TESL 170 - Skill-Based Lesson Plan

Speaking    

2 hours
Level: Advanced 1 (B2)  
Students: 14

My speaking class went so well today!

I was really happy with how everything went. Of course, there were a few things that I had to find alternatives for, but I can't complain. I felt satisfied at the end of the lesson, which wasn't the case the day before.

This class had about 19 students. The largest class so far.

When I was creating the lesson for this class, I had to keep in mind the amount of time I needed to give the students for their conversation activity. Another point that the classroom teacher made me aware of was to think about those students enrolled in the Pathway Program. These students are required to have a score at the end of every class. So, I had to reassess the timing of my lesson. If I had 13 students in the Pathway Program (P), how much time did I need to spend with each student, and what areas should I come up with to assess them on?

In collaboration with the classroom teacher, we decided to assess all P students in four different areas. Each of us asked each P student 2 questions related to the questions given as part of their conversation activity. The classroom teacher did all the odd questions, and I did all even questions. Each of us gave the students a score of up to 100% on each section and then divided the total score by five. This gave us the final score for each student at the end of the class.

Please see the chart below for better understanding.

Speaking Class

Pathway Program Students	Partici- pation	Jenny Q1	Jenny Q2	T Q1	T Q2	Final score
1.    A	not	present
2.    B	100	98	98	90	100	97.2
3.  C	100	93	93	90	95	94.2
4.  D	100	88	88	90	90	91.2
5.   E	100	87	87	100	100	94.8
6.   F	100	98	98	100	100	99.2
7.  G	100	97	97	100	100	98.8
8.   H	100	99	99	100	95	98.6
9.  I	100	96	96	95	93	96
10.K	100	100	100	100	100	100
11.L	100	98	99	100	100	99.5
12. M	100	88	88	100	87	92.6
13. N	100	89	87	90	88	90.8

To end my lesson, I had the students play "He said, She said". In this game, the students had to pass on a message to the person next to them and use the phrase "he/she said that...". The students had so much fun doing this, especially those students who had to go through over 10 people with "he/she said that"!  It was so much fun! We all left the classroom with a happy smile on our faces.

Please see the links below regarding this lesson.

Speaking lesson plan here

Idioms used for this lesson here

Notes from the classroom teacher

Hi Jenny,

Great job. You managed a big group of students well and covered a lot of material!

Attached is the observation form and below are some additional comments.

Observation: July 18 (2 hrs)

Level: Advanced 1 (B2) - Speaking
Done well:

• You made a list of the students in the class
• You gave them an overview of the lesson
• You wrote the target vocabulary on the board
• You got all the students involved in reading the dialogue
• You practiced pronunciation and reminded students about linking (snap up), different -ed sounds (marked), and the flap sound /ɾ/ (hitting).
• Good job getting students to guess the meaning from context
• Great timing! You got through a lot of material in a short time.
• They were all taking notes. They valued what you were teaching.
• Well done with assessing the Pathway Program students and giving them speaking scores 

 Areas to grow:

• Make sure the writing on the board is a good size for the students farthest away to see
• Make sure to write the meanings for all the idioms. The students always want to see the meaning.
• When asking students to guess meaning from context, make another example out loud to help them guess
• Put the idioms in the same order in the conversation questions as in the story so students can check the meanings faster

This was a well-managed lesson, and the students sure enjoyed your game at the end of class!