Lesson 6

Lesson Worksheet link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DpBo98LTM6Y-M772W1TBWnt1IjajbWb6/view?usp=sharing

Objectives: By the end of the lesson students will have read, explained and discussed multiple texts in mechanical elevator engineering, received and practised new technical and professional vocabulary orally and in writing in pairs and in groups. Students would have created a company and practiced the language for introducing it in a role play activity.

PLANNING AND PREPARATION FOR THE CLASS

This is the first class I had to plan to teach online due to the corona crisis. We decided with the guiding teacher that we would use Adobe Connect software for teaching. The teacher helped me to get the room from the IT services and guided me on how to make break-out rooms, the function I had previously been unfamiliar with. This function is of paramount importance in an English class as, without it, it would be a significant change to make an online lesson in a group of 34 students interactive.
Having gotten familiar with the break-out group function I needed to make the procedure of a logical, interactive and guided lesson. I needed the students to work together. I usually prefer the pair work in language classes as it gives more opportunities to use the language for each student in comparison to working in groups. I decided to make enough break-out rooms so that I could divide the students in pairs or groups of three if the number was uneven.

How do I guide 17 break-out rooms at the same time? That was a pickle. I know that the students work at a very different pace. One pair can be at task 1, the other at task 3.  I cannot end break-outs for students to come back to the main room for feedback, as many of them would be way ahead with tasks, the others far behind.  I cannot see who is at what stage fast by walking around the classroom to give the next instructions for the fast finishers. I decided to solve the problem by creating a worksheet for the whole lesson. The worksheet contains all the tasks for the lesson the students need to go through with their pair. Detailed instructions accompany each task. Each pair works at their own pace. The open-class feedback from each pair/student was designed to be on padlet and flinga in different tasks. I planned to give instructions for the whole lesson in the beginning in the main room, break them out into pairs to do the tasks on the worksheet, and come back to the main room at the end of the class for the common feedback.

The tasks in the worksheet were designed to be communicative and promoting collaboration and creativity. The lexis was practiced with a game element in Quizzlet application.

HOW DID I FEEL BEFORE CLASS?

Very anxious, as it was the first time I was responsible for an online class with 34 students. Anything could go wrong, technology could have malfunctioned, I could be lost on how to handle the situation and let 34 students down.

HOW DO I FEEL AFTER THE CLASS?

Relived that everything worked. AC worked well, the lesson plan worked well and students were studying and learning. Objectives met.

WHAT WENT WELL IN CLASS? WHAT WORKED?

Software worked. The activities all worked. I believe the most engaging activity was the one where the students had to create their elevator companies and present them to other students at the Expo. It was engaging, inspiring imagination and creativity. Students were having fun.

WHAT DIDN’T GO SO WELL? WHAT WOULD I CHANGE?

In the beginning there was some confusion with the grouping of the students into the breakouts. Some students were physically together, and they wanted to work together, I needed to re-group them. Some students’ mikes did not work, they worked on a WhatsApp call. In Quizzlet activity it turned out the flashcard option worked only till certain number of cards reached. To continue studying the flashcards students needed to sign-up. However, students were given the option to study the words using the textbook and then doing the activities on Quizzlet, which they did. All the activities on Quizzlet worked.

MY STRENGTHS

• Logical procedure
• Engaging task promoting creativity
• Game element for meaning check

POINTS FOR IMPROVEMENT

• Use automatic room division button in order not to waste time in the lesson grouping the students manually into pairs
• Anticipate difficulties in more detail, such as student location, equipment malfunctioning, app malfunctioning.

GUIDINGTEACHER’S FEEDBACK

The feedback was positive from my guiding teacher and my tutor observing the lesson. My tutor suggested to use the automatic division button in AC to group the students, which I will try next time. The tutor asked me how it felt to be in charge of the class but not be able to see the students and see where they can be lost or confused. It is indeed a strange feeling. I was ready to the fact that I was not going to be able to see the students and see where they were at and what they were doing. I made sure in the beginning that the students could contact me any time during the lesson if they needed help in chat or WhattsApp. I tried to jump to each room and make sure that the things were going there well and asked if the students were having any problems. I can say I was there for all the students as much as the software allowed. The jumping between the groups function really helps to feel a bit better that you can still be there for your students.