I would make the class more student centered. That is, I

would have divided students into groups and assigned each group with a segment or an aspect

about Egypt to prepare then present in front of class before I provide my own presentation to

confirm and/or add some other aspects.

I have specified two objectives for my culture lesson: a) students will be able to assess

their knowledge before and after the lesson in terms of the language, culture, and education and

b) students will develop an awareness of the cultural and educational differences between Egypt

and the United States. In order to assess the first objective, students were required to complete an

anticipation guide before the lesson in which they add a plus next to the statements they think are

likely to be true and a minus next to the ones that are unlikely to be true. After the lesson,

students completed the after-lesson column to assess whether each sentence is correct, which

provided an opportunity for students to assess as well as compare between what they knew about

Egypt before and after the lesson and how many statements they were able to guess correctly.

For the second objective, students needed to answer two questions at the end of the lesson: a)

how could you show cultural sensitivity towards your prospective Egyptian students? And b)
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what are some culturally responsive classroom practices you can implement for students who are

completely new to the education system in the US? Students were divided into groups to

brainstorm answers to these two questions and, as a result, they were able to successfully provide

some accurate suggestions by which they could successfully show cultural sensitivity toward

their prospective Egyptian students along with an example of a culturally responsive classroom

technique. Overall, I believe that both objectives were properly assessed in this lesson. However,

due to the time constraint, students were provided little time to brainstorm some ideas and

answers in response to the questions used to assess the second objective. Therefore, in a normal

class period, I would provide more time for these last two questions so that students can discuss

in their groups and brainstorm more ideas and strategies to share in a whole class discussion.

In my lesson, I have tried to display visuals that help my students make connections. For

example, two slides were displayed to show the location of Egypt on the world map as well as

the geography and the landscape of Egypt, which helped students make connections as well as

compare between their prior knowledge and the factual features of Egypt. During the language

segment, I made sure to display the alphabets, which included the way to pronounce the letters in

English, so that students can see the difference between the languages they speak and/or know of

and the Arabic language and the unique sounds that exist in Arabic which they might have never

pronounced before. In addition, a word in Arabic was shown on the slide to show how Arabic is

written only in cursive and how the letters can seem different when they are separate compared

to when they are connected to form words. Two short videos, as well, were essential as visual

aids. In the first video, students could see the normal life of a local family in the countryside of

Egypt and how different as well as simple their life is in the countryside compared to the city and

to the US, and, in the second video, students got introduced to some of the skills that are being
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taught at a school in a low-income neighborhood to help students find job opportunities if they

were likely to drop out, which helped students see the activities and the skills these students

master along with the age category of those students. Furthermore, during the education segment

of my lesson, two slides were used to differentiate between the education system in Egypt and

the US; on the first slide, a table of the education system in Egypt was displayed to show the

school level, the age, grades, and years of each stage in the education system, which helped

students understand the sequence of the educational stages, and, on the second slide, a table was

displayed to show the grading system on the secondary and the university level and its equivalent

in the education system of the US, which helped students draw comparisons between both

countries. Finally, I refrained from including paragraphs or complete sentences as much as

possible in order not to read from the slides; rather, I have used bullet points and phrases and

elaborated more on them.

With regards to time management, I have successfully concluded the lesson on time even

though I have anticipated to take longer than I did. I believe that timing myself contributed to the

success of my time management; however, I strongly believe that this lesson needs more than 30

minutes to be fully and thoroughly taught. If I were to teach this lesson again, I would do that in

a 40 or 45-minute lesson instead in order to allow room for more interaction and more

elaboration on certain points, not to mention providing sufficient time for students to answer the

last couple of questions in more detail in a whole class discussion.