CBLP: Reflection blog 3 (In-service reflection)

EDUC 8215 002

Lingyu Wang

1. What is your project about? Which course topics are most relevant to your

project? Which of the course readings can inform your project?

Project Details:

My partner (Yaqi) and I are responsible to coordinate with Northeast Academy

whose students are primarily second generation Chinese teenage immigrants. The

teaching site noticed the majority of the students’ parents have trouble communicating

in English which not only caused them having a hard time adjusting their lifestyles

but also creating obstacles for them to connect with their child. To improve their

situations, the teaching site has decided to initiate a teaching program that’s free. Our

job is to ensure students’ improvements in English listening, speaking and reading to

ensure their basic communication needs and survival. In simpler words, at the end of

the program, we should develop a set of lesson plans that’s applicable for adult

English beginners with Chinese backgrounds.

For the previously developed lesson plans, our supervisor Zhu had pointed out the

biggest problem this program faced, was that even though instructors in the past were

passionate about teaching, but they all had different lesson plans, meaning that there

was never a fixed curriculum for the school to adjust. This leads to our goal of this

project, which would be to provide a fixed course plan, setting proper model of lesson

plans with fixed topics so this program would provide more systematic teaching
agenda for its future students. Our teaching goal of the project is: to develop 4-6

lesson plans covering the topic of grocery shopping, ordering at diners, Starbucks

ordering, and shopping with discounts.

Related Topics:

Based on our site supervisor, the most urgent need this program wants us to

accomplish would be to provide a thorough and fixed set of lesson plans so instructors

in the future would focus on the same topics and they can adjust those lesson plans

basing on students’ feedbacks continuedly. Their targeted students are mostly Chinese

adults in their mid-40 and 50s who just got to an English-speaking country. Based on

this particular community, I had decided for this project to be concentrated on

activities related to daily routines, such as checking out, grocery shopping, and

finding discounts.

Yaqi and I would be responsible to complete teaching plans. Each of us are

responsible for 3 lesson plans regarding three topics. For me, as stated before, I have

selected 3 topics: checking out, grocery shopping and finding discounts. Each of us

would need to incorporate activities that would quickly assess students’ capacity in

the class design along with plans that’d fulfill students at each level’s need

(differentiated instruction) so future instructors can see what students need to catch

up; for this program to succeed, we must incorporate basic vocabulary in lesson plans

so students can recognize them in their daily routines, supporting them to complete

tasks as identifying needed objects in market, reading directions and ordering foods,

which would be the most suitable content for our targeted students; for this project,
our product will provide a model for how future instructors would teach pre-A1 adult

learners’ oral communication skills such as how to ask for help. The first topic can

help me to design surveys that would help me adjust my lesson plans based on the

results.

Related Readings:

Oral Communication: Readings from 9-26: Brandl Chapter 6-7; Gamage (2019);

Md(2018); Muchnik (2014).

Vocabulary: Readings from 10-24: Brandl Chapter 3-4; Nation (2020); Nation (2021).

Assessment Design: Readings from 11-11: Brandl Chapter 11; Muchnik (2010).

2. Do you have a plan and ideas for its completion? What jobs need to be done

to complete the project? Create a document where you list all

jobs/components that need to be completed for your project. You can use

Exercise 4.4, p.58 (Ch. 4) as a guide.

First of all, we have decided to design 3 assessments / feedback surveys along the

sessions so future teachers would have better ideas of how their students are doing

and how their lesson plans need to be adjusted accordingly. Every week, Yaqi and I

would both work on one lesson plan so within 6 weeks, we’d finish designing the

lesson plans. On Monday, we’d decide on the theme of the week and brainstorm on

what activities we need to incorporate into our lesson plans. Based on the results, on

Thursday, we’d meet together, and show each other the finished product so we can

both receive feedback and new inspirations. During the last week of this 6-week

session, other than the required lesson plans we’d need to finish, we would also need
to work on our assessment / survey designs and meet on Friday to review.

Jobs:

1. Meeting Attendance：To attend meetings twice a week to discuss and initiate

plans.

2. Material Preparation: Listen to broadcasts, lectures, experience-sharing

seminars and other related materials to get inspirations on how to design

classes, take notes on what we can learn from it and share them with the

partner during meetings.

3. Students and Coordinator Interaction: Interact with students and the

coordinator frequently to get their opinions on the set-up of the classes and

students’ perception of the class, so changes can be made to adapt to their

urgent needs and feedbacks.

4. Assessment/Feedback Evaluation: To adjust and evaluate setup of the class

based on assessment results and students’ feedbacks.

5. Critique/Support: To critique and support each other’s plan so we’d both be

evolving.

3.Member Roles

Because there are only two members of our team, it would be impossible for us to

take on different roles. We have decided we’d divide this lesson plan design into two

parts: the first three sessions and the last three sessions. Each of us would be the

leading role for the part we are in charge of. I would be the leading role for the first

session’s lesson plan and in charge of designing the assessment / survey we’d be
distributing to students to evaluate their English status so we can adjust our further

teaching plans accordingly. After the first session, we’d have a mid-session

examination to evaluate students’ progress (I’d be responsible for this part since I

understand the design and teaching goals of the first 3 sessions better) and check their

skill sets for later sessions (Yaqi’s responsibility). For the other half of the session,

we’d exchange roles.

Responsibilities:

When I’m in charge, Yaqi would be responsible for providing me with valuable

feedback and weekly new inspirations; and when Yaqi is in charge, vice versa. For

each lesson plan, the leader of the project would also be the progress track and

timekeeper; the other party would act as process observer and notetaker since that

person would have a more distant perspective to evaluate and monitor the overall

progress of the project.

So overall, both of us are responsible for meeting twice per week, giving each

other feedback and inspiration via Google documents, and making 1.5 assessment /

survey designs plus three lesson plans.

Form:

Task/Subtask Who initially Who did it How long did it

agreed to do it take

Assessment 1 Lingyu

Assessment Mid- Together

Course
 Assessment Final Yaqi

Lesson 1 Lingyu

Lesson 2 Lingyu

Lesson 3 Lingyu

Lesson 4 Yaqi

Lesson 5 Yaqi

Lesson 6 Yaqi

Weekly Comments Together

Weekly Meetings Together

4. How is your teamwork going so far? Do all team members seem to agree on

what you are going to accomplish this semester? if not, how did you find a

compromise?

Currently, each of us had completed 2 lesson plans – I had finished making the

lesson plans regarding the grocery shopping. Both of us are always on time for our

group meetings and we’d communicate on a daily basis. We do agree on making this

6-session project together; the only difference right now is that I’d like to finish all

lesson plans so the coordinator would at least have some drafts that future instructors

would work on together, but Yaqi suggested that we should focus on polishing the

existing content so they’d set a model for future instructors to mimic – I took Yaqi’s

advice because I started to realize, for the beginning two lesson plans, my original

designs were not remotely close to being perfect – the objectives needed to be

adjusted and I needed to visit the existing supermarket to record real-life dialogues so
the materials would be more authentic and easier to use for future instructors. Yaqi

had provided great feedbacks for my lesson plans. I always wanted to include more

content and my product would seem too crowded and even off-topic; with Yaqi’s help,

I am confident that we’d be able to provide this program with great modeling

examples.