Reflection On Reflective Teaching

Reflection on developments

Planning choices, staging and execution

This was the main issue that hindered LS1 from being a successful lesson, however, after the feedback with my tutor, what I thought was my capacity to analyse the language aims was in fact the way I chose how to stage the procedure plan and how I did not take into consideration my students’ perspective of the class. For that reason, I decided to tackle my planning and staging more effectively in my LS2. By narrowing the focus of the lesson, as well as keeping my students’ interest, I could interact more naturally with them and fostered more opportunities for personalisation.

Reflective teaching

After LS1, I have consulted with other colleagues who have also taught the same

However, in LS2, some of the pre-reading and vocabulary activities were tweaked to encourage students to use the required skills more effectively. By following the diagram in Appendix 3, I could adapt the material successfully to achieve the aims. It is worth noting that this was not mentioned in the commentary, but it was later discussed during the feedback session with the

Richards and Farrell (2011:Chapter 9) propose a series of steps to develop the ability “to make [my] learners the focus of [my] teaching.” Although I am aware of the importance of keeping my students at the core of my planning — meaning that I have little problem identifying learners’ needs, goals, participation styles and even cognitive styles — I sometimes fail to involve “[my] students in developing or choosing the content of lessons.” (2011:127). As I stated in my previous professional development assignment, part of my belief system as a teacher is to allow students develop their own inquiry, as “the ability to think about language is often associated with an increased ability to learn a language.” (Selinker and Grass 2008:239) However, how this works in a language class has required more research on my part. Woodward (2001:111–12) also claims that there are six things (provision of motivating tasks, interesting materials, guide questions, time and space, answering questions from learners, and encouragement for observation) that we teachers need to do if we are to understand how our students learn. Therefore, by comparing my teaching approach with this list, I have realised that there are still elements missing in my classroom