Teaching Grammar Lesson (About Tense) To A Group Of Students

Lesson Plan

Lesson plan

Dialogue oriented method was used to teach the students about tense. Jane Vella discovered this approach in 1980. This approach was developed based on different learning models and theories such as Paulo Freire, Kurt Lewin and Benjamin Blooms. Amalgamation of these theories created a learning technique that was able to develop and design in a concrete way (Larsen-Freeman & Anderson, 2013). This approach of learning helps to facilitate or enhance the student’s understanding about the topic. According to Wilson (2017), there are four key points of this learning approach learners, perspective of students, learning tasks and achievement based objectives. Dialogue is the strongest pillar of this teaching method as the conversation between student and the teacher helps the student to overcome the barriers. Secondly, this approach makes the students the prime stakeholder in the process, as their perception about the study is important. Further, the third key factor is used to evaluate the learning of the student throughout the session and uses open-ended questions to assess the learning of the student. The last key factor is achievement-based objectives, which includes objectives, which are equal to achievement. There are few principles and practices present in every level of the dialogue based approach of learning. The learning method should be safe, should have proper sequence and scope of reinforcement, respect, ideas, feelings, teamwork for better implementation of learning and proper evaluation process (McPeck, 2016).

This method was used to make the students learn about tense in three sessions because it has a modern approach of teaching. Each of the students was given the opportunity to interact within the class and discuss their activity, which helped to build their confidence to take part in dialogue. Further, discussion with him or her made them the center of the learning process and the further sessions were dependent on the level of understanding of students. The four key factors of this teaching method helped to make connection with the students and made them learn the lesson according to their comfort level (Lozano et al., 2012). The first day of the session was decided for student interaction and the introduction to the topic. The second and third session was assigned to the complete learning of the topic and then fourth day was assigned for the evaluation process. Finally, the fifth day was assigned for doubt clearance and revision. Therefore, the teaching method was depended on the understanding speed of the entire class and the tutor followed the process. Further, the evaluation method included 10 open-ended questions to assess the level of learning in those students. These questions not only help to assess the knowledge of tense learned by those students in past classes, but also helped to tutor to understand the way those learning are applied in real-life situations by the group of students. According to Richards & Rodgers (2014), theoretical and lecture based study are applicable for the group of students, who already have prior knowledge of the subject and further information provided in lecture will help them to reinforce their knowledge. However, dialogue based knowledge help to establish the knowledge in students who are not aware of the subject and the sessions in dialogue-based approach will help them to understand the topic easily.

Main Skills

The students, enrolled for those five sessions were in class 5 and ranges from age 9 to 11 years. Within this, 60 % students were male and 40 % were female. The maximum students were originally from Sri Lankan society and few of them belong to India and Nepal. 60 % students were familiar with English as they used to speak in English at their home, further were weaker in English speaking and understanding few phrases.

While teaching the students with the lesson, observations of students behavior was noted for further implications. In the introductory session, when students were asked to demonstrate their daily activity, they started discussing among themselves and everyone came up with nearly same answers. In the next classes, after understanding the topic, they concentrated on the learning and took active part in further discussions. In evaluation, they completed those answers and maximum of them were able to identify tense of within sentences.

The purpose of this reflective essay is to outline the episode of teaching and learning I conducted in my institute with 20 students of fifth standard. The following sections will describe the theory of teaching I chose for the sessions and will demonstrate the learning outcome, objective, assessment and evaluation process. I will be using Gibb’s reflective cycle to divide the reflection of my experience in six stages of description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and action plan to improve my teaching ability and express my learning from the experience for better future practice (Gibbs, 1988).

In this week, I was to teach tense to the group of students of standard fifth and then evaluate their learning through 10 open-ended questions. As mentioned by Kapp (2012), that learning is not about attending classes or reading books, but application of those learning in real-life, I chose ‘Dialogue-based approach’ to teach the students about tense in five and 40 minute long sessions. This method is student centered and uses real-life examples to reinforce the learning.

During the introductory session, I was little nervous as the dialogue based approach is applicable to adults and never been tried on children. However, after watching the active participation of children in the session, I started introducing them about their learning topic confidently and tried my best to involve each student in the session. Session after session, students were taking parts in sessions and used different examples from their daily activity to explain me about tense and its subparts.

While this session, the good experience I achieved was being able to see 9 to 11 year old students understanding the value of dialogue and utilizing their daily activities to understand about the difficult topic. However, the bad experience was associated with weaker students as they were not being able to comply with the speed of others. Therefore, I had to take extra classes for those students.

Analysis of the situation makes me understand that, using dialogue-based approach over other methods of teaching helped me to understand the cognitive knowledge of the students. While concluding the situation, I feel that I would have extended the sessions from five to seven or eight so that every student could learn equally about the topic. Further, the evaluation process could have been more difficult as maximum questions included were easy. Further, every student should have been evaluated separately so that unbiased evaluation could have been achieved (Tsay & Brady, 2012).

My future action plan for any further lesson plan would be extending the sessions so that everyone can utilize the opportunity. Secondly, the evaluation will be taken separately and will include more open and close–ended questions to reinforce the learning within students through evaluation process (Benson, 2013).

References

Benson, P. (2013). Teaching and researching: Autonomy in language learning, 2^nd Edn, pp. 254-276, Routledge. https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ZoarAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=importance+of+evaluation+in+teaching+learning+process&ots=h_BcMQN-K2&sig=dE4L9tjNX8rV4E6bfgQoF3VTjUc#v=onepage&q=importance%20of%20evaluation%20in%20teaching%20learning%20process&f=false

Gibbs, G. (1988). The reflective cycle. Kitchen S (1999) An appraisal of methods of reflection and clinical supervision. Br J Theatre Nurs, 9(7), 313-7.

Kapp, K. M. (2012). The gamification of learning and instruction: game-based methods and strategies for training and education, 1^st Edn, pp. 109-134, John Wiley & Sons. https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=M2Rb9ZtFxccC&oi=fnd&pg=PR12&dq=why+dialogue+based+approach+of+teaching+is+better&ots=JxIhZ03D9L&sig=uGC8373Fvr-cA3zBZPWxLWh_5Rg#v=onepage&q=why%20dialogue%20based%20approach%20of%20teaching%20is%20better&f=false

Larsen-Freeman, D., & Anderson, M. (2013). Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching 3rd edition-Oxford Handbooks for Language Teachers, 3^rd Edn, pp. 234-278, Oxford university press. https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=pO2dBgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT6&dq=dialogue+based+approach+of+teaching+&ots=LJ3vxiTh7X&sig=hwypJ5wwLJrz2zgVgEWzh-_MUOs#v=onepage&q=dialogue%20based%20approach%20of%20teaching&f=false

Lozano, J. F., Boni, A., Peris, J., & Hueso, A. (2012). Competencies in higher education: A critical analysis from the capabilities approach. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 46(1), 132-147.

McPeck, J. E. (2016). Teaching critical thinking: Dialogue and dialectic, 1^st Edn, pp. 34-57, Routledge. https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=CPswDQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT10&dq=dialogue+based+approach+of+teaching+&ots=FCs3in_SLe&sig=xNwsYmifyIzcAovUdy1HqKiOZUE#v=onepage&q=dialogue%20based%20approach%20of%20teaching&f=false

Richards, J. C., & Rodgers, T. S. (2014). Approaches and methods in language teaching, 3^rd edn, pp. 123-129, Cambridge university press. https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=HrhkAwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR1&dq=why+dialogue+based+approach+of+teaching+is+better&ots=_LbDsn3hn9&sig=-psnLTIdyTIf_6Aa5zUphUPoEaQ#v=onepage&q=why%20dialogue%20based%20approach%20of%20teaching%20is%20better&f=false

Tsay, M., & Brady, M. (2012). A case study of cooperative learning and communication pedagogy: Does working in teams make a difference?. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 10(2), 78-89.

Wilson, E. (Ed.). (2017). School-based research: a guide for education students,3^rd Edn, pp. 145-156, Sage. https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=JE96DgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=dialogue+based+approach+of+teaching+&ots=iSLe64kzuj&sig=HoE4VEJJXxMtEU_AgtJfVaGmEpw#v=onepage&q=dialogue%20based%20approach%20of%20teaching&f=false