World Learning SIT TESOL

As a teacher trainer, finding a balance in feedback between making sure the participants get what you need them to get (the trainer’s agenda) and developing the skill of reflection (the participant’s agenda) is quite challenging.

When I first started leading feedback as a fledgling trainer, my own agenda often took precedence. I thought that the most important thing was that the participants discovered with heavy or light guidance the significant moments that supported what was being taught in the course. This was effective in some ways because they were able to improve their teaching and better their knowledge about the course material. However, they were not developing as reflective practitioners and, more importantly, they were not developing beliefs about teaching and learning that were completely their own.

I was holding their hands, leading, cajoling, and explaining until finally they came to the conclusion I needed them to reach. I didn’t realize that I was only fulfilling one objective of feedback until, without realizing the full impact of what I was doing, I began to make small changes in the structure of my feedback sessions. I felt feedback had too much trainer talking time so I changed the sessions to be more participant centered. At the end of that course, one the participants said to me, “I can’t believe how easy feedback is now. I can look at the lesson without you and clearly find the most important moments. This is so useful because I will be able to improve after the course is finished! I always look forward to feedback and it is my favorite part of the day!” I was so impressed by this because before that, participants often remarked on how much their teaching had improved, but not on how much their reflection had improved. Since that course I have continued to tweak my feedback sessions and I have found that 3 things have made all the difference.

First, I like to make sure that the focus is on the participants and not on me, the trainer. In order to do this I make feedback groups. I split the class in half and have each group focus on one teacher for half of the time and then the teachers switch to the next group. This gives both groups a chance to talk about both lessons (in my training context, 2 teachers have lessons each day) and having their eyes on each other instead of on me creates a safer and tighter (bonding-wise) feedback environment. While the participants discuss, I monitor and listen, taking notes on points I would like to comment on. After about 10 minutes, I check in with each group and open a dialog about the points I noted, or bring up a point I felt was missed. The groups switch, the teachers update the new group on the points already discussed and continue the dialog. At the end, we come back together and the teachers share the new beliefs they have formed about teaching with the whole class and make specific goals concerning changes to implement and ideas to continue in the next lesson.

Second, I have provided my participants with a chart to help guide their reflection while I am monitoring. We use the Experiential Learning Cycle in our course and so the headings of the chart reflect a stage in the cycle.

It is up to the participants whether or not they want to take notes. I encourage them at the beginning of the course to write down Interpretations, Generalizations and Action Plans so they can see how everything is linked. However, as the course goes on, they often just take notes of Generalizations and Action Plans that they would like to share with the whole class at the end of feedback. Often in the last week of the course, they don’t need the chart anymore because they are familiar enough with the process of reflection that they can do it on their own. This chart really aids in the scaffolding of feedback from the first feedback session to the last.

The last thing I do is I make sure that the first thing the participants discuss in their groups is the objective of the lesson.  They think about the production activity or the deepest receptive skill activity and fully analyze whether or not the objective was met, how much it was met, and why this happened. By putting the focus on the goal of the lesson, I have found my participants’ analysis has primarily dealt with the key moments of the lesson. It has often been a problem in feedback that participants, left to their own devices, would often talk about moments in the lesson that didn’t reflect a key learning moment for their students. They would discuss what they remembered about their teaching, but not much about the students or how they acted/reacted in the lesson. By putting proper emphasis on the objective the participants naturally start thinking about the goals of the lesson based on their students’ performance. This not only increased their awareness of the students while teaching, but also caused them to develop a greater sensitivity to scaffolding the lesson to guide the students to the objective.

So, there it is–my 3 cents about feedback. I am still tweaking, adjusting, and changing what I do during these guided reflection sessions. Every group is different and takes to feedback and reflection in a different way. Sometimes this drives me crazy because I know I will never find the perfect format for feedback, but I think with these ideas under my belt I am on the right track!

Written by SIT Trainer Autumn Clark http://www.rennert.com/tesol/trainers.htm

To read more posts like this one visit the TESOL at Rennert NYC blog: http://tesolatrennertnyc.wordpress.com/

I was recently working in Boston, MA with colleague and mentor Radmila Popovic on World Learning/SIT’s BP TESOL for New Americans course – a pre-service teacher training course for Americorps members.  Many of our participants are non-native English speakers and they all come from a wide-range of social, economic and educational backgrounds. Due to the diverse needs of the participants and the demands of the various stakeholders we have been tasked with delivering a wide range of content in a short amount of time. Last week we realized that we had one hour and scarce resources to address “Teaching Vocabulary.”  We needed to raise participants’ awareness of a variety of ways of conveying meaning of words, introduce them to activities for practicing vocabulary and encourage the development of clear criteria for choosing appropriate techniques for teaching vocabulary. We decided to use the activity “Backs to the board.” In this activity one student sits in a “hot seat” in front of the whiteboard. The teacher writes a word on the blackboard (the student in the chair can’t see it) and the other students describe the word so that the student in the “hot seat” can guess the word. We chose words that would push participants to use a variety of techniques to convey meaning to their classmates (Window, Cow, Lazy, Democracy and Individual). After playing the game we processed the activity in terms of techniques participants had used to convey meaning. We were able to elicit the following techniques: miming/gesturing, using realia/visuals, using synonyms and opposites, giving examples and contextualizing, explaining and/or giving a definition. We highlighted how some words are easier to get students to understand and might only require one technique while others required the use of a variety of techniques. We also processed the “Backs to the board” activity in terms of how and why it was an activity that they could use for either practicing newly introduced vocabulary or reviewing previously learned vocabulary.  The next day in practice teaching I was already seeing the results of our input session. The teacher introduced vocabulary for furniture by drawing and describing his apartment on the whiteboard. He contextualized the words by placing them in their appropriate rooms in his own apartment. “This is my bathroom. What might you find in my bathroom?” He gave examples of how the item is used. “I put my clothes in a my dresser. I wash my hands in my sink.” He checked understanding by passing out images of three rooms in an apartment. He said the words and the students pointed to the items. In this lesson the teacher was able to internalize the use of a variety of techniques to convey the meaning of new words for his students.  How do you teach or train teachers to teach vocabulary?

Kevin Giddens, TESOL Training Manager at World Learning/SIT Graduate Institute