Reflective Journal
Reflection can be defined as "the capacity to reflect on action so as to engage in a process of continuous learning." (Schon 1983). Reflection has been used as a method in teacher training, since the work of Schön (1983), as a way of guiding teachers to construct their understanding and knowledge that influence their actions in the classroom. According to Ofsted; reflective practise in teaching is an important element of being a 'professional teacher'. 'The most distinctive of these very good teachers is that their practice is the result of careful reflection . . . They themselves learn lessons each time they teach, evaluating what they do and using these self-critical evaluations to adjust what they do next time.' (Why Colleges Succeed, Ofsted 2004:19)
RJ1: Using Reflection and feedback to improve teaching and learning
Reflection is an important part of continual professional development and research shows that deep learning is a more realistic goal when a reflective approach is used (Marton and Saljo 1984).
On going from Year 1 my reflections identified that I need to make my lessons more structured. My intention was to begin each task by explaining to the learners "we are now going to. the reason why we doing this." and after completing the task explain to the learners "We have just.. now you should be able to." The purpose being that each part of the lesson has its own "specific objective", which is made clear to the learners. I remember to do this sometimes although this needs to more consistent, I have started to write up more detailed lesson plans, which include these objectives to serve as a reminder.
Petty (2004) explains that teachers decide what they want to achieve in the lesson (the aims and objectives) plan the lesson accordingly, teach the lesson and then evaluate, asking themselves whether they achieved those aims. The evaluation will determine plans for the next lesson, therefore it is a cycle. Giving leaner's specific objectives `are the stepping stones which take the learners in the direction of our aims.` (Petty 2004:394) Petty describes in detail how to write clear objectives, which can be remembered by the mnemonic SMART, which I was already familiar with when setting targets in ILPs, by keeping this in mind and there purpose I feel more likely to keep coming back to the objectives during the class and making the learners and myself clear about the direction we are going in.
One of the difficulties that I am finding with my lowest level of learners is trying to encourage them to remember what I have taught them. I am aware of the importance of drilling and repeating activities in order to move knowledge from their short term to long term memory and I have thought that I probably don`t do enough drilling in my lessons, when it is an important element for our brains to be able to `automise` tasks. Drilling enables us to `cut a groove` in our brain so that we can then `get up to speed` and as well as `getting our tongue around it` (Scrivener 200:255). Other theorists have argued it is not genuine communication and they may have no idea what they are saying but Scrivener argues it`s emphasis is on accuracy and explains if we are going to drill however there should be a high standard of pronunciation expected from the learners and made challenging. When it comes to helping my students to remember the learnt language it was also interesting to read that `if students think about what they are repeating and try to organise it in their heads, they stand a better chance of remembering what they are learning than if they merely repeat it without thought.` (Harmer 2007). It is important to repeat encounters with the language and the more they come across the language, the better chance they have of remembering it. With my Early Entry learners I tend to repeat what we have learnt the previous lesson but this is probably not enough with this level of language learner and throughout the course I need to find a variety of different ways for the students to encounter the same language again for them to remember it.
Another aspect to teaching and learning, which I had difficulties this year was perhaps following a clearly thought out scheme of work. After the Christmas holidays I needed to decide which of my learners should be on a speaking and listening only learning aim or which learners had the reading and writing skills to do the full Entry 3. It was important to get the right learning aim so I decided to do a writing practise paper with the learners, which included asking them to plan, draft and write an article. We had never discussed planning or newspaper articles and so of course some of the students commented on this negatively. I felt this was a fundamental mistake in my planning and made me realise that although I plan lessons individually and I feel I teach all necessary aspects of the exams, I don`t however follow a scheme of work and don`t really consider the longer term aims of the course. Thaine (1996) believes that for inexperienced teachers, a plan - a mental structure - `might be just the map we need initially` and it is not only useful for the teacher but gives the learner more confidence in the person teaching them as well knowing what`s in store. I have written schemes of work and I think it will help me a lot to start to follow them more but to not be afraid to deviate, remembering that `what happens in lessons is the result of an interactive system and things will evolve and develop, depending on what has happened as explained by Mallows (2002) language is complex and does not happen in linear patterns. I do appreciate the need now for following a scheme of work more closely then I do and I am going to revisit my scheme of work and also consider introducing `threads` of learning I can introduce, which will help my learners revisit language as discussed previously.
I feel some of my activities and lessons fall on a bit of a flat note. According to Ofsted "the plenary is poorly used if it is simply a bolt-on-extra which provides an opportunity for groups of pupils to present their work daily; it is essential time for making sure that pupils have grasped the objectives and made progress, so that the next lesson can begin on firm foundations" I have researched some practical plenaries, which could be used with my learners, in order to establish whether the learning objectives have been met. For example; Beat the teacher; where everyone (teacher included) has a mini-whiteboard and pen and everybody perhaps brainstorms vocabulary from the lesson. Learners are given an extra minute and see if they can beat the number the teacher wrote.
RJ2: Reflection on own specialist knowledge and skills
I feel having an MA in TESOL shows that I have the level of specialist knowledge needed to teach the level of students that I teach, as identified in PDP3 however there are areas of ESOL that I feel less confident in delivering because of the lack of experience in teaching in those areas. In particular learning grammatical rules in English has been a sharp learning curve for me, each time I teach a new grammatical feature to my highest class level, I have spent time making sure I understand the rules before I go into the classroom and an example in order to explain how we use that feature of English, use the appropriate meta-language and teach these to my learners. I have now started a level 5 ESOL, which is already increasing how confident I feel with regards to grammar.
The level 5 is also helping me with the ability to identify the grammatical errors, with the work that we have done on discourse analysis, in students written and spoken English as identified in PDP3 and give the appropriate feedback accordingly. I have an increasing understanding of transferred characteristics of different learners' first languages and Learner English by Michael Swan and Bernard Smith is an excellent book, I refer to for this.
RJ3: Audit of literacy, language, numeracy and ICT skills in your specialist area
All areas of literacy and language is integral to teaching ESOL. Speaking, listening, reading and writing skills are each developed every lesson with the learners. Reading is a barrier for the low level learners and, as already discussed phonics based work is often used to support these learners with their reading skills. Spelling is a particular barrier for a lot of ESOL learners at any level and at our college there are loads of resources, which can be used to help the learners grasp some of the rules of English spelling.
In the past I have supported ESOL learners in numeracy lessons so I understand how much the learners level of English acts as a barrier to the learners numeracy skills and although many of the learners are competent in maths in their mother tongue, being able to comprehend numeracy problems in English will limit the learners progress in numeracy, however once learners reach Entry Level 3 ESOL the learners are encouraged to join a numeracy class to develop their skills further. Prior to this direct numeracy teaching, it is vital that basic numeracy is embedded in the ESOL classes, for example counting, shapes, reading the time, dates, ordinal numbers, money and role playing a shop situation are all basic numeracy skills covered in ESOL classes, which provide a foundation of English for them to build their numeracy skills and support them with the necessary language needed for day to day situations requiring numeracy skills. As identified in PDP3 I believe I have the numeracy skills needed to teach at this level.
Last year I identified a need to do basic ICT lessons with my lessons and incorporate more technology in ESOL lessons. This year with the pre-entry learners we have introduced some basic ICT units, which teach the learners to identify ICT equipment, use a digital camera, a mouse and undergo an internet search. During my specialist conference two of my peers presented on the use of ICT equipment in the ESOL classroom and gave some very interesting suggestions, especially using mobile phones, blogging and social media as part of language teaching.
References
Francis, D (1995) The reflective journal: A window to pre-service teachers` practical knowledge Teaching and Teacher Education Volume 11, Issue 3, May 1995, Pages 229-241
Harmer, J. 2007 The practice of English Language Teaching Pearson Education Ltd
Petty, G. 2004 A Practical Guide: Teaching Today Nelson Thornes Ltd
Schön, D. A. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner. Basic Books, New York.
Scrivener, J. 2005 Learning Teaching Macmillan Publishers Limited
Swan, M. & Smith, B. 2001 Learner English: A teachers guide to interference and other problems Cambridge University Press
