Reflective summary
Reflection is one of the main methods that a teacher can achieve in his or her professional development. It is an honest and intrapersonal discussion about the effective, and ineffective aspects of an experience gained. I did a teaching internship at OKI International School for 45 hours and as an amateur teacher, I could obtain immeasurable experiences to start and develop my career as a teacher. Even though receiving four classes from grade 6 and grade 7 with diverse students made my internship challenging, those hardships drove me to develop the confidence I obtained as a teacher today. Therefore, when reflecting on the effective and ineffective aspects of the teaching methods, materials, and activities used, students’ reactions, and the professional growth I gained, it is clear that this internship is a remarkable landmark in my career of teaching.
Project-based learning was testified as a highly impactful teaching method in my teaching practicum. In order to identify students’ language needs, an essay was given on the topic of “Beautiful Nature” for grade seven students. Consequently, it was revealed that most of the students have the least knowledge of the use and the structure of the tenses. Therefore, a project was launched to create posters on essential tenses; simple present tense, simple past tense, simple future tense, present continuous tense, and present perfect tense, in groups. Students were instructed to mention the use of the tense, the structures of the positive, negative, and question forms along with two examples from each form of the tense. With the assumption that most of the students do not have a clear understanding of the tense assigned for the group, I visited each group and explained the use of the tense and the structures of the three forms of the tense within 7-10 minutes. Students benefited from this approach especially when each group presented their poster in front of the class. Moreover, every poster could be prepared in a similar structure that students can easily grab the knowledge of tenses when they display the posters on the classroom walls.
Introducing the process of writing essays and summaries was a fruitful attempt to motivate students to write essays and summaries. Another significant weakness in 7th graders’ essays was the repetition. It was identified that repetition occurred since the essays were not organized well. Moreover, students neglect writing essays usually as a result of their unawareness of the process of writing an essay. Therefore, the structure and the process of writing essays[1] were taught. Similarly, writing summaries was also a difficult language area for grade 7 students[2]. The teacher used to provide the summary without asking students to write summaries by themselves. Consequently, students are incapable of summarizing a text. Therefore, the process of writing summaries[3] was also introduced. After teaching these two approaches students were self-motivated to write summaries and the repetition could hardly be seen in their essays.
As a student-teacher, I identified myself as a scientist who conducts experiments in the field. There were ineffective teaching sessions among the effective teaching sessions. Giving instructions was challenging at the beginning of the practicum. This inconvenience occurred especially when explaining grammar lessons. Even though the subject knowledge was with me, I had to struggle when explaining the use of the grammar component. For example, when I taught If conditional (type 1) I struggled to elaborate on the use of this sentence type. The principal was observing the class and she interfered politely and explained the grammar component taking some examples from the classroom itself. Students could understand the whole lesson within a few minutes. I witnessed the effectiveness of the clear instructions and understood that because of the unspecified instructions, my instructions were ineffective.
Throughout the whole practicum, numerous materials were used. In order to teach present continuous tense and past continuous tense timelines were used[1] Manipulating these graphics, the meaning of the tense could be explained clearly. Unlike a typical grammar lesson where the teacher elaborates on the grammar component, by using this method, the students could understand the meaning and the use of the two tenses separately without any confusion[2].
Utilizing examples was recognized as a highly impactful material for eliciting. For example, I used two sets of sentences (with and without the prefixes: in, im, dis, and un) and asked about the difference between the two sets of sentences in terms of appearance and meaning. Throughout this questioning, students could understand one of the uses of the aforementioned prefixes[3] that I wanted to teach them in the lesson. Similarly, this method and materials were used to teach idiomatic expressions and past tense (when teaching the spelling rules of converting a base verb into a past form of the verb) for the grade 6 students. Further, this method and materials provided an opportunity to maintain interaction and rapport, unlike the lecture method.[4]
As a type of teaching and learning material, the effectiveness of the technology-based materials; smartboard, presentations, YouTube videos, JBL etc. was unpredictable due to the unavoidable conditions in the school. For example, because of the limited resources of the school, I could not use the smartboard to show the presentation when teaching how to write essays. Consequently, I had to struggle to conduct the lesson using the whiteboard. However, when doing grammar lessons; If conditionals, quantifiers, and summarizing, as a pre-task, YouTube videos were shown using the laptop to maximize students’ interest in the lesson. Moreover, a JBL was used to conduct listening activities. Thus, it is noteworthy to mention that, because of the limited resources of the schools, to estimate to effectiveness of the lessons that are planned to be conducted with technology-based materials, it is better to use personal technological equipment.
Students’ face is the best reflection of the teacher’s lesson. Therefore, I was always mindful to maintain the eye contact with the students. Apart from that, at the end of the while-task where I describe the lesson, I usually visit every student to ask whether they understood the lesson, and depending on their responses I repeat the lesson using more simplified instructions. For example, after explaining the If conditional (type 2), I visited every student to check their understanding and found one student who could not understand the lesson because of missing the previous lesson on If conditionals (type 1). I explained the use and the structure of the If conditional (type 1) which are the essentials and revised If conditional (type 2) while highlighting the difference using simplified instructions. Throughout the whole internship period, it was witnessed that after the interval it was difficult to focus students’ attention on the lesson, students looked tired, lethargic, and not ready for learning. Thus, reflecting on the students’ behavior, the lesson was started with a warm-up activity.[1] This practice established a stress-free atmosphere in the classroom.
Undoubtedly, I gained professional growth through the teaching internship. A significant growth could be obtained in terms of giving instructions while using appropriate materials for the lesson. For example, when I taught essay writing for the 7B class, I kept on explaining how to write each part of the essay in detail. Even though the lesson appeared important students got bored. Reflecting on my teaching I decided to use a chart instead of doing lengthy explanations when I attend to next class (7A). I split the whiteboard into three columns and wrote Introduction, Body Part (Paragraph 1), and Conclusion as the headings of each column and wrote the things that should be written in each paragraph and explained with examples. The lesson was brief and even the students understood the lesson without getting bored. Thus, with these experiences, I ensured that brief and clear teaching materials are always beneficial for the teacher and the learner in both the teaching and learning process.
To conclude, when reflecting on the strengths and weakness of the teaching methods, materials, and activities, students’ response to the lessons, and the professional growth I gained from the internship, it was obvious that my internship has laid a solid foundation to enter my future as a professional educator.
[1] Warm-up activities can foster motivation and generate positive attitudes toward learning in students (Dornyei, 2001, as cited in Velandia, 2008)
[1] Extracted from Murphy (2012)
[2] In the needs analysis it was identified that students usually get confused with other tenses.
[3] These prefixes are used to generate opposite meaning of a word.
[4] The lecture method is imparting the instructor’s knowledge for the learners. Here the instructor’s role is active while the learner’s role is passive (Kaur, 2020)
[1]Finding informationà Free writingà Planningà Writing the essayà Read for checking mistakes (Charles Sturt University, 2012, pp. 1-3)
[2] This was revealed during a conversation between me and the English teacher who was teaching them permanently.
[3] Read the text → Break the text into sections (if it is lengthy) → Find main points → Write the summary → Check the summary against the article (Educraft, 2020)
References
Hassan, M., Mahmood, K., Farahnaz, R. & Nikoo (2013). The role of schema or background knowledge
activation and graphic organizer on increasing Iranian EFL learners’ reading comprehension. European Online Journal of Natural and Social Sciences, 2(2), pp. 229-240 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259979762_The_Role_of_Schema_or_Background_Knowledge_Activation_and_Graphic_Organizer_on_Increasing_Iranian_EFL_Learners'_Reading_Comprehension
Kapur, R. (2020). Lecture method: The comprehensively used pedagogical method.
Velandia, R. (2008). The role of warming up activities in adolescent students’ involvement during the
English class.
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