In this class today we had five adult ESL students at a level 3 speaking level and one adult ESL student at a level 1 speaking level. Today we talked about Canadian history.
This week I tried really hard to work on my classroom persona. Honestly, it was exhausting. I think it worked though. Halfway through the lesson I started to feel quite drained, and probably slipped back into my more quiet self a few times but was able to recover and be enthusiastic again. I’m guessing in time this will become easier and less tiring as I adjust.
In class this week, the roles worked out even better than last week. There were two discussions this class and both were great. The students talked a lot to each other and there wasn’t a great need for our teacher intervention. The got kind of off topic at some points however. I wasn’t sure at what point it was okay to ask them to go back to the main discussion because it was still somewhat relevant and they were all engaged with each other. This class we mostly let it slide and didn’t ask them to return to the main questions we asked. I kept watch over the discussion and if they had ventured to a topic that wasn’t connected at all I would have asked them to return back to the questions. In the future I might ask them to stay in a more narrow topic but for now I think this is okay.
Along the same lines as teacher intervention, I’m still trying to learn when to stop one student speaking to allow the more quiet students a chance to talk, as well as staying on time. I’m not sure when interruption is needed, and how to go about it. I don’t want to discourage the student from talking, but they can’t spend 10 minutes speaking alone.
Timing continues to be an issue, there never seems to be enough of it. What a tricky thing online. It’s so hard to account for the online format that slows things down, like turning cameras on or lags when switching activities. Also while talking about cameras the infamous camera issue has come back with some students. Some students who used to seem comfortable turning their cameras on have now stopped. Both me, my peer teacher, and my sponsor teacher can’t come up with any ideas we’ve tried several strategies at this point.
The biggest change I saw this week was the students were talking with each other and not just at each other. This is a good improvement and great to see them really listening to each other and having meaningful responses. I really hope to encourage this in the following weeks. Next week we have our first evaluation and I’m pretty nervous. While I know I’ve been watched and evaluated every week, this just feels different. I’m sure it’ll be okay, but that doesn’t stop the nerves.
