DAY 10 25 APRIL 2011
Mehvish is right, AR is not linear, I mean every stage within the cycle. It happened to me, when S asked to meet her to discuss what she had in mind with 3ro Polimodal, she was in fact sort of starting with the action stage, which, according to my plan, comes after I’m done with the initial investigations (observ + indiv interviews).
I suspect schedules will again suffer this week as there seems to be God knows what tomorrow at the school. Once again I’ll have to put off one observ I think.
DAY 11 27 APRIL 2011
Observed S’s lesson and OMG, terrible preparation, I forgot the iPod to audio-record the lesson. Fortunately, a saw a student with his iPhone and borrowed it. Bad bad boy.
The lesson went smoothly. I realised later that S never bothered to do the useless task on the page and instead focused on practising reported speech in relation to verbal communication and the game Chinese whispers or (Broken) Telephone.
Did the interview at 9pm over the phone, horrible horrible thing to do, I was tired, she was tired too, it was short, only 9 minutes, I didn’t feel like asking her things we already know, still couple of issues emerged that I need to explore in future interviews
jueves, 28 de abril de 2011
sábado, 23 de abril de 2011
planning again
Day 15, 21 April 2011
A few conscious decisions I made: one, no more structured/planned group presentations (as students focus more towards memorizing content in English), second, group discussion rather than presentation (so that they experience something new). Finally, 5 for 1 (I mean 5 evaluators for each group) to keep it rather unbiased (if that’s what students think). Keeping in view the previous speaking lessons I had to take these decisions. Obviously I could anticipate issues/difficulties even here like if I carry out group discussions, how I will deal with the classroom organization? How I will monitor each group more effectively? What kind of feedback they will get?
First I’ve designed a group monitoring form that both me and one other students (whose not part of the group being evaluated) will use during the group discussion. The evaluation sheet includes space for writing group and group members’ name and an open ended question at the end that the evaluators will use to write their feedback for a particular group. The evaluation is broadly on the basis on content, participation, manner, communication. The student evaluator will mark on a scale of 1 to 5 which I’ll later marks from an average of 10. Since there are 17 groups of 5-7 members each, I’ll ask each group to pick one small piece of paper that has an alphabet written on it so that each group has a name. I’ve pre-selected nine different topics (all argumentative) and will ask one member from each group to randomly pick a piece of paper. I intend to select four students as evaluators for one group each whereas I’ll be the fifth evaluator who will move around in each group. The plan is to carry out group discussion with 9 groups on the first and 8 groups on the second day. The students who are not among the groups participating in the discussion will act as evaluators for that particular day. I do think that I’ll have to go through the monitoring form with the students before I give it to them for actual use. It all looks lengthy, but I’m hoping that if I carefully follow the steps as per plan, I will achieve the aims set for the lesson. Good luck to me!
A few conscious decisions I made: one, no more structured/planned group presentations (as students focus more towards memorizing content in English), second, group discussion rather than presentation (so that they experience something new). Finally, 5 for 1 (I mean 5 evaluators for each group) to keep it rather unbiased (if that’s what students think). Keeping in view the previous speaking lessons I had to take these decisions. Obviously I could anticipate issues/difficulties even here like if I carry out group discussions, how I will deal with the classroom organization? How I will monitor each group more effectively? What kind of feedback they will get?
First I’ve designed a group monitoring form that both me and one other students (whose not part of the group being evaluated) will use during the group discussion. The evaluation sheet includes space for writing group and group members’ name and an open ended question at the end that the evaluators will use to write their feedback for a particular group. The evaluation is broadly on the basis on content, participation, manner, communication. The student evaluator will mark on a scale of 1 to 5 which I’ll later marks from an average of 10. Since there are 17 groups of 5-7 members each, I’ll ask each group to pick one small piece of paper that has an alphabet written on it so that each group has a name. I’ve pre-selected nine different topics (all argumentative) and will ask one member from each group to randomly pick a piece of paper. I intend to select four students as evaluators for one group each whereas I’ll be the fifth evaluator who will move around in each group. The plan is to carry out group discussion with 9 groups on the first and 8 groups on the second day. The students who are not among the groups participating in the discussion will act as evaluators for that particular day. I do think that I’ll have to go through the monitoring form with the students before I give it to them for actual use. It all looks lengthy, but I’m hoping that if I carefully follow the steps as per plan, I will achieve the aims set for the lesson. Good luck to me!
Resuming fieldwork
Day 14, 20 April 2011
The reason why I enjoy the AR cycles is because it is practically not as linear as it looks. There I was moving to the 3rd day of cycle 1 where I had planned to implement a similar writing lesson that I had done before leaving for the conference. I went into the class with a new handout, but then some students came to me and asked if I had checked/corrected the drafts they submitted last week. Due to lack of time I couldn’t check those drafts. However, I decided to give feedback to them in today’s class only because if they revisited their work they would probably identify their own mistakes in a better way than before. So I quickly returned their drafts and asked them a list of questions that I had already prepared with the idea of checking/marking each draft at home. I read my marking criteria while they checked their work. Usually students are more motivated in doing something that offers them marks, but here for the first time I found them engaged in the task even though there was no reward involved. Hmmm, I still wonder what derived them…may be the fact that I told them that they will have something similar in the exam or because they realized it’s for their own benefit…I really don’t know. But there were clear signs of uptake of feedback as they asked me to repeat the criteria while they check and recheck their work. Since they sit in three wide rows of 7 seats each, I faced one row at a time while going through each marking criteria. I did notice that while I faced one row, students sitting in the other two rows would try and follow the criteria even though they’d get a chance to check their work later. Although I didn’t plan to give feedback in this way, but I thought I worked quite well both for me and the students. I think there’s enough food for thought for my next week’s lesson as I’ll be continuing with cycle 1, but I’ll be focusing on speaking skills again.
The reason why I enjoy the AR cycles is because it is practically not as linear as it looks. There I was moving to the 3rd day of cycle 1 where I had planned to implement a similar writing lesson that I had done before leaving for the conference. I went into the class with a new handout, but then some students came to me and asked if I had checked/corrected the drafts they submitted last week. Due to lack of time I couldn’t check those drafts. However, I decided to give feedback to them in today’s class only because if they revisited their work they would probably identify their own mistakes in a better way than before. So I quickly returned their drafts and asked them a list of questions that I had already prepared with the idea of checking/marking each draft at home. I read my marking criteria while they checked their work. Usually students are more motivated in doing something that offers them marks, but here for the first time I found them engaged in the task even though there was no reward involved. Hmmm, I still wonder what derived them…may be the fact that I told them that they will have something similar in the exam or because they realized it’s for their own benefit…I really don’t know. But there were clear signs of uptake of feedback as they asked me to repeat the criteria while they check and recheck their work. Since they sit in three wide rows of 7 seats each, I faced one row at a time while going through each marking criteria. I did notice that while I faced one row, students sitting in the other two rows would try and follow the criteria even though they’d get a chance to check their work later. Although I didn’t plan to give feedback in this way, but I thought I worked quite well both for me and the students. I think there’s enough food for thought for my next week’s lesson as I’ll be continuing with cycle 1, but I’ll be focusing on speaking skills again.
martes, 19 de abril de 2011
Catching up
DAY 8 18 April 2011
Delivered my second lesson. It was OK; I think I was better prepared but even though I tried to plan most things and what to say I started with my usual rumbling and digressions. I intended to do some language work, managed but it was VERY peripheral. VERY, so peripheral that it was hardly noticed. I did more vocab though and some pronunciation features but very little as regards conditional sentences, grammar point of the coursebook unit.
We couldn’t get together with C to discuss her observations and feelings more but we only chatted for about ten minutes during the break between lessons.
DAY 9 19 April 2011
Observed A’s first lesson. Only 40’, I had to leave the classroom but thanks to the ipod everything’s there, well, at least what the teacher said… I don’t think I’ll be able to interview her today, I was tired, so was she, then I tried to arrange a phone interview but that didn’t work either…I don’t to be a burden
Then, later, I ended up recording a meeting with S. Out of the blue she decided to plan History lessons for her YEAR 3 Polimodal. As I was listening to her, the idea of motivation is beginning to emerge more strongly. Also, I begin to see again this idea of the teacher as a ‘resourcer’: like ‘I give you these photocopies, and you make a presentation based on this material plus others you might find and bother to find’. I’ll transcribe it and keep it stored, it might be beneficial. To some extent, S’s plan sort of advances what I have in mind for May and June but I’m not sure to what extent is intimate to the AR project as this is more of an individual endeavour to fight this lack of motivation and interest S perceives in her class. Again, she determined the topics and contents because A. She’s got worth exploiting sources (book and films) and she likes English History. I guess she’s at a loss or she confirms her low expectations about her students as the told me that she asked them what they are interested in and nobody said a thing. Does it have to do with the way she asked them? Maybe she asked them in English rather than in Spanish? I should ask her.
I couldn’t help it and opened my mouth again by suggesting a couple of things for the stu’s benefit: stu presentations on Tue, film discussion on Wed, more scaffolding for their presentation and follow-up activities for their peers. It’s a fact that we don’t think the same about our stu, I don’t have to let that affect the process of research and, above all, our friendship WAY more important than our professional relationship.
Delivered my second lesson. It was OK; I think I was better prepared but even though I tried to plan most things and what to say I started with my usual rumbling and digressions. I intended to do some language work, managed but it was VERY peripheral. VERY, so peripheral that it was hardly noticed. I did more vocab though and some pronunciation features but very little as regards conditional sentences, grammar point of the coursebook unit.
We couldn’t get together with C to discuss her observations and feelings more but we only chatted for about ten minutes during the break between lessons.
DAY 9 19 April 2011
Observed A’s first lesson. Only 40’, I had to leave the classroom but thanks to the ipod everything’s there, well, at least what the teacher said… I don’t think I’ll be able to interview her today, I was tired, so was she, then I tried to arrange a phone interview but that didn’t work either…I don’t to be a burden
Then, later, I ended up recording a meeting with S. Out of the blue she decided to plan History lessons for her YEAR 3 Polimodal. As I was listening to her, the idea of motivation is beginning to emerge more strongly. Also, I begin to see again this idea of the teacher as a ‘resourcer’: like ‘I give you these photocopies, and you make a presentation based on this material plus others you might find and bother to find’. I’ll transcribe it and keep it stored, it might be beneficial. To some extent, S’s plan sort of advances what I have in mind for May and June but I’m not sure to what extent is intimate to the AR project as this is more of an individual endeavour to fight this lack of motivation and interest S perceives in her class. Again, she determined the topics and contents because A. She’s got worth exploiting sources (book and films) and she likes English History. I guess she’s at a loss or she confirms her low expectations about her students as the told me that she asked them what they are interested in and nobody said a thing. Does it have to do with the way she asked them? Maybe she asked them in English rather than in Spanish? I should ask her.
I couldn’t help it and opened my mouth again by suggesting a couple of things for the stu’s benefit: stu presentations on Tue, film discussion on Wed, more scaffolding for their presentation and follow-up activities for their peers. It’s a fact that we don’t think the same about our stu, I don’t have to let that affect the process of research and, above all, our friendship WAY more important than our professional relationship.
miércoles, 13 de abril de 2011
Dealing with the unavoidable
Day 13, 13 April 2011
I had to reschedule today’s class because one of the teachers asked me that she needed the auditorium for some seminar that the department had arranged. I could not have my class in any other room as the other rooms didn’t have enough seating space. I’ll also have to reschedule some of my classes next week as I’m leaving for a conference. I now hope to resume classes from 20 April.
I had to reschedule today’s class because one of the teachers asked me that she needed the auditorium for some seminar that the department had arranged. I could not have my class in any other room as the other rooms didn’t have enough seating space. I’ll also have to reschedule some of my classes next week as I’m leaving for a conference. I now hope to resume classes from 20 April.
Action plan continues
Day 12, 12 April 2011
When I went for the class today, some students were busy writing their second drafts and some were filling up the self-assessment form. For a moment I felt annoyed that they were doing it at the last minute, but then I was happy to see them involved. Some of them requested that I give them 5 minutes so that they could complete. At least they were taking interest! So I encouraged them to quickly complete and submit the work. All I wanted was that they maintain their interest especially those who never cared about getting their worked checked. Once they all handed in yesterday’s work, I moved to the new lesson. This time it was easy as I didn’t need to explain much and students knew it was a similar task like the previous day. But then today I told them to spend 5 – 10 minutes separately on reading and interpreting the graph first and then another 20 minutes for writing. I had learned from the previous lesson that students needed more time to understand and write about the graph than I had initially planned. So today, I told them that they have around 30 minutes to complete the first draft. Meanwhile the students wrote their first draft, I decided to move around and see what they were doing. I knew this won’t be easy in fact; it will be quite tiring, but then I’d learn what each student was doing. I moved around and signed students’ first draft to ensure they were all doing the task. Also, if they had to take this task for home assignment (in case they couldn’t complete in the class), I wouldn’t mind as long as it is the same draft they submit to me later. I noticed that for some strange reason they all wanted to get their drafts signed. This is something that I had never seen in my previous writing lessons. Students who never cared about showing their work to me were now asking me to come and sign their drafts. A marked difference in their attitudes! Once they finished writing draft 1, they exchanged their work for peer review. After spending 10 – 15 minutes on peer review, I told them to complete the rest of the task at home and submit their work to me in the next class. In the last couple of minutes, I quickly asked if they were satisfied with peer feedback. Some students clearly said that the peer feedback of was not relevant as the mistakes pointed out were not really mistakes and so they decided for a second peer review. Once again I could see their serious attitude and involvement in the task. Good thing!
When I went for the class today, some students were busy writing their second drafts and some were filling up the self-assessment form. For a moment I felt annoyed that they were doing it at the last minute, but then I was happy to see them involved. Some of them requested that I give them 5 minutes so that they could complete. At least they were taking interest! So I encouraged them to quickly complete and submit the work. All I wanted was that they maintain their interest especially those who never cared about getting their worked checked. Once they all handed in yesterday’s work, I moved to the new lesson. This time it was easy as I didn’t need to explain much and students knew it was a similar task like the previous day. But then today I told them to spend 5 – 10 minutes separately on reading and interpreting the graph first and then another 20 minutes for writing. I had learned from the previous lesson that students needed more time to understand and write about the graph than I had initially planned. So today, I told them that they have around 30 minutes to complete the first draft. Meanwhile the students wrote their first draft, I decided to move around and see what they were doing. I knew this won’t be easy in fact; it will be quite tiring, but then I’d learn what each student was doing. I moved around and signed students’ first draft to ensure they were all doing the task. Also, if they had to take this task for home assignment (in case they couldn’t complete in the class), I wouldn’t mind as long as it is the same draft they submit to me later. I noticed that for some strange reason they all wanted to get their drafts signed. This is something that I had never seen in my previous writing lessons. Students who never cared about showing their work to me were now asking me to come and sign their drafts. A marked difference in their attitudes! Once they finished writing draft 1, they exchanged their work for peer review. After spending 10 – 15 minutes on peer review, I told them to complete the rest of the task at home and submit their work to me in the next class. In the last couple of minutes, I quickly asked if they were satisfied with peer feedback. Some students clearly said that the peer feedback of was not relevant as the mistakes pointed out were not really mistakes and so they decided for a second peer review. Once again I could see their serious attitude and involvement in the task. Good thing!
Action plan Cycle 1
Day 11, 11 April 2011
The students were sitting in the class when I went for the lesson today. They all had copies of the booklet with them as I had informed the class representative that they should get the photocopies before coming to the class. I first had to introduce them with the lesson and the booklet so that they exactly know what I had planned for them. It took me almost 15 minutes to familiarize them with the planned activity and particularly the peer review and self assessment form which they had never used before. I knew it would be difficult to expect them to finish the whole task in the class as this was the first time they were trying this kind of an activity. After explaining the task I asked them to spend 20 minutes in writing about the graph. They started doing the task while I moved around in the front row monitoring them and answering some of the queries they had. I could see some students sitting at the back discussing the graph. Half way through I realized that they will not be able to complete the first draft by the end of this class as some of them were struggling in trying to interpret and analyze information from the graph. So I moved with the natural flow and didn’t rush at all. They asked more questions today than they usually ask. I tried to explain things several times and made instructions easy and simple so that they follow me. Today, I didn’t call out the attendance, but I circulated a paper and asked students to write their names. So I had more time to observe them while they were on-task. Ten minutes prior to the end of class, I told them that they will complete the first draft today and give their draft along with the booklet to their peer for review and feedback. I told them that they can get peer feedback after the class and then complete the second draft and self-assessment form as a home assignment. I told them that I will collect their completed handouts along with draft 1 and 2 before we begin tomorrow’s lesson. I also gave tomorrow’s lesson to the class representative and asked everyone to get photocopies before coming to the class tomorrow. With that I finished today’s class and left.
The students were sitting in the class when I went for the lesson today. They all had copies of the booklet with them as I had informed the class representative that they should get the photocopies before coming to the class. I first had to introduce them with the lesson and the booklet so that they exactly know what I had planned for them. It took me almost 15 minutes to familiarize them with the planned activity and particularly the peer review and self assessment form which they had never used before. I knew it would be difficult to expect them to finish the whole task in the class as this was the first time they were trying this kind of an activity. After explaining the task I asked them to spend 20 minutes in writing about the graph. They started doing the task while I moved around in the front row monitoring them and answering some of the queries they had. I could see some students sitting at the back discussing the graph. Half way through I realized that they will not be able to complete the first draft by the end of this class as some of them were struggling in trying to interpret and analyze information from the graph. So I moved with the natural flow and didn’t rush at all. They asked more questions today than they usually ask. I tried to explain things several times and made instructions easy and simple so that they follow me. Today, I didn’t call out the attendance, but I circulated a paper and asked students to write their names. So I had more time to observe them while they were on-task. Ten minutes prior to the end of class, I told them that they will complete the first draft today and give their draft along with the booklet to their peer for review and feedback. I told them that they can get peer feedback after the class and then complete the second draft and self-assessment form as a home assignment. I told them that I will collect their completed handouts along with draft 1 and 2 before we begin tomorrow’s lesson. I also gave tomorrow’s lesson to the class representative and asked everyone to get photocopies before coming to the class tomorrow. With that I finished today’s class and left.
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