Module 5 Unit 5 Activity 2
Clinical Practice
For my clinical observation, I observed my mentor Tristan Lange. Tristan was at the beginning of his unit on food. Tristan was conducting his class for our shared school we have, in an elementary grade 5 classroom. The level of the students were high beginner and the lesson plans mainly consisted of vocabulary and expression builders. I observed Tristan over a two day period on Wednesday and on Thursday.
Day one
- How did the lessons support the topic/theme of the unit and the learning objective(s)?
I felt the lessons that Tristan has created a lesson that really helped support the topic and learning objective of his unit. As his students were still beginners with a limited vocabulary on the subject, Tristan was able to effectively introduce and review a lot of related words and expressions that the students should know when speaking about food in English. Tristan used a technique using flashcards, which I commonly use with my students. The activities that he used with the flashcards engaged the students and got them learning using the target language points in a meaningful way.
- How did the lesson plans compare to the activities that occurred?
Except for one activity which seemed to take off, Tristan followed his lesson plan fairly closely. Food is an ESL topic that many of us have covered several times throughout our experience here in South Korea and Tristan was very comfortable with the topic and how he wanted to teach it. He deviated from the lesson by introducing a game that he called “WAR” that really got the students involved and having fun with the lesson. Besides this, it seemed like he followed along with what he had planned.
- What adjustments to the lesson plans did the teacher make? Why were those adjustments needed?
The only adjustment that Tristan made to the lesson plan was to introduce a game into the class rather than to continue with just a flashcard activity. From the post conference, Tristan had already mentally prepared for this adjustment in case the students were already familiar with a lot of the vocabulary that he was going to introduce. As this class was an introduction class, Tristan indicated that he wanted build a language foundation for the rest of the unit. The students displayed a lot of prior knowledge so he shifted gears and adjusted the material to make it more fun for everyone.
- How effective were the activities at helping students meet the learning objective?
I felt as did the other teacher observing (Chris) that the activity Tristan introduced was very effective in helping the students meet the learning objective. Tristan’s objective was to build a foundation of vocabulary words and expressions for the students to use throughout the unit and I could easily observe that the students learned new words and refreshed their knowledge of the prior knowledge through the activities Tristan introduced.
- What formative assessments did the teacher use? What did the teacher learn from those assessments?
Tristan performed a few simple restaurant role plays with the students which gave him a chance to assess whether or not the students could use the target language in a practical setting. He was able to see which students understand the material and could use it effectively if they were to put in a real world situation such as ordering food at a restaurant or talking about food with a teacher or classmate.
Day Two
- How did the lessons support the topic/theme of the unit and the learning objective(s)?
In the second day of Tristan’s class, he was introducing the concept of food categories and organizing those categories into a food pyramid. This a common lesson that teachers all over the world teach when addressing the topic of food. I felt that this lesson was a natural way to continue the transition of his unit plan.
- How did the lesson plans compare to the activities that occurred?
On this day, Tristan mainly stuck to his lesson plan and all the activities he introduced and followed along with what he had planned. He made a few slight adjustments on the delivery but for the most part he stuck to the activities that were laid out in his lesson plan.
- What adjustments to the lesson plans did the teacher make? Why were those adjustments needed?
Tristan only made one slight adjustment to the lesson plan. The activities remained the same but he told us in our post conference that he felt the students had finished the pyramid activity a bit faster than he had anticipated. He got the class to work together as a unit to come up with a classroom consensus on which categories fit where on the food pyramid and how many serving we should eat of each category. I really liked how he made this adjustment and incorporated more of of the two key elements of 21st century skills i.e Communication and Collaboration. I feel that any adjustment that gets the students collaborating together is an effective usage of time.
- How effective were the activities at helping students meet the learning objective?
I felt that the activities Tristan used in his class were very effective. He first worked together with the class to get an understanding of different foods and how they are categorized and his food pyramid activity where the students were given a blank pyramid template and allowed to work together a group and then as a classroom to think for themselves about food and health. Tristan’s learning objective was to categorize food and then look at the importance of each category and I feel that his activities really helped achieve his goal.
- What formative assessments did the teacher use? What did the teacher learn from those assessments?
Tristan was able to assess the students performance at several points throughout the lesson. First he could assess the prior learning form the previous day’s lesson on how quickly students were able to call out vocabulary for each category he introduced. As he progressed he tried to emphasize some importance to each group and then the pyramid activity really gave Tristan the opportunity to assess the students reading and listening comprehension. Finally, one of the goals of our school is to improve the speaking ability of the students and his classroom consensus activity helped him assess the students speaking capabilities with the target language.
Over the two day period which I observed Tristan, I could really observe how comfortable he was with the unit content and I felt I could see how he liked to build on the language and then progress from day to day. It is a theme that I am understanding more and more that there needs to be an understandable sequence and transition from one lesson to another so that the students and teachers can easily achieve the unit goals. If the lesson plans are disjointed then it makes it much more difficult for him to look back over the unit from day to day and assess whether or not the lesson objectives are being met. I really like how in the two lesson plans that I observed with Tristan, each lesson depended on the students using learning objective from previous lessons to complete the tasks in the next lesson plan. Overall, I got a good sense of how I should be building my unit plans.
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