LTP Reflective Essay

7/30/2019 LTP Reflective Essay

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INTRODUCTION

For this reflection, I will try to critically analyse what I have gained from

designing a scheme of work and a lesson plan, preparing teaching materials as well

as conducting a microteaching presentation. This reflection will help me to see my

strengths and weaknesses in doing the tasks. Hence, this is important so that it can

be applied for my teaching in the real classroom. Therefore, this reflective essay will

express what I have learned from the tasks stated above.

SCHEME OF WORK

According to Kirklees Council (2007), it states that a scheme of work is the

whole school teaching programme provided for each subject of the curriculum for all

key stages. It helps us to organise our own teaching and makes it well planned. It

also shows how skills and concept can be taught through practical activities

according to pupils level of proficiency.

Throughout the process of designing a scheme of work, I found that it is not

an easy job. Lots of things should be taken into consideration. However, after I

showed my groups scheme of work to my tutor, I learned many ideas and

suggestions on what should we put in the scheme of work. As for my groups

scheme of work, we have chosen to design a year 5 in urban areas weekly scheme

of work. The topic we chose is Save Our Environment and we were focusing on

Land pollution. We have to come out with a well-designed scheme of work so that

our lesson plan will be tally with the scheme of work.

Designing a scheme of work requires us to refer to the curriculum

specifications and syllabus as these are the main sources for its design. The

suggested activities to be put in the scheme of work should be in line with the

curriculum specifications so that it suits the lesson. Knowing these will help in my

future teaching as I was exposed to the importance and the usage of curriculum

specifications in my teaching profession.


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LESSON PLAN

A lesson plan is the title given to a statement of the achievements to be

realized and the specific meaning by which these are to be attained as a result of the

activities engaged during the period (Lakshmi, 2004). It gives clear instructions on

what the teacher should do during the lesson. A good lesson plan shows how good

the teacher is (Orlich, Harder, Callahan & Brown, 2008).

I was doing a lesson plan on the listening skill. Listening is a basic skill in a

learning process. According to Flohr (2006), it is an active behaviour in contrast of

reading which is just receiving of sound waves. A teacher should be able to design a

well-balanced listening course which provides a good range of opportunities for

learning, (Newton, 2009).

Based on comments I received, I found that my lesson plan still have lots of

things to be improved. To plan a 30 minutes lesson is not easy. At the first place, I

include many activities as though it is an hour lesson. Then only I realized that to

come out with a short lesson, I should put more focus on the input rather than

activities. Besides, my first lesson plan is so much of teacher-centred where teacher

gives input without getting students involvements. I would consider my lesson asboring because students will not engage to the lesson. The most suitable lesson for

students is when the teacher can design lesson plan with fun and engaging

activities. This will help students to be actively engaged into the lesson so that the

lesson would be more meaningful. Therefore, I need to have more reading on

pedagogical skills to develop my knowledge on teaching. I need to look also on the

curriculum and curriculum specifications so that my lesson objectives will be

collateral with what that has been provided.

In the lesson, there is a listening activity where students need to fill in the

banks with the correct words. The choice of text must suit the students proficiency

level. For year 5 pupils, they are able to listen to a longer passage. However, there

would be some problems because pupils have different level of proficiency. Based

on the listening passage for the pupils, it can be seen that the choice of words are

not really difficult. Even the structures of sentences are made simpler so that it would

not cause difficulties for students. This is important to ensure that learning will takeplace to all pupils in the classroom.


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TEACHING MATERIALS

I find that designing a teaching kit is not an easy task. As it is very specific,

teachers have to consider many elements that include from considering the students,

thinking of the contents, materials and activities, jetting these down and having a

quiet ponder that will help them to help teach and students to teach, (Woodward,

2001). I had spent a lot of time developing my teaching kit to ensure the suitability of

activities that need to match the learning objectives. Halliwell (2002), states that

children need to engage in enjoyable activities to learn effectively. Thus, it is

important to plan my activity well to make it more interesting, motivating and

engaging.

As in my lesson plan, I have prepared some picture cards for students to think

about and brainstorm what they are expected to learn on that day. The use of

pictures is important because students will get attracted to colourful pictures and

stimulate their thinking. However, I found that my pictures are not big enough so that

it would not be appropriate to a large classroom situation. Therefore, I should have

made the pictures larger and it need more works to do. So, I should prepare myself

as I am already into this profession and I need to be more diligent as it will benefit

me later.

Besides, I need to also prepare a recorded audio since my lesion is focusing

on listening skill. For that, I have requested for help from my peer to record his voice

because I thought that his voice is clear and he has native speakers accent. This is

important because students need to listen carefully and get the ideas from the text

they listened. They need to also listen to variety kinds of accents in English because

in the real life, there are many accents that they are exposed. However, I cannot

depend on others to record their voice because in future, I need to prepare that

myself. So, I need to practice harder and improve my pronunciation.

Despite all the difficulties I faced, I really want to thank my friend for

supporting me by giving ideas and helped me in making the teaching kits. As

mentioned, to come out with activities with teaching kits were not as easy as most

people can see. So, I really appreciate those who helped me in completing the task.


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MICROTEACHING

For the microteaching session, my group has agreed to choose my lesson

plan. Each one of us needs to conduct one part of the lesson and I need to conduct

while-listening stage. During that stage, I played a recorded audio for students to

listen. Before that, I gave instruction to students for them to listen and complete the

task sheet given. I found that my instruction was clear because students did not have

problems in completing the task. This shows that I have improved a little after some

microteaching sessions few years back.

Based on the feedback received, most of them are positive except for some

aspects. First, I need to explain the meaning of some words that they will identify

during the listening activity. This is to familiarise students to some words that they

will learn in the lesson. Besides that, I need to also ask students for the meaning of

the whole text to check whether the students did understand or not on what they

listened. From that, I have learnt that in a lesson, teacher should check students

understanding from the lesson, not to test students previous knowledge.

Overall, I would personally say that my group have showed good teacher

presence as it was good enough for us in preparing ourselves to become Englishteachers in the future. It can be seen on the way we control the pupils during the

lesson. Even though all the pupils are from the same age as us, we were still able to

control their behaviour as it helped us in making the lesson more efficient. This is

very important because in order to get pupils into the lesson, teachers must first

tackle their attention so that the learning process can run smoothly (Srivastava,

2004). Besides, it was said that we have good teachers voice during the lesson.

Some people may say that this was a little thing but for me, teachers voice will help

teachers to ensure that learning will take place. With the teachers voice, it shows

that we are actually ready in becoming teachers except we need to polish on our

content knowledge on what we are going to teach. This will help us in building our

confidence level in teaching in a real situation next time.


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CONCLUSION

Based on my experience on designing a scheme of work, derive a lesson plan

from the scheme of work and come out with a microteaching presentation, I have

gained many valuable lessons that help me to improve my teaching skills. I realise

that as a teacher, I have many responsibilities that I need to execute in order to

provide maximum learning opportunity for students. To be a good teacher

undoubtedly is a tough job to do. Teachers need to identify the knowledge and skills

that they want students to acquire, decide an appropriate sequence in which to teach

such knowledge and skills, and provide classroom lessons that will enhance learning

and keep students motivated and on the tasks.


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References

Donald C. Orlich, Robert J. harder, Richard C. Callahan, Abbie H. Brown (2008).

Instructional Planning Procedures. In Teaching Strategies : A Guide to

Effective Instruction (pp. 129-133). USA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Flohr, S. (2006). Teaching Listening and Speaking. Noderstedt: GRIN Verlag.

Halliwell, S. (1992) Teaching English in the Primary Classroom. Harlow: Longman.

Kirklee Council. (2007). LEA Guidance on Schemes of Work. Scheme Of Work for

Key stage 1 and 2, 2-8.

Lakshmi, D. V. (2004). Skills for Teaching. In Basic Education (pp. 179-181). New

Delhi: Discovery Publishing House.

Newton, J. (2009). Parts and Goals of Listening and Speaking Course. In Teaching

ESL/EFL Listening and Speaking(pp. 12-14). New York: Routledge.

Srivastava, G. P. (2004). Perspectives In Teacher Education. New Delhi: Concept

Publishing Company.

Woodward, T. (2001).Planning lessons and courses.Designing sequences of work

for the language classroom.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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LTP Reflective Essay