Lesson Reflection – Wed 31st September

Requirements:

• One clear objective that must be written on the board and read aloud
• Minimum 5 minutes-maximum 7 (includes set-up)

• Don’t “dominate” the discussion

• Assess your objective/did they get it?

• Lesson can be taught in any language EXCEPT English

Please write a reflection about the mini lessons in which you were both teacher and student.
Please use the following questions to guide your reflection.
• As a teacher, what was your biggest challenge while planning the lesson?
• As a teacher, what challenges did you face when trying to teach your lesson/content to
the class?
• What did you do to “overcome” these challenges?
• As a teacher, how did this activity simulate trying to instruct one or more ELL students in
your classroom? How did you use "language" in your instruction?
• As a student, what did you rely on most to comprehend what was being taught?
• As part of the "class", how can you relate this activity to the experience of ELL students
in an English-speaking classroom?
• Overall, what do you think was the purpose of this activity?

1. When planning the lesson, the biggest challenge was creating a lesson that would have a
clear and measurable objective that could be easily measured at the end. It was crucial to
be able to explain the learning outcome to all the students while not using any English
instruction.

2. While teaching, one issue that came up was being able to get the students' attention
without using vocal commands, instead clapping gained all students attention.
Another challenge that arose was explaining steps to any students that misunderstood the
initial directions, this was overcome by the teacher modelling the steps for the student to
recreate. For example, drawing the square box portion of the house to show the students
what step 1 was.
An important aspect of the lesson was ensuring that all students understood what the
learning outcome for the lesson was going to be, this was a struggle as we could not use
 words to explain we had to turn to a way that would be understood by all students.
Instead, we wrote the learning outcome while also adding representative images. We used
an image of a pencil drawing and a house to illustrate that the learning outcome was to
‘draw a house.’
Another challenge faced was praising students while they were completing their project
or when they had achieved the learning outcome. Instead of verbal praise we used strong
facial expressions e.g., a smile, and used hand signal e.g., a thumbs up and head nod to
illustrate to the students that they were on the right track.

3. Overcome (above)

4. As a teacher this stimulated the experience of teaching an ELL student as everything that
was explained and talked about in the lesson had to be carefully thought out and planned
to ensure that no student would be left out or left behind throughout the steps of the
lesson. Instead of using language for instruction, we used images and used the items the
students would be using to show rather than tell. By holding up the crayon and paper, it
showed all the students what items they needed to use rather than just telling them to pick
up a crayon

5. As a student, while I was being taught, I relied heavily on the images on the board and
how the images were presented. I also relied on the teacher’s expressions as they viewed
my work for reassurance that I was completing the tasks correctly. Looking to the other
students in the class also helped when looking for guidance as often another student
understood the instruction I was confused about.

6. While participating as a part of the ‘class,’ this could be related to the experience of an
ELL student in the classroom as I could not understand what the teacher was saying
while they taught the lesson and I often felt like I was missing crucial information to get
to the final step.
Although this did not fully relate to the experience of an ELL student as they are
typically the minority in the classroom and often the only student who does not
understand, while in my ‘class’ all the students were at the same advantage with no one
understanding the language spoken by the teacher. Although some ‘teachers’ did choose
to speak in Spanish which allowed some students to understand the instructions, which
more closely reflected the experience of an ELL student in the classroom.

7. Overall, I think that the point of this activity was to give us an actual experience of what
ELL students experience in the classroom rather than trying to explain how ELL students
 may feel. This allowed us to step into the shoes of what a student experiences when they
don’t understand the instructional language of the lesson. It allows us to sympathise with
these students and be able to hopefully acknowledge their difficulties with more
compassion and understanding. This will allow us to be more considerate in our lesson
planning when taking ELL students into account.

Learning outcome

Challenge

Understood

Experience

Difficulties