Reflective Summary

 

    In my teaching demonstration, I have selected a speaking lesson to teach 6^th graders how to showcase expressions and feelings in their speech using specific sound variations, tones, hand gestures, and facial expressions. Here I have selected a very unique and interesting activity to do in the classroom. By doing that the classroom was filled with a great deal of excitement and fun. At the beginning of the activity, the attention-grabbing techniques I used were as successful as I expected them to be. I started the lesson by giving a warm-up session for the students who were sitting for a long time studying lots of grammar and vocabulary lessons. I believe that it prevented the students from being lazy and playing numb around the speaking activities.  

    Good engagement was maintained throughout the lesson without fading at the latter parts of the lesson. The students were engaging in fun-filled activities with constant energy and excitement. Yet little did they know I was successfully achieving my intended learning outcomes which were to make the learners understand the need for expressions in speaking language, to let them know how the tones can vary according to specific emotions and moods, and to make them perform in real-life-like situations. Moreover, there was a successful demonstration of emotion-filled speech and emotionless which I initially introduced to them as “Robot Speech”. In my activities, I have tried to give chances to as many as students I could during the time, and it helped me to meet my learning objectives.

    And also, changing my position in the classroom as the teacher was purposefully done by me in order to maintain the suitable classroom structures in specific classroom activities. Furthermore, most of the techniques that I have mentioned in my lesson plan were clearly demonstrated in my teaching demonstration.

  Even though there are lots of positive remarks about the lesson I still believe that there is room for further improvements. I should have spent less time on detailed instructions, and I understood that it could cloud the perfectly installed understanding of the lesson that the students have already grabbed. So, I think next time I should give instructions in chunks making it easier and clearer for the students to grasp.  

    Another fact to improve is time management, in this lesson I could have avoided unnecessarily lengthy instruction time and shouldn’t have given more than enough turns when practicing dialogues in the activities. I think I should train myself to have a grip on the time by using options such as keeping a stopwatch by the side of me while doing the lessons. Moreover, I believe that the vocabulary and the concepts such as intonation, and word stress sometimes could have been a bit heavy for the 6^th graders. Even though there was a constant balance of energy maintained throughout my session in some situations and contexts there can be outbursts of energy especially when it comes to fun-filled and exciting classrooms like this. So, in case of such an instance, I should be more confident and trained to maintain the classroom well.