ILT Blog post 3

This week, our lesson focused on learning a few new phrases and the rules governing those phrases. Materials and activities were pretty similar to what we’ve been doing in the past lessons, with a few new additions. Miranda used the computer and projector to write (taking out the potential difficulty for students that a teacher with poor handwriting presents) and gave detailed handouts for learners to look at throughout the lesson and take home, something she’s done in every session. These I think she includes so we have something to refer back to. I have a hard time remembering everything, so having it in front of me is great.

My favourite material in the lesson was the colour-coded phrases Miranda used during the phrase presentation. This helped me pick out the patterns a lot easier – I could see the way the same vocabulary and grammar was used in different ways. Miranda clearly did this on purpose, and it was very effective.

There were roughly 4 parts to this lesson, structured really well so the easiest material was in the beginning and the harder was at the end. There was a warm-up, going from easier material to more difficult, which is a good way to teach a subject that students don’t have every day or very often. It allows the students to be reminded of what they are supposed to know. I think Miranda structured the class the way she did so we could ease into the material. Once we got to the harder stuff, like figuring out the rule of how to put phrases together, I was ready.

Something I noticed and really appreciated that Miranda did was give the literal translation of some of the phrases. That’s something that I’ve never had a language teacher do, but something I always end up doing for myself. Overall, I liked this lesson a lot. There was a lot of variation and it was really engaging. It’s interesting to me how a lesson that’s very well-structured like this one doesn’t really appear to be—from the student’s side, it’s a seamless lesson. You would never really know how much prep goes into it. It’s completely necessary, though, as this kind of lesson is the best for students.

Blog post 2: The Role of the Teacher and Student

12/11/15

The second Dutch lesson I found a lot different than the first. It had a similar structure, but the teaching style was a lot different, reflective of the different learning goals. As students of language-teaching, we were to focus on the student and teacher activity during the lesson.

In the first part of the lesson, a review of what we’d learned already, we went around the room snake-style saying the questions and phrases we’d learned to one another. The teacher’s role was to facilitate our use of and learning of the language. To do this, Miranda didn’t talk as much or teach us vocab and language rules – she let us try the phrases out on each other and figure it out on our own.

The most significant activity we did was with a handout. In pairs, we had to try to guess the rule for making the present tense of regular verbs. Miranda stood back and watched, letting us puzzle over it. Like the reviewing part of the lesson, she didn’t play an active role as teacher, something I found effective and useful. She allowed the learners to learn on their own. We were in charge of our own comprehension and it was up to us to put effort into making connections.

The teacher’s role was much more passive in this lesson, allowing us to learn actively and engage with the language and each other. When she stood back, we were forced to try speaking on our own (though there was a bit of looking to her for assistance as we struggled to pronounce certain words) and try it out. While she did help when we were stuck, we primarily had to remember and listen to each other to pronounce correctly. The teacher and learner’s role was the same with the worksheet activity. Miranda again stood back and let us work it out on our own. The amount of STT to TTT I found really good – we did most of the talking, and Miranda did a good job facilitating that.

While the activities were effective in facilitating learning, I didn’t think they were supremely varied or interesting. Although the question-answer review style is a good way to get everyone in a classroom to participate in the language, there was just a bit too much of the same thing. I got a little bored after the second time. The handout activity was also a bit dull, as it was pretty simple and the answers were obvious. However, the most important thing in the lesson was achieved – through the activity, I learned (basically) the rule of conjugating regular verbs.