Observation – TEFL Like a Pro Videos

Reflection on the observation of Three TEFL like a Pro videos

Watched on May 24th

The context of the three videos I watched were that of activities in the classroom.

What I am starting to notice from watching live classes and video classes is that activities and engagement are a huge focus. Variety is stressed where students don’t have an opportunity to be bored and just sit back.

I imagine that most ESL students are coming to class after a full day at work or on their weekend. Therefore, the class needs to be kept lively be it with songs, or games or role play. Getting students up out of their chairs and engaging with each other seems to be a good strategy.

I also noticed that all the activities were not complicated. They were easy to explain, easy to demo and students got on quickly. Even if a game seems elementary (like wack a word) the students became competitive and celebrated the winning team. They were having fun and yet they were still learning. I can imagine them walking out of class and chatting with each other on the way home.

My final thought I take away from this observation is that we as teachers need to have many ideas ready to go. We need variety and material in the form of worksheets, music, game ideas. I wonder how I will start to accumulate these resources and have started to create a list of ideas to draw from

	Activity	Comment
#1	Lesson Type: Oral Lesson Topic: Household Objects The topic was about using Games in the classroom to deliver the content. The teacher gave simple instructions at the start of the game and demonstrated what to do. Three games were played Whack a Word – as a group Password – with a Partner Last Man Standing – as a group	The students were having fun even though the game structure was very low level. The competition of teams and then individual made for fun variation. Maybe this is a new Covid world thinking but for the game password I would change this from whispering words in someone’s ear to showing the word on a cue card. I can see incorporating games in my practice and I need to make sure I they are age and culture appropriate and they are supporting my teaching points. These three games were simple enough in terms of communicating the rules. It did support the objective of the lesson as well.
#2	Lesson Type: Listening Lesson Topic: Song in the classroom Warm Up: The teacher started with playing several verses to a very simple song. With a partner: A worksheet was given to the students to listen again and fill in missing words. Together as a class: The students sang the full song reading the lyrics from their worksheet Group Communicative Activity: Students created a new verse to the song and then sang it to their classmates	I loved this activity. I see the challenge would be to find a song where lyrics are repetitive, non-threatening to any age or culture. Singing may be difficult for those that are shy however singing as she did with a small group could alleviate that. Singing is happy and the activity is motivating and rhythm can also help students remember the words and how they are used.
#3	Lesson Type: Listening, reading and questioning Lesson Topic: Mingle and Role Play The teacher described the first activity of Mingle. Partner – students asked each other simple questions and their partner gave a response. The teacher described the second activity of Role Play Partner- students followed a script and assumed roles in a skit To build on this constructed role play the students had to come up with a new scenario using the same characters	Activities were relevant I was distracted by the setup of the classroom. There were only four students and they were sitting in a semi – circle on chairs for the entire class. They looked uncomfortable. I would think students prefer desks to sit behind, to take notes and to not feel so exposed. My other thought was that the teacher was not clear enough in his explanation. I do see the value of these two activities as they mimic actual conversations that could happen, the activity was totally focused on the student and the teacher was not involved and it offered variety from the regular classroom activity.