Feedback on Teaching Reading

Well, our presentation didn’t come out all right. These continuous sections of teaching reading, pre-reading, during-reading and after-reading, have something to be adjusted and modified. In the initial warm-up, we used power point as our teaching aid. To draw the link between students’ prior knowledge and the topic we were going to present, we then tried to display the picture of General MacArthur and a string of questions on the author. The teaching moved on to the main body which generally works in the mode of teacher-centered. I think it is alright to be teacher-led at times but somehow it is hard to get students’ attention. To get away from this possibility, we strived for figuring out what kind of “garnish” could be with the “meal.” To be honest, I like the “synonym” part and sentence making. Finally, the teaching ended with 4R activity which is similar to the information hunting. Well…I got to say sorry to all of you since the worksheet seemed a bit hard for you. I thought that all of you would certainty see the sheet as a walk in the park, so I made it much more challenging. This was my first time to prepare the worksheet on gap filling. And I’m about to keep this in my mind. Again feel sorry about that.
By the way, the two songs I played as the backgroud music were as follows, hope you enjoy it!^^
1. Sugar Ray – Answer The Phone
2. Avril Lavigne – Runaway

Group3 and Croup4, Good for You!

In everyone’s perception, it is undebatable that the abilities of listening and speaking are connected tightly. For group3, it is effective to present a film without showing its subtitles as the warm-up. However, there is one thing I’d like to point out. The worksheet which group3 passed down left me with a bit haste to fill the gaps on it. Maybe it’ll be well modified to leave much amount of words between each blank. On the other hand, I agree with the repetition of role plays which students can be well informed and get to be familiar with the vocabulary. The teaching sequences of group3 are fairly smooth as a whole.
As for group4, wow…the presentation was not so much a real lesson as a TV program. Like the group3, they did well in warm-up. It could be told that they tried their best to create a learning situation authentic to the real life. In addition, I like the website they displayed as the presentation of ppp strategy. The visual aid was graphic and in turn I could focus my concentration all the way to the end of their presentation. Today’s both groups did excellently and had something in common. Among the similarities we’ve talked in class, role play is the part I’m particularly interested in. Since it not only triggers learners’ attention to their peer’s acting, but allows them get to familiarize with the learning concept effectively by way of the process of acting.

My First Visit to Lishan High School

Tiffany and I reached in Nei-Hu at about 8:20 am. As I took my first look at Lishan High School, it was like a castle in the fairy tale. The surrounding area was not densely populated as I thought and so the air was fresh. I could tell that the school was newly set up by the whole school buildings as well as the feeling that people there revealed. There was a signboard which was read “A School of the Future” giving me a thought, “Wow, it must be provided with great technology.” This is my first impression about Lishan High School. Put it as a footnote that I think it is quite economical, since there were lots of facilities of sensoring lighting system at school.
I was in the group A. The teachers we visited had different teaching styles which were involved in their individual’s characteristics. The first teacher we visited was Ms. Liu. She started the lesson with some simple review questions about an article, “Echo and Narcissus,” which she had covered it before. At that time, I was a bit embarrassing since stories on ancient Greek mythology were a far access for me when I was in their age. Ms. Liu then indicated the intended lesson objective clearly. Here came the first activity: tape listening on “Echo and Narcissus” along with its reading content. The learning activity was followed by an array of questions asked by Ms. Liu. There were some features I jotted down concerning the way she presented questions to her students. To start with, she asked for students who were picked to look her eyes and answer the question in their own words. Furthermore, Ms. Liu asked questions step by step along the plot, including “who, what and when.” The way she presented was quite logical and clear-cut. Interestingly, she kept repeating the question about 6 to 7 times while asking. My understanding is that she intended to help students who were absent-minded remind of her questions. Repeating questions, on the other hand, can speed up students’ train of thought. As for students, to my surprise, they all were able to give answers in fluent English.
The following activity was “word building.” Ms. Liu introduced three vocabularies on the board. Students then familiarized those vocabularies through a tape listening on the story of Tantalus. Later on, teacher again asked questions to help students piece together about what they heard. The learning activity smoothly went on with tape listening again with the handouts. There were some vocabularies on the handout. The learning activity, consequentially, turned to sentence making. Ms. Liu set an example by herself first. Continually, she went over those vocabularies one by one with students. In the meantime, students were asked to make their own sentence with a certain vocabulary. The former learning activities I mentioned were all teacher-centered, I might say, given the patterns of interaction were like teacher asking and the students giving answers in response. The last learning activity was that students were allowed to discuss with their peers and showed their sentences on the board. Since students produced the sentences on their own, the activity was student-oriented, let me put this way. The whole sequences of those activities were fairly coherent and smooth, except from the time management was a bit out of control. By the way, as I took a look at those vocabularies on the material, amazingly to me that some of the words like “condemn” or “recede,” were out of my knowledge as I was in the second year in my senior high. “Nowadays senior high students are really excellent in English,” I was wondering.
Our following class observation led to the class308 conducted by Ms. Yuan. Today’s topic was about handling stress which was directly displayed with some simple questions by Ms Yuan. Questions giving to the students are like, “Have anyone of you ever had pressure or distress in your daily life?” or “How did you handle it?” To start with, Ms. Yuan distributed handouts which require students to write down their own troubles and stress. Ms. Yuan put herself as an example sharing her trouble and how she dealt with it. The activity further moved on to the pair work that students were asked to find a partner that s/he trusts on for help and suggestions. There was a girl, by the way, asking me about how to get an easy access to memorize vocabularies. After the completion of the blanks on the handout, Ms. Yuan picked up some students and asked them to share what advices they were given. I noticed that, however, the whole class was a bit out of control. Since some students haven’t finished the sheet yet, inevitably it was hard for them to draw their attention to what other people said. The next learning activity was to read some dialogue poems about friends, parents or dream on the other handout. Some students were chosen to read out the poem. After the reading section, here came the last activity. Students were required to find a partner or two members to create their own dialogue poem.
It’s interesting to me that teachers with different characteristics actually can initiate different atmospheres among the class. As I was in the class207, it appeared that there was something pushing me to focus my concentration. While I was in the class308, I felt a sense of comfort to be with them.