CBLP: Reflection blog 4

Hailey Cho
1. What is your team working on at this point of the semester?

I assume that Every PEDAL teacher is done with writing down description about their current students and now
working on filling out the chart suggested by Dr. Kozlova (brainstorming which topic, grammar, vocabulary, and
pragmatic points to connect) at this point. We are still on the initial stage of the project (stage 2), but I believe that
this is the phase that we have to put the most time and effort during our project as it is going to be the basis of our
curriculum. This week, I am going to spend one hour in doing this every day because it makes me more efficient
with fresh ideas.

I have written down description about my students – mostly focusing on their language proficiency based on what I
have observed so far. Referring to CEFR framework, I assume that my students are in a wide range of proficiency
in between B1 to C1, mostly ranging from B2 to C1. Then, I went over Wiggins & McTighe (2005) and tried to
delve deep into backward design. Based on my current students’ proficiency, I am figuring out the grammar
structure and vocabulary that my students would want to learn in general. (I am trying to think comprehensively in
this initial stage)

Practically, it might be hard to focus on everything - grammar structure, vocabulary, and pragmatics - in the class for
an hour and half especially in advanced level class. However, I am trying to include every point in the chart for now
so that future teachers can select language points in their needs.

2. What is your role in your team?

I am working on developing curriculum for advanced level (3+). Other PEDAL teachers considerately concerned
about me as I am the only one working on advanced level, and they promised to provide me with assistance and
feedback if I need any help.

My only concern in my progress is that currently PEDAL only has 3 levels (level 1, level 2, level 3+) as there was
lack of PEDAL teachers this semester, but next semester PEDAL will go back to have 4 levels. Since I have
students in level 3 and level 4 at the same time for this semester, I am trying to figure out how I can set a baseline
for future level 3,4 PEDAL teachers so that they can draw some ideas from the curriculum made in this semester and
develop curriculums for each level.

3. Does your team experience any challenges?

Mona and Beryl were the first pair sending their topics to PEDAL group chat. They did a great job in suggesting
possible topics for PEDAL in-person level 1 students, and they grouped the relevant topics in four different units
(ex. Unit 4 includes body parts, symptoms, medication & pharmacy, and go to the doctor). I thought the idea of
grouping lessons into units make the curriculum cohesive – especially in beginner class where letting students keep
practicing a certain interactional routine is important. However, it was not easy to do the same in the advanced level
(grouping relevant topics together) as we are covering a wide range of topics. I shared my concerns with PEDAL
teachers, and we figured out that I can still group topics into units even though topics are not directly related to each
other but if the topics are somewhat similar or covering relevant grammatical points.
Discussing about it, I could see that a difference in personal preference in group work – especially because we are
currently working independently accordingly to the level that we are teaching. Some prefer to work separately
during the most time and collaborate at the end, and some prefer to share the progress throughout the whole project.

4. What is your plan for solving the problems?

I preferred to share the progress throughout the whole project, so I suggested other teammates to work on the shared
document. We decided to create a shared folder on google drive instead of shared document so that everyone can
keep track on other’s works but at the same time focus on their own work for now.

We initially agreed to talk about the project after each PEDAL meeting, but as PEDAL meeting has switched into
zoom everyone just left the room after the meeting. We agreed that we do not have to share everything in detail
during the whole process, but to briefly check each other’s progress after biweekly PEDAL meeting even when the
PEDAL meeting is on zoom.

5. Did you get your supervisor’s feedback on your work? If not, have you shared your work for feedback?
Getting feedback is very important to make sure you are on the right track.

We haven’t got to get our supervisor’s feedback about the project yet, because everyone is working on filling the
chart pretty much independently and no one has finished the whole chart. We agreed to get the feedback once we
are done with this phase so that we can receive more constructive feedback.

We can ask our supervisor if she can check on our works before or after next pedal meeting in advance (Hopefully
everyone is done with filling out the chart by next Monday) – and there was one teammate who suggested that
we can share our google folder with our supervisors so that they can leave comments on our works without
arranging meeting.