EPIK Korea Class Video

Time Objective Observations Subjective Observations
0:00-1:50 The Korean instructor facilitates questions while Mr. Moore responds to the questions. Students recite and repeat questions.

“Where did you go on your vacation?” “What did you do there?” Mr. Moore shows slides with photos as a responds.

 This is cool to see in-person pair teaching. I wonder if this is just while the American teacher is getting started at the school, like a mentorship program, or if this is how this school functions?
1:50-3:38 Korean instructor tells the class that they will continue learning about past tenses. Asking and answering about the past. Starting with a listening and speaking activity. Students listen to a video dialogue. Afterwards, they are asked to recall the dialogue one sentence at a time. The class seems very structured and the two instructors seems very well rehearsed. There is hardly any time spent transitioning between them or explaining activities.
3:38-4:52 Mr. Moore now asks the students to “repeat after me” the sentences from the video. Then the students are asked to pick a role in the dialogue, stand, and read it out loud. Next, the whole class practices the dialogue at the same time. Students are handed cards when they answer questions? They collect tickets for participating which is a cool rewards system to get students to volunteer rapidly.
4:52 Mr. Moore claps a pattern and students respond to bring their attention back and quiet the room. We used to do this when I was in school. Very effective.
4:53-5:53 Two students at a time are asked to stand a recite the dialogue. They are called on, not volunteers. Positive feedback from instructors. The students seem prepared to speak in front of the class. No opportunity is given to be too shy to participate.
4:53-10:05 Students are asked to open textbooks and describe a picture. Then a video of the image is shown with a dialogue. Same activities are run as the previous video. The activities are very quick but seem to follow an expected pattern. When the students know how the activity functions you spend less time explaining the expectations for how it is to be done.
10:05-14:23 Textbook activity. Students are asked to describe an image. Look and Speak Activity. Two students are asked to speak the dialogue. Then the dialogue is played on the video. Repeated with a 3 other images. Again, following the same structure may allow the students to focus more on the content rather than figuring out how they are supposed to respond.
14:23-18:10 Students are asked to listen to a song. The lyrics are about “how was your vacation?” and are connected to the dialogue from the previous activities. Mr. Moore then sings the lyrics and asks the students to repeat back to him. The song is played again and they all sing along together. The song seems to be forcing the dialogue a bit, not a great song. The tune may help with retention of the dialogue though. It will definitely be stuck in my head the rest of the day.
18:10-40:00 Students play a game called “last word.” It uses a timer and whoever is speaking when the timer ends get a point. Students must speak using the past tenses. Cannot repeat words that have already been used. Students are given whiteboards and markers to write down their activity ideas to participate in the game easier. Teachers form students into separate groups around the room. Multiple rounds. This game is good for collaboration and independently coming up with vocab that they already now and feel confident using. A little competition is good for many learners.

Reflection: I found it interesting how fast paced and structured the class was. Once students are used to this sort of learning environment, I can see why it would be difficult to transition to a more loosely structured or even amore teacher centred environment. They are not taking notes, rather, they are practicing skills with a huge emphasis on speaking. The classroom is oriented like a traditional classroom, but a large emphasis is on the tv screen at the front. All materials are pre-prepared, not written on the board which certainly helps speed up the class. The two instructors work well together with one handing out tickets or running the slides while the other speaks to the students or runs an activity. They also move around the classroom a lot and give students feedback and encouragement while they are completing activities.

 

Teaching Grade 6 in a Chinese Primary School Video

Time Objective Observations Subjective Observations
0:00-2:44 Teacher greets students. Their lesson will focus on practicing what they have learned about holidays. Vacation, trip, holiday, suitcase, rest, beach, city, Jungle, arctic.

Students are asked to name a location and spell it, then answer a question about it.

  
2:44-7:35 Slides are shown for beach, city, jungle, arctic. Students are asked to describe things you can do there. “you can lie under the sun, swim in the sea, make a sandcastle…” I never realised how weird a word skyscraper is. Cool how she breaks down the meanings of words.
7:35-10:27 Students recite and repeat each of the sentences they just learned in the slides. After they do it together they do it one at a time. Repetition seems to be a large part of this classroom environment. Good practice for memorizing vocab you just learned.
10:27-10:53 Students are asked to match the vocab words to the place they are identified with.  
10:53-17:13 Students are asked to talk about their holiday. Teacher reviews past tense verbs that students can use in the activity. Teacher presents an example based on her trip to the jungle. Asks students to identify which word in the sentence shows that it happened “before.” Most students appear to be participating correctly in the activity and using English. With that many students it would be difficult to moderate and correct everyone. I like how the activity incorporates vocab from the previous activities as well as the clear grammar focus. I also like to the vocab was designed around experiences the teacher had had so she was able to bring in personal photos for the examples.

Reflection: It was cool to see a teacher who was not from America, so the students will be exposed to a different accent. This lesson is also very structured and well thought out. The theme is clear. The introduction of new words, such as skyscraper, was minimal but that allows students to gain confidence in what they know while acquiring the new words. She spoke with a clear tone of voice and kept the lesson moving along at a fairly quick pace but did not speak too quickly. The students seemed to enjoy the personal touch of bringing in photos and examples from her own trips, which creates more of a solid memory foundation than just using examples from the textbook.