Reflections from my co-teacher

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I have been working as a director of English department at Soongeui Elementary School for 7 years, and I have observed lots of different English teachers’ classes. Lindsay’s conversation and reading club was one of the most impressive classes I have observed in this school.

 

When Lindsay told me she was planning a reading and conversation class for the Wednesday afterschool club program, I did not expect much because the program was not one of the regular English classes based on the school English curriculum. Since the class was an extracurricular activity, it is mainly for students to have fun through the club activity not to be evaluated. For the past few years, the teacher who had that class did not have a well-planned semester syllabus. They just prepared one time activity or project for each day. Students still had fun; but unfortunately, the program missed the continuity of learning for students.

 

Lindsay’s class, however, was well-designed considering the students’ interests and their English proficiency. It was planned that students can learn how to discuss with peers step by step through reading a chapter book. While I have been watching her classes, I could see that she put much time and effort on the class. She prepared a lot for the class activities every time. The activities were not just one time thing and all the activities were related under the same book. They were not only fun and engaging for the students but also very effective to learn English through reading.

 

During the first class, I found some of the students were easily distracted and not fully into the lesson. However, as the class went on over few weeks, the students were getting used to Lindsay’s class routine (Engaging activity – reading – main activity-discussion) and I was able to see that they were having fun in the class while reading and doing different activities. They were even waiting for the next lesson and wanted to know in advance what activities they were going to do. They really loved reading the book they chose with her, even the one student who said he did not like Star Wars and Yoda seemed to enjoy reading it a lot.

 

The most impressive thing about her class was that I could actually see that the students were improving their speaking. They have had the class only over nine weeks, but their speaking skills have improved in this short period of time. When they had their first discussion, they seemed to be uncomfortable to share ideas with peers. Only a few students participated actively in the discussion. Since then, Lindsay always told me the problem she found in her previous class and what she was planning to do to solve it. I think this close attention to her own class made her class better and more effective for the students. The discussion topics she chose were very interesting for them to engage the discussion. Every discussion time, she gave the students different discussion skill to focus on. While the students were having a discussion, she tried to give little direction not to interrupt their discussion and make it more student-centered. Fortunately, they have followed her guidance well so far and they were able to learn how to discuss in English with peers step by step. It seemed that they understood many important things to do to have a good discussion time. While I was watching the latest discussion, I noticed that now students knew that not only do they need to be good speakers, but also good listeners to have more active discussions. They became better at eye-contact, interacting with others and asking questions during the discussion. They are still young and energetic kids so they could be distracted or get too loud during the class, but I think they have improved a lot through this class and more importantly, they are enjoying it a lot. I personally think that the nine kids who have joined this club this year are very lucky to have this well-designed and fun lesson with a great teacher!  

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-Jean Kwak