Micro-teaching presentation #2 (FS19)

Think reflectively about the micro-teaching lesson that you created and presented in class. Then, write a blog (300-350 words approx.) that responds to the following three key questions: why you found this lesson interesting and strong for your class, what you would have done differently due to differentiating instruction reasons, and how you would have incorporated more culture into it.

In order to earn full credit for this blog, you must also leave at least two comments (100-150 words each) on your peers’ posts. Please take the time to read what they wrote – you’ll find that you often have similar reactions to the teaching experience, and can help one another a great deal through this first semester!

Deadlines:

For personal blog: Thursday, October 10, 2019, 11:59 p.m.

For two comments: Tuesday, October 15, 2019, 11:59 p.m.

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Permalink Reply by Maria Lorena Flores on October 14, 2019 at 6:15am

The teaching activity presented was very rich culturally, it definitely created a clear understanding of Perú and the beauty of this country. It is important for students to get to know Latin American countries and its culture to create some curiosity and engage participation. Your production was very fun and exciting for students to learn and compete with each other academically. The reading was comprehensive and the visuals used were real and well done. One of the things I would change is the readings, which I made the same mistake you did in giving a lot of reading which as you said can be overwhelming. You had a lot of great material! (112)

Permalink Reply by Fazima Kausar on October 13, 2019 at 5:38pm

For the second teaching slide, I chose to do a lesson on reading comprehension. To do so, I presented students with a pre-reading activity. According to Lee and VanPatten (2003) the structure that must be followed while teaching the receptive skills of reading and listening, consists of three phases: preparation (pre-reading), guided interaction (during reading), and assimilation (post-reading). This activity could also be considered the Do Now activity, a short task that teachers implement in the very beginning of their presentation. For this Do Now activity I decided to not go about the traditional route, by not requiring students to simply perform a task on paper. I wanted students to interact and get a bit personal by having them speak to one another in the target language and discuss their likes and dislikes about parties. I did this with hopes that students can discuss any family or cultural traditions, as I strongly believe that parties or any celebrations at all incorporate lots of aspects of many traditions and customs.

For the while-reading part of my lesson plan, I decided to include statements about the texts that students had to decide were either true or false. Then I included some short answer questions about the text. For the future, one change I would definitely make is include more while-reading activities. Then for the production phase, students were required to write a short paragraph of how they would personally plan a birthday party on their own.

In one of the classes I observe there is a student with a reading disability, known as dyslexia. When making my lesson plan accommodating for student(s) with such a disability, I decided to make the font a lot bigger of the reading. Then I divided the paragraph, sentence by sentence, and included corresponding pictures, so that the reading is a bit more comprehensible and seems less intimidating. In order to facilitate the while-reading activities for the student, I highlighted all the sentences that corresponded with the questions.

Lee, J. F., & VanPatten, B. (2003). Making communicative language teaching happen. Boston: McGraw-Hill.

Permalink Reply by Evelyn Salazar on October 13, 2019 at 8:37pm

Hello Fazema,

The Reading Comprehension presentation that you presented in class was fun and well organized. I like the fact that you took into consideration students with IEP and you even made arrangements in the activities to help those students to be able to complete the task and understand the content. As Cook points out “Every teacher knows that some students will learn a second language effortlessly, others will struggle for ever. Some of the explanation for this undoubtly lies in the different situations.” So for this reason as future teachers we should always think about all the students that we may have, the ones that need less help and the ones that need more help, and we should be able to support them and challenge them in the classroom. (Word Count:130)

References:

Cook, V. (2008). Second Language Learning and Language Teaching (4th Edition). Oxford University Press.

Permalink Reply by melinda vargas on October 17, 2019 at 7:26am

I really enjoyed your reading comprehension which is a really good example of using UDL. You created one lesson plan using two methods to assist students with such needs. By providing options to text you optimize individual choice and self-sufficiency which is increasing their motivation for learning the language. You were able to successfully link recognizable items to trigger their memory and link items to vocabulary they know but in a different language, this type of visual input assists not only those with dyslexia but also other students who may have difficulty reading or seeing who are then able to understand via audio feedback, large print and the visuals. (109)

Permalink Reply by melinda vargas on October 16, 2019 at 6:42am

The reason why I found this lesson to be strong and interesting is because the pictures used are familiar to those who watched “Jane the Virgen”, a very popular Spanglish soap opera. By knowing the characters and background in English students will be able to connect to those images in Spanish using the most memorable parts of the soap opera. Due to you differentiating instruction reasons instead of asking students to describe what they see using their prior knowledge, I would have created a matching activity as previously suggested in class. In addition, I would have also added a clip to capture the student’s attention as well as more pictures for visual learners and students with other needs. After s thorough self-assessment of the activity it was noticeable that the activities are not easy to the eye and can be a bit overwhelming for a student who is not confident in their Spanish language skills for this reason it would have been better to have two sets of the same activities one with more pictures for those who struggle and one with more text for those who are more confident so that each student works on the same material but on their comfortable zone and both reach the next milestone together using different methods. One way culture could have been incorporated more into the activity could have been changing the text to a comparison of Jane’s wedding and traditional weddings in Venezuela since Jane is a young Venezuelan-American woman with a semi-traditional family. Through this activity student would be able to point out similarities and differences for example Jane’s marriage to Michael she uses a typical wedding dress similar to those of the 1920’s however in her last wedding with Rafael she uses a more modern wedding dress. They would also be able to point out that her first marriage was more traditional in that it was in a church and the send was done in an outside venue. Of course in doing this activity it would have to be simplified for level one or given at level two when they are ready. (353)

References:
Tomlinson, C. A. (2001). How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-Ability Classrooms (2nd Edition). Reston, VA: ASCD.