Unfortunately the class was affected by the brutal snow, so many of the students could not make it. Benefited to this occurrence though, my partner and I tried implementing the delivery in a different manner. In essence, we organized it in a way that each of us would do 25 minutes each throughout. She did the first 25 minutes, and I would help her set up the activities, and vice versa. From the feedback from the TA, she appreciated this change. She commented that the organization was clear for students, and progression was flowing well. She also made remarks about how before it could have caused students to feel confused on who is in control. However, this style benefited all parties, and in turn increased overall participation and engagement. Takeaway: Open to try something new.

Reminiscing on the goals of today’s lesson delivery, I wanted to practice limiting my words and try not be redundant. Sometimes redundancy was the worst bad-habit of mine. I thought maybe they already understood the words, but let me just make sure. Talking more as a teacher might not always be ideal. Give them time to reflect and share. Reflecting on it, I used this mentality when I delivered content and it was a success. Surely, the percentage of teacher talk and student talk were comparably better than last week and prior. There was a comment about the teacher talk being more than 60-80% of the lesson, and it should’ve been the other way around. Fortunately, today’s lesson was the other way around, or 60-80% student talk. As more students conversed, I realized that I was only prolonging conversation to motivate their speaking competency. Students appreciated the time allotted for their expression of thoughts. From certain slides and conversations, when we came to a term or image that needed further clarification, I asked students to state what it was or what it meant to them. That in turn made them engage it more personally, and spoke all that they knew about the subject being asked. Takeaway: Allow STs to speak.

Lastly, I took time to ask for the TA’s feedback on the lesson. She gave some points of consideration, such as the following:

• 50/50 delivery form is a massive success as students become clear who is in control
• Students’ comfortability allowed increase in lesson flow
• Explaining more difficult words and images when it shows
• Familiarize the class with harder words so they are not fossilized at their current level
• Theme of lesson was relatable and realistic, made them connect to Qs easily
• Vocabulary relates/related to how they might use it in daily conversation.
  • how might L2 words and phrases like “sweet-tooth” make its way in their conversations and understandings?

The following are the slides for the hometown lesson.