Reflection 2: Fortune Telling

Course: PG Adult School Conversation
Date: April 8, 2015
Time: 9:00 – 10:30
Topic: Fortune Telling

Lesson Plan

This reflection is based on my fortune telling lesson plan, which uses palmistry and cartomancy to predict one’s future.

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. There were ten students present for this lesson on fortune telling. My overarching lesson objective was for students to accurately use will in writing and speech to predict one’s future.

Narrative

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

Pre-activities. The lesson began with a review from the previous week’s lesson on California State and National Parks, where students shared which California park they would like to visit. I presented an interactive YouTube video on fortune telling and then had students discuss, as a class, two questions: (1) What is fortune telling? (2) What are different ways of telling one’s fortune? In groups, students then shared their fortune telling beliefs and personal stories. To prepare students for the upcoming activity I reviewed the form, meaning, and use of the modal will.

During-activities. Students chose between reading cards or palms to predict each other’s fortune. Prior to executing this activity, I discussed vocabulary words that students might not know on their prediction worksheets. To prepare students to write predictions, I modeled their assignment and provided a few examples of how they could do this. They then used the prediction worksheet to write 13 of their own predictions using the modal will. Later, one cartomancy fortune teller and one palmistry fortune teller worked together to take turns reading each other’s fortunes.

Post-activities. Students shared with the class what their fortune teller predicted about their future, and whether or not they believed they were accurate readings.

Reflection

Since I have a reccurring pattern of not finishing lessons on time, I tried to design a lesson with fewer activities and more focus on pre-teaching grammar and vocabulary. I was determined to work on the feedback I received from my professor’s observation.

Thinking through the lesson design

Prior to executing this lesson, I carefully reviewed each stage to ensure the steps were simple and clear. I contemplated whether or not to execute an activity encompassing both palmistry and cartomancy within a single lesson. I thought it might take too much time to simultaneously set-up two activities, but I decided to go through with it anyways. I presented both topics because I wanted to focus on my learners, giving them an opportunity to tell fortunes using a method they were interested in. Unfortunately, my prediction was partially right. Allowing students to predict each other’s fortune through either cartomancy or palmistry meant that I had to model and give separate directions for each. This is where I believe my lesson faced the greatest challenge.

Writing predictions

Modeling and giving directions for two methods of fortune telling was a little time consuming, but having students write predictions caused a bigger problem—it took them much more time than I had expected. Even though I had previously reviewed the modal will and students demonstrated that they could accurately use it, they still struggled with writing predictions. This caught me by surprise because I wrote example predictions with the class to model the activity, and checked that they understood their task before beginning. I further separated the class into two groups, palmistry and cartomancy, so they could work together to help each other write predictions. As I circulated around the classroom, I realized: (1) the students weren’t working together, (2) I must have not explained the directions well enough and (3) this assignment might have been too difficult for them. At this point I made a conscious choice to help individual students rather than target the whole class in re-explaining their task. I believe that this was the correct choice because I could focus on each students’ needs. Furthermore, had I explained the directions to the whole class again, I would have lost more time, as well as the opportunity to help struggling students.

Bringing the lesson full-circle

I did not want to end the class without students predicting each other’s fortunes, so I cut the activity short even though some students hadn’t finished writing all 13 predictions. At the time, it made more sense to me to bring the lesson full-circle, so that students could see the purpose of the lesson. I am honestly not sure that this was the right choice. The students who wrote minimal predictions could not contribute to this final activity because it depended on their written responses. Even though I made it through every stage of my lesson plan, I am sure students still walked away confused about the lesson’s purpose.

In retrospect

For such a fascinating topic I should have incorporated more group discussions. I had a diverse group of students and could have capitalized on them discussing their culture’s ways of telling fortunes. Although students had a brief chance to do this at the beginning of the lesson, I think it would have been a better introduction to the topic than the YouTube video I showed. In fact, I am not convinced the YouTube video I used as a pre-activity to motivate students in the topic contributed to their learning. If anything, it took away time they could have used to write predictions and tell each other’s fortunes.

Improving Future Lessons

This lesson was not completely ineffective—I was able to focus on pre-teaching vocabulary and grammar, as I determined to improve. For the future, however, I think that I need to more thoroughly think through whether using videos to motivate students toward lesson topics contributes to their learning. In this lesson, the video clearly did not contribute to their learning. Additionally, even though I wanted to differentiate instruction by providing students with choices, I believe that they were at too low of a level for this degree of autonomy. Therefore, in the future I need to design even simpler, cohesive lessons and alot more time for each activity.