I had two goals going into this week’s lesson. First, I wanted to incorporate correction throughout the class. Specifically, I wanted to use recasting and elicitation. Second, I wanted to speak slower and use level appropriate vocabulary. I am proud that I was able to give students corrections using recasting and elicitation. My speaking speed was better this week compared to last. However, I know that my speaking speed is something that I will have to continue to monitor as I tend to speak fast when I am excited. In general, I believe that my teaching skills were better this week. I hope that I am able to see continual growth for the next eight weeks of practicum.
Something I would like to work on for the rest of practicum is making my classes more student centered opposed to teacher centered. It was obvious in this lesson that I was running the class instead of facilitating learning. During the discussion portion of this lesson I found myself leading the discussion and in doing that I did a lot of talking to try to get the students to join the conversation. In future lesson I want to be able to introduce the activity and have the students do most of the talking. To do this I will need to design lessons that engage the students and include activities that have a goal. I think that making my classes student centric will be a challenge in an online classroom. In next week’s class, I am going to try turning off my camera during student discussions. It is my hope that by removing myself visually from the discussion will encourage students to talk more.