Teaching practice (2) - Teacher talk - Student talk

source: https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/what-about-students-talking-in-class-6141c777ae5

Another topic I would like to write about is Teacher talk - Student talk. I observed the class on 27.01.2022 (during the first two lessons). First, I will write the most important information about the class and the lessons observed. Then, I will answer the questions from the observation sheet. At the end, I will share my reflections about the topic and how teacher talk may affect the pupils, as well as possible unexpected situations.

Information about the class

I observed the 2nd grade (students are 7-8 years old). There are 26 students in the class. Students have English lessons 2 hours each day of the week. Last lesson, children were reading the text and completing the tasks connected to it. They were talking about emotions (sad, happy, missing someone) and completing the timeline of the happenings from the story.

Observed lessons pertained to grammar revision and text comprehension. Their aims were: 

1. revising question words (who, where, what)
2. giving directions (up, down, left, right)
3. creating questions and answers (Who’s that? That’s … )
4. reading the text
5. sharing reflection
6. exercises from the workbook

Information about chosen students

During those two classes, I focus on observing two students. Pupil A is very active and always prepared for the lesson. Pupil B rarely takes part in classroom activities and is often unprepared. Below are observations of each of them.

Pupil A

• answers a question addressed to them by name very often
• very often (at least few times each lesson) answers questions addressed to the whole class
• usually shouts out the answer or raises his hand (though he easily gets discouraged and spaces out for a few minutes)
• moves around a lot (changes sitting positions, lays his head on the table, looks in different directions)
• sometimes looks at the teacher, but usually completes the exercises when she’s talking
• uses English while talking to the teacher ( in cases of responding to the questions, participating in the games, creating sentences)
  

When the teacher is talking to the whole class or someone else, he:

• does the next exercise
• talks to his friend sitting next to him - they talk in Polish, about time to the break, feeling bored or how easy the task is (in case of student A, his friend often has difficulties with completing it)
• starts drawing on separate pieces of paper or leans on his desk

Pupil B 

• usually talks to his desk friend and is unaware of what’s happening in the classroom
• almost never answers the questions addressed to the whole class
• usually doesn’t respond, apart from being asked by name - then he sometimes answers and sometimes waits for the teacher to explain the instruction once again
• often answers the teacher's question saying: I don’t know
• sits rather still, without sudden movements or making much noise (apart from the sound of whispering)
• uses English while talking to the teacher (usually one, two words, very rarely whole sentences)
• rarely looks at the teacher, often leaning towards his friend
  

During the class he talks to his friend:

• the talk in Polish
• none of them follows what’s going on in the classroom
• hey are talking about their hobbies and toys

Information about the teacher

The teacher addresses each student by name or by name in surname (in case of having two students with the same name). When she is talking to the students, her voice is warm, rather cheerful and not too loud. She sounds enthusiastic and passionate.

When the students answer questions she:

• usually praises them for the effort and thanks them for their answer
• encourages those speaking very quietly to repeat what they are saying
• never ignores the answer (unless she cannot hear it because it’s too noisy)

For getting students’ attention, she usually raises her voice a little bit. Other methods include: 

• clapping her hands
• switching to Polish (she uses English about 90% of the time)
• a method very similar to 1,2,3 …, (but it’s not the same thing)
  

The teacher gives instructions before every exercise or task from the book. She keeps it very simple and rather short. She corrects errors connected to the topic (so if an error is grammatical and it’s the lesson about the text, she may leave it). Instead of simply pointing out an error, she repeats the student's sentence in the correct way (letting him/her know how it should sound).

She does multiple things outside of the ones described. The teacher:

• explains grammar (writing it down on the board, using examples
• explains vocabulary (usually by flashcards)
• asks lots of questions
• reprimands students that are misbehaving
• sometimes chats with students during the break or at the beginning of the lesson (up to 3 minutes)
  

 

My reflection

Teacher's body language and teacher talk may affect students’ well-being and performance in the classroom in many different ways. In this case, they motivate pupils to further work and encourage them to take part in classroom activities. Teacher’s body language shows her positive attitude and openness to students.

In the classroom with young learners, almost anything can happen. So far I haven’t witnessed many unexpected situations, but I’m looking forward to learning more about ways to face them. Either way, there are two things I would like to consider for the future and try implementing in my own teaching. The first thing I would like to take with me is reacting to errors (in this case mostly grammatical). This teacher does it in a gentle, yet mostly effective way. I reckon I will try doing the same.

Secondly, I would like to consider dealing with the behaviour manifested by Student B. This boy is rarely focused on the topic, spends most of the time talking to his friends and sometimes doesn’t even have his books open. He frequently comes to the class late and is unprepared (even by not taking the book from home or not doing homework). This kind of behaviour may not affect other pupils directly, but the teacher's response is crucial here. If she allows those things to happen, his peers could start to act in a similar way.