Best Lesson -- catharine

About the Lesson:
The best lesson I conducted during Practicum was a vocabulary lesson. The vocabulary lesson was part of the descriptive writing unit that I was teaching. Prior to the vocab lesson, students have already been taught the structure and grammar features of descriptive writing. They have also done some brainstorming on the person they are going to write about. This lesson is a 2-period lesson (35min/period).

Brief Profile of Student:
Students are from a mid-range Sec 2 express class. They are generally quite weak in language, with the exception of a few students who consistently write well. As a whole, the students in this class tend to do better in Paper 1 than Paper 2.

Purpose of Lesson:
The objective was very simple. I wanted to introduce new, specific, descriptive vocabulary to the students to help them in their descriptive writing assignment.

The What and How:
Basically, the whole lesson was a vocabulary game. Students were divided into groups of 4. Everyone was present, so there were 10 groups. Each group had the following materials:
+ A pack of new vocabulary (printed on coloured paper and cut into individual strips of words)
+ Dictionary
+ Coloured plate
+ Makeshift whiteboard
+ Whiteboard marker

From the powerpoint, students would then choose their question and attempt to answer the question. They may use the dictionary to help them. [[Rem: Purpose was to get them to learn new vocabulary, so this creates incentive for the majority to keep flipping the dictionary.]]

I also had a cool 12-sided die that groups with the correct can roll to get points. The group with the highest points at the end wins, of course.

Best Practices: Successful Skills and Strategies
1. Lots of different stimulus (refer to list of things the groups got)
This worked because there were so many different things they could be doing, so everyone could play a part in the game and everyone can be engaged simultaneously.

2. Unpredictability
There were two ways to answer each question because each question was either a open-to-all, where all groups will answer and all groups with the correct answer will get the points, or a up-for-grabs, where groups have to compete to answer the question.

The die added extra unpredictability because students did not know how many points they will get, even if they got the answer right. Also, there was a [SWAP] option on the die, so groups would also aim swap with the leading group.

3. Inductive Teaching
By constantly checking the dictionary and trying to remember as many meanings as possible, students are indirectly learning many new vocabulary. For each question, I had accompanying visuals so students can see what each word actually refers to. I was extremely pleased to see ALL the groups furiously engaged, ha ha.

What They Learnt & How I Knew:
Lots of new vocabulary. I did a quick semantic map the next lesson and the students were able to throw out many words from the game. I was quite surprised, actually. I also knew they had retained at least some of the words because they used them in the descriptive assignment.

What I Learnt:
This lesson took tonnes of preparation and brain-cracking but I felt that it was worth it because there was so much learning during the lesson. I could have never made those students learn what they learnt in that lesson via teacher-talk or worksheets. From this lesson, I was really amazed at how much learning could take place with rigourus planning from the teacher. Some of the best practices that I took away from this lesson are:

+ Always have the element of unpredictability. This really ups the energy and engagement level.
+ Inductive approach. This has the potential to increase learning exponentially, depending on what we are teaching.
+ Scaffold their learning. Link new vocabullary to what they are familiar with. It was also important to tie the lesson back to the text-type and how it fits in with their writing assignment.