Explore Your Teaching Through Self-Observation

Gemma Lunn

Have you ever seen / heard yourself teach? (was this voluntary or a requirement?

- If so how was it?- If not why not?

timeI can’t stand the sound of my own voice

It makes students uncomfortable

Admin won’t allow it.I want to forget a class once it’s over.

Lack of equipment.I can’t see the benefits.

“Get over it and move on”

Willy Cardoso

Video Camera.

Camera.

Phone.

Voice recorder.

Focus is on the teacher. Explain the benefits.

Objectifies the teaching process by providing data which can show the teacher what ‘really happened’.

“Promote self-awareness in the teacher.”

(Wallace, M 1991,Training Foreign Language Teachers: A reflective approach, CUP).

See how far your teaching beliefs are in line with your pedagogy and assumptions about learning.

Focus the camera on you.

Use the camera in an activity.

http://peacecorpsworldwide.org/teaching/author/jfanselow/

John Faneslow

www.itdi.pro

Just record 5-10 minutes of your class. Transcribe. Choose an area you want to work on.

• Giving instructions / setting up activities.

• Error correction.• Opening / closing a class.

“Transcribing is like taking a high-contrast photo with all the filters off: you “see” exactly what’s there, including what’s usually hidden by shadows and frames” “Once you look at what’s really there, you can then begin to extract “meaning from it”

(Chuck Sandy, Breaking Rules Course, iTDi, Nov 2012) Different perspective. non judgemental

Write descriptions NOT judgments. The teacher should correct errors more

XXX The teacher is not correcting errors. Don’t just look at negative points look at

positive too.

Opening / closing a class. Error correction. Giving instructions. Giving feedback. Pre-reading / listening tasks. Questions –who asked the questions and

what type of questions are they? Recasting / parroting. Giving praise. Student-teacher interactions.

Specific Measurable Achievable Relevant Time-based

Choose 1 or 2 areas from the transcripts which you (the T) could work on.

- Next time I- I will- so that

In my next class I will - correct the first mistake to show students which tense they should be using.

- use ‘how about you?’ / ‘what did you do?’ instead of just ‘how was your vacation?’

- - I will get the students to guess the question what did you do during your vacation by giving them the first letter of each word.

Use facts from your transcripts to help describe the event.

Your interpretation or judgements are more objective.

More structured / factual and thus more measurable.

“A reflective teacher does not merely seek solutions, nor does he or she do things the same way every day without an awareness of both the source and the impact of his or her actions. Rather, from his or her practice and the students’ learning, the teacher seeks meaning and creates from this a theory to live by, a story that provides structure for the growth of the students and the teacher”