Reflections cycle 1, ph 1 – speaking skills lesson

Day 26-27, 5-6 May

Though the lessons in cycle 1, phase 2 were more interactive as compared to my routine teaching practices that took place during the initial investigation, however, my concern here is not just students’ involvement or participation in classroom activity. I really think that improving the quality of individualized feedback and also monitoring students’ on-task behavior needs major input from my side. In the previous cycle, I did manage to move around in the class and monitor each group’s participation in the discussion and also, on the third day of the lesson shared with students, the feedback that the evaluators had given to them along with my own observations of the discussions. I still feel that this whole strategy is promoting individual feedback, but not to its fullest as the feedback is still very general and not detailed enough. I mean giving individual feedback is not the only target. In fact, I also need to consider the up-take of feedback so that students actually improve their skills. And I am not very satisfied with the up-take of feedback from the previous cycle as the feedback remained very general and broad. This could be because the task was such and probably because the evaluators were not given enough practice in evaluating students. Similarly for me, the task is even more challenging because giving feedback to 80 plus students is virtually impossible in a 50 minutes class. Therefore, I intend to develop the activity in the next cycle in such a way that whatever material I prepare for the students, that should communicate my feedback at the end of the lesson.