Teaching reflection:
In order to advance with the development of the new curriculum reform, the Yancheng Teaching and Research Institute sponsored the annual Top-quality Courses Competition. I, luckily, took this rare opportunity to participate in this competition on December 7th. All of the competitors were from different counties. They had the same goal, that is, to show their teaching style so as to promote academic changes between themselves. I felt a little nervous at first, because it was my first time to take part in such a competition. In addition, there was little time for me to do enough preparation and put it into practice. With the help of my colleagues and their encouragement, I decided to try my best. I chose the part of Main Task as my teaching material. After I studied the text, I found that the main goals of this period were to make the students master the new words about people’s personality, appearance and to train the students’ability to write an article about himself/herself or his/her best friend. Based on the knowledge aims, I also had to help realize students’ emotional aim, say, to enable the students to know what kind of a friend is a true friend and how to make good friends. This was a valuable experience for me. After this competition, I realized that I had learnt a lot from practice and others.
Now I’d like to analyze my teaching from the following aspects:
Ⅰ Preparation and teaching process
During my preparation, I prepared a lot of pictures to realize the revision and teaching of the new words. I found that they were quite attractive when students saw them during the teaching. To some extent, the use of the pictures of some famous stars could cultivate students’ interest to use the adjectives to describe their appearance, personality and etc. When I had to teach the related words about the face, for example, round and square, I presented some cartoons for comparison. As far as the adjectives of eyes and nose were concerned, I also used some flashcards for presentation and comparison. The students inclined to look and say something about the pictures, using the related adjectives. When I taught the words of one’s figure and personality, I first called some students to tell me what kind of friends they would like to choose as their best friends. I gave them some hints when they met some difficulties. Then, I presented some pictures for a small talk, getting students to talk about the personalities of different people and what kind of person they would like to be. After this, I gave students some time to describe the famous stars, for instance, Yao Ming, Harry Porter, S.H.E and etc., which could help them to understand the meanings of the adjectives. During the reading part, I presented some questions and tasks for students to answer and fulfill. Owing to the use of multimedia, students could answer the questions quickly and effectively. In order to avoid the one-sidedness of comprehension, I gave students more time to read and practice. The total goal was to develop students’ ability to write an article about his/her best friend. To serve this goal, I designed some questions for them to answer in advance and got students to talk and make a conclusion. In this part, I used a game to help, say, a guessing game, asking students to write down something about his/her friend and read it aloud for others to guess who he/she was. This method, I thought, conquered the monotony of writing. I outlined the importance of being an honest, kind-hearted and helpful person. At last, I
played a poem for students to enjoy and imitate, which, as I saw it, would possibly raise the theme to a higher level.
Ⅱ Students’ learning process
This was the first time that I came to Jianhu. All of the things were strange to me. I knew nothing about the school and the students. In order to make better exchanges between the students and me in class, I stepped into their classroom and introduced myself to them before my class. They felt quite strange initially, but later they felt excited. I asked them to try their best in my class. All of them nodded and it seemed that we became closer. However, when it came to my class, they felt quite nervous just in front of the teachers from different places. Before class, I tried to relax them by singing a song and asking them to wave their hands. They were very cooperative. I felt a little more confident. During the class, I proceeded well as I designed. Once I raised a question, most of the students could undertake brainstorm and gave me the correct answers. When the discussion time came, I divided them into groups of four, asking them to do related tasks. What I didn’t expect was that they preferred not to come to the front for acting. I felt a bit embarrassed at first, but I respected their choices and dealt with it properly. For most of the time, all of the students were very hard-working. It seemed that they had grasped all the knowledge effectively in this period. However, I found some problems when they stood up to give me answers. At that time, I felt nervous about my teaching effect. “Was my teaching method unsuitable for them?”, I said to myself, but I had no time to think . I tried to speak more slowly and clearly, giving them more time to think and speak. It really worked. The students and I cooperated well during the following steps. In my teaching process, I felt it a pity that I didn’t give the students time to present their papers and correct their mistakes, which I thought I should keep in mind for future teaching. After the class, our instructor gave me some advice, which was quite acceptable and suitable to me.
Ⅲ The organization of the class
In terms of my organization of the class, there were seven steps in detail. They were warm-up, revision, presentation, practice, conclusion, discussion and writing. From the angle of the time control, all of the steps were carried out successfully during my class. Warm-up and revision occupied about 8 minutes; presentation occupied 5 minutes; practice accounted for half of the class; writing lasted about 7 minutes. I was quite satisfied with the part of oral practice, because every student participated in listening and talking. They could give correct answers when they stood up. The feedback information was ideal at this point. Meanwhile, I was not satisfied with the writing part, as I mentioned in part Ⅱ.Although students had time to write their compositions, they didn’t have the opportunities to know how well they had written. They should get some comments on their composition, for instance, grammar, sentence structure, hand-writing and so on. If I had five more minutes, I would present their papers to the whole class and gave some corrections if necessary. The last part was enjoying a poem, which was related to the theme of the class. Because of the limited time, I didn’t realize the teaching aim of this part. I just called them to read it. If I removed this part, I thought it would be better for the writing exercise.
All in all, on one hand, this was a comparatively successful class. On the other hand, during my competition, I found some unsatisfactory elements in my teaching. I think it would be better for me to improve the teaching procedure for future use. In addition, the classed should be practical and adhere to the students’ ability. I learned a lot from my experience and my instructor’s guide. In order to realize the new concept of teaching, I think I need to do more research on the textbook and learn more from the others.
by Zhong Pingping
December 12th, 2006
8A Unit One Main Task teaching plan
Zhong Pingping from Dafeng Middle School
Teaching aims:
(1). Knowledge aims:
A. To make the Ss. master some new words about people’s personality. appearance and future plans.
B To let Ss understand the passage better.
(2). Ability aims:
A. To develop the Ss’ abilities of listening, speaking, reading and writing.
B. To train the Ss’ ability of working in groups.
(3). Emotional aims:
A To enable the Ss to know what kind of friend is a true friend and how to make good friends.
B. To enable the Ss to communicate with each other
Teaching focuses: To help to train the students’ abilities of expressing themselves in English
A. To help the Ss to communicate with each other.
B. To enable the Ss to study in groups and co-operate skillfully.
C. To develop the Ss’ interest in English.
Teaching difficulties:
(1) How to describe a person.
(2) How to write a passage
Teaching Methods:
(1). Communicative teaching method
(2). “ Task-based” teaching method
Teaching Procedures
Step1 warm up
1. Free talk between T and Ss.
Such as: Fine weather, isn’t?
Do you like this kind of weather?
What will you do on such a find day?
Who do you want to do with?
Step2. revision
1. ask a few questions about friends.
For example: What does your friend look like?
What kind of person is your friend/
What does your friend like?
What does your friend do or want to do in the future?
What made you become good friends?
2. let students practice in pairs.
Step3.presentation
1. show pictures of stars and let Ss say sth. about appearance and guess their personalities. let Ss work in pair to describe persons
2. play a game
I will let Ss describe a person in our class to ask other students guess.
Step4.listening and practice
1. play the tape recorder. Let the Ss listen and answer some questions. For example, Who is Daniel’s friend? Where does she live? What is she like? What would she like to do when she grows up?
2. play the tape again ask the student read aloud after the tape then fill a table. is employed to make the Ss grasp the main idea of the text. .
Step5.make a conclusion
How to write a passage:
Introduction: say who is your best friend is.
Main body: describe his/her appearance
describe his/her personality
Conclusion: describe his/her future plan
Step6discussion
I will say: we have learnt a lot about friends. If you choose a boy or a girl as your best friend, what will you thank about? Here are some questions for you to discussion. ?What is his/her name?
?What is he/she like? (appearance)
?What’s his/her personalities, qualities and abilities?
?What does he/she like doing?
?What would he/she like to do in the future?
Then let them have a competition.
Then make a conclusion: a friend in need is a friend indeed.
Step7.Homework:
(1)Recite the words as many as possible after class.
(2) Write an article about your friend.