Reflection on Teaching

Reflection on Own Teaching

Teacher- Noshin Tabassum
Course- English 103
Topic- Parallelism
Date- November 16th, 2015
What I did ( Action )
1. At the very beginning, before starting
my lecture I went in front of the students
and greeted them gently. Throwing a
smiley face I said Good Afternoon, How
are you all? Next I introduced myself
briefly
and
exchanged
a
warm
belongingness with them by saying I
hope together we will learn something
new and interesting topic of English
language today.
2. I wrote one sentence of faulty
parallelism on the board and asked the
students to correct it in their own way.
Right after their correction I asked them
to guess the upcoming lesson. They
successfully figured out the topic. Only
when majority of the students together
confirmed the topic, I introduced the
topic formally.

3. Students were shown PowerPoint

slides regarding the basic concept and
three points of parallelism to keep in
mind while doing activities. I asked
different students to read out aloud each
piece of information to make sure their
minds are within the topic.

What I thought about it

( Reflection )
1. My thinking was that, a good learning
happens when the learners and the
instructor cooperate each other in a
comfortable way. For this the first thing I
did was to put the learners at ease. It
was also necessary to create a positive
appeal for the lesson to be taught. That
is when both interest and attention of
the students remained intact for the
new topic.
2. Going from known knowledge to
unknown is the best way to make the
students feel confident and worthy of
their capability. Being the students of
intermediate level, most of them knew
about the parallelism at least at a basic
level. So I tried to elicit the topic from
them instead of just reveling it easily.
Because I think the more students
participations are, the more effective
the teaching is.
3. In most of the cases, if the lecturer
reads out everything about the topic,
students start to become inattentive
and less passionate to participate in the
lesson. So I wanted to confirm their
successful participation without being
hesitated and afraid of speaking
liberally, to make the lesson more
interesting. Another important thing is,
when students started participating in

the
class,
they
started
feeling
themselves as the important parts of
the class- which was an important aim
of mine.
4. When the proper understanding of the
lesson was done, students were asked to
divide into pairs with the person sitting
next to each one. After that, their first
activity was given where they had to
simply cross out unparalleled items from
each group of words and substitute
those in a parallel form that goes with
the rest of the group. They were asked to
discuss with the partner and given two
minutes to complete the task but they
just nailed it within one minute. Next I
asked different groups to reply to
different groups of words. When one
group was answering, I made sure that,
it was loud enough to reach to all other
pairs in order to correct the answers
together. Luckily all of them answered
properly.
Next they were divided into four groups
to complete second activity which
included making verbal phrases parallel
to each other in the given sentences.
Before assigning them the task I was
consistently appreciating their brilliance
saying, you guys are very smart. I am
sure you would do it faster. While they
were doing the activity within the group I
tried to go to each group to make them
understand the task better. Even though
two groups had confusion they did it
perfectly after I made the question clear
enough. Again they completed the task
within the time limit with no additional
time.

4. I thought of designing my activities

from easier to harder keeping a pace
with creativity. So the first task was easy
enough
to
complete
which
just
reassured
the
students
strong
confidence level to move on. Next, I
elicited the answers from the students
because I believed it would retain their
attention in the lesson.

I believed little longer exchange of

knowledge regarding specific lesson
makes the students understand the
topic even better. Sometimes it happens
that out of hesitation learners do not get
the
points
clearly.
Those
minor
confusions get removed by peer
discussion. So I gave this task to do in a
group. Next, since they were very sharp,
I tried to motivate them as much as
possible because that is when best
results
are
delivered.
Personal
explanation works at level best for
many learners so I moved to each group
to guide them according to their level of
knowledge and also to make them
comfortable to do the task. In this
regard, friendly gestures are the key.
When the task was done, I asked each Calling on names makes the learners

group
to
answer
each
question;
sometimes by calling their names as
well. When they answered correctly, I
appreciated them through showing
encouraging picture on the PowerPoint
slide which included clauses like, Your
sentence knowledge makes us happy,
Add another score to your point. Etc.
Such thing just made them feel proud of
themselves. One group when failed to
give the right answer, I corrected them
my offering the right answer and not by
saying this is wrong. I explained the
answer as well and asked them again to
say aloud
the right answer by
themselves. After they said I showed
them another appreciative image to not
to make them feel discouraged.
The final activity was given next. In this
task, all students were divided into two
groups to play a game named Tic-TacToe. One team was the "Circles" and the
other team the "Cross. Questions were
shown on power point slides and which
team raised hand first were given
chance to answer. They placed their sign
anywhere on the box of the game drawn
on the board if replied correctly. Play
ended when one team got three shapes
in a row on the tic-tac-toe board. I along
with the whole class cheered up the
team with hands of applause.
Finally when all the tasks were done, I
thanked each and every student of the
class for their cordial participation,
attention and wished a great future
ahead.

feel special and participate even more.

Therefore I did it purposely. Since they
were students of intermediate levels, so
anything encouraging point would
trigger them accurately, I thought so.
Therefore I included such item to make
them feel good about the lesson as well
as about themselves. Next, my purpose
of correcting the answer through saying
the right one was not to make students
feel unhappy. Sometimes it happens in a
classroom
when
wrong
answers
demotivate students to participate. So
to prevent that I offered the correct
answer to let them do self-correction.

I thought to include a game into the

lesson activities to cheer up all the
students to focus even more on the
topic. When the task is competitive,
there remains a challenge of winning. In
such segment students always feel
enthusiastic to answer and make own
team winner. A teacher in such chance
can include different questions of
multiple rules as well to drill into
students minds. So I tried to make
them revise all the rules in a nonmonotonous way. Last but not the least
clapping for the winners just gave the
activity a happy ending.
Anything is impressive if that is left
impressively. So I wanted to end the
session just the way I started it that is
with a friendly presence.