Lesson Reflection

Yiyuan Zhang (Tiffany)

University of California, Riverside Extension
Foundations of TESOL
August 26, 2017

Lesson Reflection
My lesson is conducted to four students three of them from China and the rest
one from South Korea. After watching the lesson delivery video and collecting
feedback from my students, I found that I did quite well in delivering my lesson but
I still have to improve my performance in several ways. In the following paragraphs, I
will reflect on my lesson in terms of the surface, the pedagogical and the critical level.
On the surface level, I allocated time for each activity and used a timer to avoid
making each activity too long or too short. In addition, I used the technology in the
warm up activity (by showing the pictures of San Diego and the Universal Studios on
the screen) to pique students interests and helped them better understand the content.
Even though I used different colors of markers to write on the board and my
students said my writing was quite clear for them, I will try to use PowerPoint for
my next lesson.
On the pedagogical level, I used visual aids in activities to activate students
background knowledge and used a lot of gestures to aid student understanding of the
content. Secondly, I gave directions to each activity and repeated the requirements
before students completed each activity. Thirdly, I kept monitoring students in each
pair work activity to support them and facilitated their communication. When I found
some errors in students discussions, I did not interrupt them but collected the errors
to correct as a class after each activity. In other words, I incorporated Communicative
Language Teaching to some extent and behaved like the supporter of the learning
process (Spada, 2007). For future development, I will use more visual aids (For
instance, I will show students some pictures of cabinets, armchairs, sofa or give
them a picture of an office in the dialogue-reading activity.) and pay more attention to
the comprehension check section.
On the critical level, I treated each student equally and gave them equal
opportunities to speak. When I found two of them speak more actively than the other
two students, I asked the two students who speak less to talk. Nonetheless, from the
lesson delivery video, I found I should pay more attention to the two students in the
front row in the communicative activity because they seemed to talk less than the two
in the back row. To make students apply the target structure in daily lives, I should
extend the communicative activity by asking them to describe the neighborhood of
their homes.
To conclude, my lesson on the There be pattern is effective for English learning
beginners. I gave warm up and wrap up activities and kept monitoring students to
support their communication. The next time I can improve my performance in terms
of the comprehension check and the use of visual aids and the technology.
 References
Spada, N. (2007). Communicative language teaching. International handbook of
English language teaching, 271-288.