Reflection 1: Staying Healthy

Course: PG Adult School Conversation
Date: March 19, 2015
Time: 9:00 – 10:30
Topic: Staying Healthy

Lesson Plan

This reflection is based on this lesson plan about healthy eating and different dietary guidelines.

Background

This is an adult intermediate-level ESL course offered by the Pacific Grove Adult School in Pacific Grove, CA. Approximately ten to fifteen students attend class each week, ranging between the ages of 30 and 60 years old. The students are from Taiwan, South Korea, Italy, Spain, Afghanistan, Brazil, Turkey, China, and Mexico. The class meets once a week for three hours, every Wednesday. Students spend the first 90 minutes in the classroom developing conversation skills, and the second 90 minutes at the computer lab. All lessons are independent of one-another, aimed less at teaching grammar and more on developing student’s communicative abilities. This lesson was broken into two parts: (1) student introductions and (2) a lesson on staying healthy. Since it was the first lesson together, students introduced themselves before proceeding to the main lesson. My overarching lesson objectives were for students to determine a personal definition of staying healthy through group conversations, and analyzing different food pyramids using the modal should.

Narrative

I broke the lesson into three stages: pre-activities, during-activities, and post-activities.

Pre-activities. The lesson began with teacher and student introductions. Students wrote a paragraph about themselves without stating their name or where they were from. After 8 minutes, I collected their papers and redistributed them for their classmates to read aloud. After introductions, the main lesson began with a schema activation question that had students discuss what staying healthy meant to them.

During-activities. To prepare student to interpret food pyramids, I wrote the word should and shouldn’t on the board and briefly explained they are used for giving advice and making recommendations. Groups then chose a food pyramid and underlined words they did not understand. We discussed the meaning of these words as a class. Afterwards, groups discussed four questions pertaining to their pyramid: (1) which food should you eat? (2) How much/how often should you eat them? (3) What are the pros and cons of this pyramid? (4) How would you change it?

Post-activities. As each group had a different food pyramid design, groups presented theirs using the modal should. After everyone presented, students stated the food pyramid they believed offered the best advice to follow and the reason for their decision.

Reflection

Opening the class with student introductions gave me an opportunity to assess students’ writing, listening and speaking skills, in addition to learning their names and who they were. It further challenged students to listen, reflect and be active participants in the activity. Although I believe the introduction task was an engaging and alternative approach to introducing oneself, I think it might have been better if students made nametags and briefly introduced themselves instead. Since I under estimated how long student introductions would take, I had to decrease the amount of time I spent on the during- and post-activities. Several activities I even had to skip. Therefore, had I taken a simpler approach to student and teacher introductions, I might have accomplished all of the content and language objectives and tasks.

The during-activities took longer than I had expected. I believe I successfully taught the modal should, as I overheard students using it when discussing their food pyramid handout; however, I was unable to teach I think, I believe, and In my opinion. Due to the prior activities taking longer than I had expected, I consciously decided to skip teaching this grammar point. I believe this was the right decision because otherwise students would not have been able to present the pros and cons of their pyramids to the class. Thus, by having students present to the class, they could draw connections between their own healthy lifestyle beliefs and those recommended by different food pyramids.

Since I was rushed for time, I finished the lesson with a class discussion on the food pyramid they believed had the best recommendations. I believe this nicely brought the lesson full-circle, but I wish students had the opportunity to execute the final post-activity: designing their own food pyramid based on how they eat. I believe this activity would have helped students consciously see how their diet and exercise habits relate to government recommendations. Despite skipping a few activities, I still achieved a majority of my lesson’s objectives.

In retrospect I need to work on two things. First, designing simpler lessons that require less time for setting up activities, which in turn will decrease teacher talk time and provide enough time for students to ask questions and fully participate in all activities. Second, designing lessons with fewer activities so that students have more time to process and practice new material, while also achieving all pre-, during-, and post-activities. I believe my biggest weakness is not appropriately estimating the amount of time activities will take.

For future lessons, I want to incorporate more explicit form, meaning and use grammar explanations and practice exercises. In addition, I would like to make sure to pre-teach vocabulary that students may need prior to executing an activity. In this lesson I do not think I properly prepared students to develop their language skills to their fullest potential. I skimmed over the grammar and did not pre-teach vocabulary prior to distributing the food pyramid handouts. Therefore, my goal for future classes is to design simpler, yet still thorough, lessons that I can complete.