Reflection

I like working with teacher trainees because I need to reflect on my lessons more often, and I’ve also learnt several useful questions that can help you yourself guide through the process of reflecting on the happenings in your lesson. I’ve tried to collect some ideas that you can use to improve your own work, or if you are a mentor, to guide you through the mentoring process with your trainee.

My main mentor as a mentor teacher always says and teaches that we plan a lesson three times: before the lesson, during the lesson, and after the lesson. Even if I’ve done my preparation well enough, it often happens that I have to rush from one lesson to another with a very short 10-minute break and I don’t really have time to revise my lesson plan. Still, before I go into a lesson, the most important questions I quickly ask myself while walking towards the classroom are the following:

• How am I feeling about the lesson coming up? Am I really sure what I want to achieve?
• What’s the first task I’ve planned to do with them?
• Which is the task that I’m looking forward to the most? Why am I waiting for this part? Why is it going to be so interesting / useful / whatever?
• Which is the one I’m dreading the most? Why?

These questions will be the basis of your reflection after the lesson.

When I come out from a lesson, the most general, but in a way the most important question is: How am I feeling now? What kinds of feeling do I have about the lesson?  If I’m having positive feelings, most probably the lesson was positive as well. If my feelings are mixed or rather negative, something went (terribly) wrong and I need to find out what and why.

The next question can be about the feelings of your students. Did they feel the same? Or did they feel completely differently? If they did, again why? A few years ago I had quite a complicated group who had lost their general motivation towards school and studying along the way. I know they weren’t like this only with me but in other lessons as well. When I had lessons with them, most of the time I came out feeling that I had managed to have one of the best lessons in my life, I had put an interesting and methodologically spot-on lesson together, and had managed to follow it all the way through, but somehow I didn’t have an audience for it because the students were sitting there, staring at me with their empty eyes (the best cases), or checking their mobiles or chatting with each other (the worst cases). Maybe one or two students felt a kind of pity towards me and tried to answer my questions of pretend some kind of enthusiasm, but most often it felt as if I was working with sacks of potatoes. I and my colleagues tried to find the answer to the why and when, but sadly couldn’t come up with a reasonable answer and also couldn’t help the students get their motivation back.

Another group of questions you can reflect on are the ones concerning the changes you made to your original plan during the lesson. Why did you make those changes? Were they really necessary? Was there a problem with your lesson plan? Was there a problem with the students? Was it a good idea to make those changes? Would you do it again?

The next part is about the tasks itself. Did they work well enough? Would you keep them if you had to have the same lesson again? Or would you change anything? Why? How?

When I work with the teacher trainees I write down my questions as the lesson progresses and discuss them. The most important thing with these questions is that they have to justify them using the methodology knowledge they’ve gathered during their studies and practice.

And finally the most important question: What are your students taking home from the lesson? And here, I would like to share my thoughts about course books. More and more teachers say and feel that course books are unnecessary. I, on the contrary, support the use of course books greatly. Firstly, it gives you, the students, and the whole course an outline. If it is a well-written course book, it gives a very good outline. It also makes your work easier, because most of the materials in the course book is well-written and methodologically well built-up. It also gives your students a sense of getting along and achievement, as they (and their parents) measure how well you work together based on how many lessons you can cover within a given amount of time.

A few years ago I taught in a language school and we used a widely renowned series, the Headway books. On the one hand, it was interesting, covered the topics well, gave enough opportunities for practice, but on the other hand the units were so long (8-10 pages) with loads of tasks that somehow the students felt that we were getting nowhere as it seemed ages for them to finish a unit. In the most popular books today these long lessons are (wisely) divided up into shorter sub-units, with only 2-4 pages each, and although the progress test comes at the same time as with Headway, the students feel that we have a faster pace as we finish each unit more quickly.

Another great advantage of course books over handouts is that most students just lose the handouts – even before they leave the classroom. In my pervious school we had conversation classes in the language preparatory year, and as there is no course book that covers exactly the same topics as we had in the end-of-year exam, we took in numerous photocopied materials. I recommended them at the beginning of the year that they should collect these handouts and file them based on the different topics they belong to. The good students did so, but the less careful ones didn’t even take them home. When the exam-time came, they asked me when we were going to prepare for the speaking part and were greatly surprised when I told them that we had been doing that throughout the whole year and the handouts I had given them should help them revise on their own for the exam. After struggling with this problem for a couple of years, I collected these handouts and created a booklet that they got at the beginning of the school year and could work with it. Their whole sense of moving forward and getting somewhere improved greatly, and now they could revise for the exam on their own.

Moreover, photocopied materials are more expensive and highly harmful for the environment – just think of the amount of paper we use, let alone the ozone copying machines create while working. Online or simply computer based materials can be a useful option, but still, they don’t have the feeling that you get when you hold your book and can write in it, collect your ideas in it, so simply follow your learning process with the help of it.

And now comes the question of using note books, old fashioned exercise books in the lesson. A lot of students (sometimes following the advice of their teachers) simply take photos of the screen they’re being shown because they’re too lazy to write down all those words. I know that it’s really quick and we can move on sooner, but based on my own experience with conferences and such, these photos will most probably never be looked at again, and when one’s storing capacity is full, they will be the first ones to get deleted. On the other hand, your notebook will stay with you for long years to come, and can again work with it: highlight, underline, circle, etc. the most important parts; and use it simply for revision. And as I see with my student this is another way to measure their progress: how many pages they have used up for taking notes and doing tasks in their note books. The more pages they have covered, the better teacher you are.

And finally, here’s my collection of the reflection questions and guides I use most often:

• reflecting on the best parts
• reflecting on the parts that didn’t go well & how could have been done differently
• What was the aim of my lesson and how did I manage to achieve it? (the tasks, explanations, etc.)
• Learning outcomes & objectives: What were these? Did I really reach my objectives?
• What are the things you would have done differently? Why? How?
• How successful were the tasks? Why (not)? How do you know it?
• Teacher Talking Time: did I talk too much? enough? Where are the points I can make them talk more?
• Did I work more or did I manage to make my students work a lot? If not, how can I make them work more the next time?
• ICQ & CCQ: What kinds of questions did I ask? Were they good? What were my instructions like? Were they simple and easy to follow? How many times did I repeat them / paraphrase them? (Is it clear? and Do you understand? are not ICQs and CCQs – however, with online teaching I did use them a lot because I couldn’t see their faces and didn’t want them to repeat everything I say to check their understanding. If your students care for their own learning, they will answer these questions honestly.)
• Do I tend to repeat what my students say? When? Why? – it’s an important point again. If you repeat it because the others can’t hear it, you won’t help that student learn to speak up. If you repeat it because there are discipline problems and most students can’t hear it, the discipline problem will never disappear. If you keep repeating what your students say, they will still believe that you’re the only person who has the correct answer and won’t trust their peers.
• Was I really interested in what they were saying? How did I show it?
• What kinds of questions were asked? Ones I already knew the answer to or open questions for real communication?
• The use of L1 & L2 – When do I want them to translate something and why? When did I start to speak L1? Why? When did I let them speak L1? Why?
• Did I tell them how much time they have for a task? Did I keep those time limits? If not, why not?
• What do I do to create a good and relaxing atmosphere in my lessons? How do I show my students I care about them and their learning?
• Mistake correction: Which mistakes did I correct and why? Which ones not and why not?
• How smoothly did I move from one task to the next?
• Was there a balance of skills, tasks and group formation?
• How well did I manage to follow the recommendations of methodology in teaching what I wanted to teach?
• It’s OK if I don’t know every word – how well could I handle a situation when it came up in the lesson?
• How can I follow from here the next time?
• What will happen with the new words that came up today?
• Did I differentiate enough?
• Did I hurt anyone’s feelings without wanting to? e.g. saying that it’s an easy task and appointing it to one student, then saying it’s more difficult and appointing it to a different student?
• Was it the best time when we checked their homework? Did I consider their energy level and the meaningfulness of the homework tasks well enough?
• Were my tasks too easy or too difficult for the students, or at the required level? How do I know? What made them too easy or too difficult? How can I adjust them next time to their level? How can I make them challenging enough?
• What did I find out about my students in the lesson? How can I use it later on?
• Did I pay enough attention to my word usage? e.g. saying “challenging” instead of “difficult” – not wanting them prejudiced about a task… or: after a listening task “What could you write down?” instead of “What did they say?”
• How useful were my tasks? How much did my students enjoy them? If they didn’t, how can I make them more interesting? Do I want to make them more interesting or do I want to teach them to sometimes tolerate more monotonous tasks? Is my role to entertain them or engage them? How can I fulfil that?
• What kind of visuals did I use in my lesson to make the meaning clearer and easier to remember?
• Did I give them enough time to formulate their ideas or did I want to hurry things too much? Was I patient enough?
• Did I pay enough attention to students’ needs?
• How did I manage to train them for their future language usage? e.g. exam preparation, using it in real life situations, etc.
• Do I like how a task is built up in the book? If yes, can I use it with other tasks as well? If not, what can I change?
• Was the order of the tasks good? Would they have worked better if I had changed them? e.g. controlled practice – semi-controlled practice – free practice?
• Did we play in the lesson? Was it useful? Did I manage to find the right time and right place for this game?
• Did I make the most of my material? Did I make my students say as many things they could say? e.g. Yes/No questions vs. Wh-questions – or at least, ask “Why?”
• How much have I changed in my teaching style in the last couple of weeks/months/years?
• How well was my lesson rounded up?
• Why did I make the decisions I made during the lesson?
• Did I leave a mistake in my ppt / handout tasks?

I know that this is a lot to think over after each lesson, but if we consider that a teacher on average makes over 140 decisions during a lesson (at least there’s a study that came up with this number) I think it’s fair enough to go through most of these questions – if not after every lesson, but now and then.

And a bonus tips for your lessons:

How can you avoid your students repeating what they’ve talked about in pair or group work? Instead of asking them to act out their conversation again, ask them one of the following questions: What did you find out about your partner(s)? What was the most interesting / funniest thing you talked about? Did you learn anything new about your partner(s)?