Second Classroom Observation

※ Instrctor: Pamela
※ 2007/5/21, 1:00 ~ 1:50 pm, O-106, Language Center, NCU.

Today was the second time for me to observe Pamela’s teaching. Pamela chatted with students and reminded them some assignments in the beginning if the class. I think it’s important and effective to "warm up". By doing so, students can not only feel the comfortable atmosphere in the class but also have time to get ready to pay attention to the teacher.

About five minutes later, Pamela played the CD, which is about a passage from the textbook. Since the passage is long, some of students did not really listen carefully to the CD. After listening to the CD, students were asked to separate into groups to discuss the questions related to the passage. Pamela separated students randomly by asking them to number off from one to eleven. Then, the people who counted the same number would in the same groups. From my point of view, separating students randomly in this kind of small discussion is appropriate, but it’s very likely to cause chaos because students would not remember each other’s number. What Pamela wanted students to do was that they had to go through all the discuss questions (sentences), and then she would assign every group to take charge of two questions after later. I keep this “strategy” in mind because I think it can make students to read all of the questions. If teacher directly ask students to take a look at the assigned questions, students would tend to neglect other questions because they think those questions are not their business.
Pamela allowed students to use either English or Chinese to do their presentations, I think this is the main reason why students use Chinese during the discussion. Since the students had the “privilege” to use Chinese, I did not hear English in their discussion. Almost at the end of the discussion (about 3 or 4 minutes left), teacher assigned the two questions that each group was responsible for.
And each group had to choose one person to do the report.

Oh ~time flies! 50 minutes passed by. Today’s lesson gives me some new ideas about the field project. Though there is lots of uncertainty about my project, I wish I can turn my disorganized thoughts into a real project! Oh ~ I must to !!! well, I really need some muses.

First Classroom Observation

※ Instrctor: Pamela
※ 2007/5/14, 1:00 ~ 1:50 pm, O-106, Language Center, NCU.
※ Teaching material (textbook): NorthStar, focus on Reading and Writing
(unit 9---the topic about immigration)

For the first ten minutes, Pamela distributed the students’ compositions with both her comments and other three students’ suggestions. That’s one of her ways to polish students’ writing skills. In other words, Pamela thinks it’s important for students to know their errors and also have the abilities to help others to know their errors. Students can upgrade their writing abilities in this kind of mutual (the teacher and students) correction process.

Pamela asked students to read the descriptions of the pictures, then, students had to tell Pamela what they read. Before long, students found out those pictures had one thing in common, that is, these were about immigration. Pamela also sang a song to make it easier for students to guess and know more about this topic. She successfully caught everyone’s attention and made the class much more active.

After that, Pamela asked students try to imagine a situation which was similar to what the textbook mentioned: if you were 16 years old, and you had to immigrant from Taiwan to New York, what difficulties would you encounter? Besides, Pamela also asked them to make a sentence by using “… while….” In this activity, students are free to discuss with each other. Nevertheless, students tended to figure it out by themselves. And also, when Pamela stood beside students to check whether they had any problem or not, students are pretty shy even though they actually had good answers. Regardless of students’ reactions to this activity, I still consider it could positively help students’ learning because it was an open question, which could provide opportunities for students to “brainstorm.” What’ more, since open questions do not have a specific answer, students might be more wiling to share their ideas. In other words, students could let their imagination run wild, and not be afraid of making mistakes.

The last part of this class, Pamela asked students to do the exercises on the textbook, and explained the first three questions for them. From question four, students had to be volunteers to read the questions and say his or her answers. But there was no volunteer at all; Pamela had to randomly appoint some students to answer.

That was the first time for me to observe Pamela’s teaching, I felt really amazed and excited because she indeed has a kind of charisma. However, I think the students in that class are toooooo shy just as what Pamela told me before my observation. Oh~ tomorrow, I am going to observer Pamela’s teaching again, I really hope I can see a better interaction between the teacher and students. Oh, students don’t be shy anymore!!!

2007/5/11Discussion : weblogs

1. Discuss principles for designing English teaching and learning weblogs with team members Our group thinks that the principles of an English learning weblog should be the use of “multimedia”, the “links” of wide range of information, a platform for posting and receiving “comments” from other participants, and a way to “evaluate” the effectiveness of their learning.Compared to the traditional classroom learning, English learning weblog has the characteristics of online learning, which provides more time and space for learners to think, offers hypertexts for learners to absorb more information if they want, works with multimedia contents to attract learners’ attention.Besides, using the form of weblog, learners can receive immediate articles from that English learning weblog through “RSS.”For example, when an English learner gets into a weblog, he/she will browse a lot of online articles with links and multimedia contents to learn English. Then, he/she is allowed to post his/her personal opinions there, he/she can even give the response to other postings, certainly, he/she can receive the feedback for other participants, so that the learning process involves a kind of interaction of knowledge, instead of just one-way input for a learner. Finally, after learning from the weblog, he/she can receive the updated information from that weblog immediately in their personal blogs.

2. Discuss criteria for evaluating ESL/EFL weblogs with team members. **Multimedia : This is a very basic and important component for a weblog because students can find the most appropriate way of learning. That is, the weblog provide various media to facilitate students’ English learning. If there is no multimedia in a weblog, then, it just has a few differences between those traditional learning materials.

**Comments : To judge whether a weblog is good or not, we can take a careful look at the comments from the visitors. These feedback can provide more objective views of the weblog. In other words, we can also know the advantages and disadvantages of this weblog. Besides, comments can inspire the designer of the weblog to make his or her weblog better.

**Information links(hypertext) : The greatest difference between traditional learning materials is that hypertext can make student’s reading much more efficient. Students do not have to flip through many books to obtain knowledge. They just have to click on the links, than, they can explore as many as other websites or weblogs they want.

**Quizzes/ Tasks : It’s very important for an English learning weblog to have such criteria. In that way, students could have the opportunities to check what they have learned. Most importantly, by taking some quizzes or tasks, students can get to know what else they need to put more emphasis on.

Intro. to Weblog

– Understand the weblog and its applications What is the weblog? What are some popular English learning weblogs?
This is the definition of blog (from Wikipedia).
To be honest, I do not know many English learning weblogs because I am still not accustomed to learn English by visiting others’ blogs. I just visit some English websites, selecting something that can arouse my interests. But today I found some weblogs which are about English learning. I cannot promise these are “good” English learning webblogs, but at least, I love them so much. The designers of these weblogs are English teachers, and I think I can see how much they’ve devoted to English teaching by seeing their weblogs.
Kidding me (I love it sooooo much!)
Bonie House
Cindy 魔法
Penny英語教學

– Understand specific weblog features and functions. What can the weblog do compared to the traditional English learning website? What are RSS/ permalinks/ trackback?
Not until Mei-Ya asked us to think about this question, did I really try to differentiate these two seriously. Compare to websites, weblogs provide us with other useful and friendly services which can produce more interactions! Though some special features, such as RSS / permalinks/ trackback, we can share and acquire knowledge much easier than before! Permit me to give you some ideas about these features. (from Wikipedia)
RSS
Permalink
Trackback

–Explore blog features and use them in your blog. How can team blog functions (e.g., comments, moderation, trackback, and pingback) support English reading and writing? How can multimedia presentation (e.g., pictures, and videos, and audio) support English listening and speaking?
Among four functions mentioned above, I do believe that they can facilitate English learning. In particular, I think “trackback” can practice reading ability while “comments” can sharpen writing skills. If you want to apply the function of trackback, it means that you’ve already fully understood and agreed with those articles. In the process of assess whether the article is beneficial for you or not, you have to read very carefully, that is, good reading ability is required in this process. As for giving comments, I consider it’s just like an art of writhing. It’s not an easy task to give appropriate and constructive comments because you have to be very careful not to hurt others’ feelings when you try to give some suggestions. So, writing skills are very critical in giving comments.
It goes without saying that multimedia presentation can support English listening and speaking especially when you are trying to integrate those technologies into your learning. To be more specific, you have to know why and how the multimedia can make you learn better before you decide to take them as learning tools. Most video clips in blogs or youtube have no subtitles. Though you get the general ideas of the clips, you would get more detailed and complete information if you have the ability to listen carefully to the dialogue or explanations in the videos. And also, speaking ability is very important especially when you want to introduce both these multimedia and your own opinion about them to others. In other words, it might be hard for you to persuade how fantastic those multimedia are if you do not know how to describe them properly.