On 10th February, 2021, Wednesday evening, I joined the LLC Conversation Club’s Social Room for delivering my 2nd practica. The topic covered was ‘Festivals’. Since there were 2 festivals (Chinese New Year & Valentine’s Day) due this week, hence I believed it to be an apt topic to cover on this day.

Reflections

  1. There are a lot of things that appealed me as I reflect upon my teaching:-
  • I used ‘shared notes’ feature, as I thought this would involve use of a new Moodle tool that’s not used before, adding an intrigue element to it.
  • The extensive use of Moodle tools like, polling, shared notes, public chat, interactive circle; drawing, typing & circling using the interactive whiteboard.
  • 1 student (Valadyslav) who never responded in any way, in the previous session, spoke for the 1st time, I consider this as a great victory.
  • I believe in over planning and I had planned breakout room activity. However, I did not get a chance to conduct this activity. This is due to the fact that this time I decided to continue the activities wherein good communication happened between students. I tried to improvise from my previous session by following the adaptation technique.
  • I tried something new in this session as well. I made 1 Chinese student teach us the Chinese pronunciation(Chun Jie) for ‘Happy Chinese new year’, all students repeated after her with their mics on, students loved it and it created great energy and interest in the class.
  • Debrief technique was used in exit ticket, it was good to see students remember some facts covered in the session.

 

  1. Nevertheless, there are a few things I would like to do differently:-
  • To work on my speed of speaking which was sometimes fast in this session, which might not be understood by all students.
  • Talk less myself and call out to students instead of waiting for them to speak voluntarily.
  • I would like to keep encouragingly calling on one student (Elizabeth) who doesn’t get involved in any activity. I wonder if it is her inhibitions or she’s not present in the class.

 

  1. My key take-aways are as follows:-
  • Students love colorful slides and variety, so I will continue giving them that.
  • Adaptation is the key to a good lesson, when needed must be applied. Just like I did today, prepare more slides as it is always better rather than under preparation. At the same time skip a few activities if need be, i.e. if there is an interactive session happening in the earlier slides.
  • Keep encouraging students to speak and this might lead to 100% class involvement one day.