MT 3 *yawn*

As I watch the video for my MT, I’m struck, once again, by the fact that the lesson seemed really…bland.  It’s the same kind of feeling I had after watching my second MT lesson.

I prepared this MT last week, and had Friday to ‘try it out’ with two of my classes (that’s for a different reflection) so in a way, I knew the steps and knew what had worked well the day before, so I think I was focused on trying to get it all ‘correct.’  This is something I know I’m bad at – I focus too much on getting the steps right, and am less engaged with the class and the activities. 

I keep wondering if there was something else I could have done to have made it fun (“Let’s try some Balinese dancing everyone!”) but I’m not sure how I could have made it more fun, without being able to go through the source and the reading tasks. 

When I focus on my instructions, they seem shorter, in fact, I think my Teacher Talk Time is definitely shorter than before.  However, some of the instructions were a little confusing:  “Write down two things that she does that you don’t do.  Two things that are different about Putu.”  As I know I’m bad with instructions, I try to script them in my LP – but I don’t always remember them, obviously.

Also – when I asked ss to use the ‘structure’ in the board – I noticed I did all the talking.  Perhaps I could have done this a bit more inductively – and had ss try to use the structure before – HOWEVER – I did want to give them a model.  The ‘practice rounds’ I’d done at school didn’t go very well – so I was conscious of wanting to give ss a model.  Here, though, maybe I could have given one model and then asked a ss to give another example before they went into their pairs.

In terms of feedback, I tried to be as communicative as possible – I asked ss to elaborate, and some of them did (Laura told me about a friend who lived in Bali etc.)  Some ss answered with “just a guess” or “no reason” and I didn’t continue with that – maybe I should have? 

When I was planning my lesson, I put in a lot of ‘short’ activities for ss to go through.  As I watch the video – I wonder how ‘smoothly’ the lesson went.  The many short activities feel like they made the lesson a bit ‘choppy.’  So it was: guess – feedback – find the country – feedback – what are we going to read? – feedback – find two things you do and don’t do – grammar construct – use it  - feedback.  Perhaps I still need to work on deciding how many activities I should use to get through the TD, TDBU and BU sequence. 

One last thing – I did a little pronunciation drilling in the class.  Now, in my ‘real’ practice class, the students didn’t pronounce Indonesia correctly – so we practiced it (It was actually something I anticipated).  Here, when we practiced it – it just sounded weird because everyone got it right…but I still drilled it (face palm.)

All in all, I think the MT went well enough.  I think I have improved in my instructions and feedback – but again, I can’t help but feel like the class needed some more ‘spark’ to it.  Also – I think the idea of ‘letting ss talk amongst themselves’ still isn’t comfortable for me – maybe I’m the one who’s bored because no-one’s talking to me??  I can hear Tom’s favourite line ringing in my ears… “It’s not all about you, Amy…”