On this site could you post a short report each session ... about two or three paragraphs. Raise any problems, questions or issues. Then comment on others' reports asking for clarification, asking questions fibving adivice or making comments. FInally return to the page a day or so later and read the comments on your report and make a response. It all sounds confusing but it is meant as a support. This by the way is not part of the assessment. SAMPLE REPORT I had my first session with Thuy on Friday. We chatted for the first few minutes and then we went through the pronunciation unit 6. ALong the way she said that she preferred to do grammar and began askign some difficult questions. One of these was 'What is the difference in English between when you say 'coming' and when you say 'going'. IDoes anyone have an answer? Also how would you suggest we make her happy with grammar but also get to do some pronunciation work?
Sara Infante | (129.78.64.28) | Tuesday, 9 April 2002 3:47:26 PM
Sorry! I accidently posted a summarised report on all the weeks I tutored on another site (I'm hopeless at this)
Hope Kelson | (203.166.96.234) | Thursday, 11 April 2002 6:10:28 PM
what other site? are mine in the wrong places too???
Sara Infante | (129.78.64.5) | Friday, 12 April 2002 4:10:11 PM
Hope,
I accidently typed my report where you are meant to click on the "M Teach 1 Group" when it is meant to be in this one.....oh well!!
Sara
Jackie Saisithidej | (63.34.197.59) | Sunday, 14 April 2002 10:14:52 PM
I guess I'm kicking off the M.Teach 2 coaching/tutoring discussion. My first comment concerns confidentiality. I assume anyone (including the students we are coaching/tutoring) can access this chatroom. I feel this may limit some comments I am willing to make on online.
Okay now for my report. I'm coaching Tuyet. We've met for 8 hours already. Our first session was a get to know you session. I asked her the questions recommended in the assessment guide, plus a few of my own. I asked her what she wanted to get out of the coaching. She is very prac preparation focussed. She indicated that she would like to present lessons and for me to give her feedback. She also wanted to get a sense of what it is like in primary schools in Sydney. Not sure whether I could help her there. it's been nearly 20 years since I was last in primary school! I also told her what I wanted to get out of the coaching, that is, the requirements of the assessment task.
I recorded this and have used this recording to assess her speaking skills. Oh, I also read "The Waterhole" by Graeme Base. It's a great book. It's got lots of animal sounds, repetition and if beautifully illustrated. I have lent Tuyet this book and have subsequently made a recording of my reading of the book for her to listen to and to practice her own reading. I now think that the book may be too demanding for her at this point.
What have I learnt to date?
Well I'm over ambitious. Everything is taking much longer than I had planned so I'm scaling back my ambitions. Plus the last few sessions seem to keep straying into discussions of "What do you think I should do on prac or how should I answer this question at the DET interview?". While I found this discussions interesting I was/am concern that I'm not getting out of the coaching what I need to do to satisfy the assessment. ANYONE ELSE EXPERIENCING THIS?
We've had a talk about our priorities and I think we've reached an agreement about how the sessions will go from now. We've agreed on about 90mins of activities aimed at preparing for prac and 30 mins on pronounciation. The last session was more structured. I'm using the 'Self Access Program' as a basis. I've found the 'Interview' activities to be useful, plus it seems to satisfy Tuyet's priority of getting ready for prac. We've used the role cards (see p. 6) and I've created some more of my own as an extension.
Over the sessions I've been making a note of Tuyet's frequently used phrases such as "What this mean?"; "My English no good" and "I very difficult". Each week I've corrected one phrase (written it on cardboard using different coloured textures to highlight the grammar error) and have told her that I will be paying particular attention next session to her use of the phrase. Seems to be working. My reasoning for this is that the phrases occur frequently in her conversations and it is worthwhile focussing on getting them correct.
Next session, Tuyet's going to present a lesson on Cinderalla to a Yr 5 class. That's me. ANY SUGGESTIONS OF TYPICAL YR 5 BEHAVIOUR? :-) (Tuyet is very concerned about classroom mangement). I'm going to start the ground work for the Unit 7 interview actitivity. I'm also going to prepare some role plays on contacting the co-operating teacher? ANY OTHER SUGGESTIONS?
Okay. Going to stop now. Gone on enough!. Would appreciate any response or feedback.
Jackie
Megan Ireland | (203.88.229.180) | Sunday, 14 April 2002 10:18:00 PM
Um, I've never used these before but I'm reporting a lesson. Its
the third lesson I've had with Ai (sounds like eye!) and we basically focused on her reading aloud to a class from a
picture book. After one reading of the book, without me looking at the text, we had a whole lesson on pronounciation..the main problems appeared to be the following sounds:
sh, f, p, d, ts, j (as in pyjamas). After taking the time to show her how to shape her mouth and explaining where her toungue needs to go to make each sound, we were able to make a great deal of progress
so we went back to the reading - I read the book as an example and then she read it again.
It was a lot clearer- not perfect, but better. She really had to work hard to get the right sound and we were both quite excited at how well she did after a lot of really hard work. The only way I can relate to this is in trying to make the gutteral sounds of
the German/Arabic languages and how it is just so unfamiliar to me. It was worth the time to get it right even though it was frustrating to try and work out exactly what she was doing that was making the wrong sound. I felt a little
like a dentist and a bit silly trying to open my own mouth to show her how to really make the right
sound, but she said it really helped her. She was able to successfully make the sounds by the end of today but she still needs
to practice them to bring them into her automatic language patterns - ie so she actually uses them in speaking.
If anyone else has any successful stategies for pronounciation, please write them up.
I had a lot of trouble with trying to teach intonation...Vietnamese is such a monotone language
All I could think of was to model the sound and draw diagrams above the sentences to indicate when to go up and down in intonation. This seemed to be relatively successful.
Any suggestions? Anyway, that's me for now.
Megan
Ken | (129.78.104.203) | Wednesday, 17 April 2002 8:42:50 AM
I am sorry ...I couldn't help but responding. Jackie, I think what you are doing is great. I think you are correct in being a bit more insistent on doing what you need to do also. Because she is SO concerned about prac and her fears of classroom management, she may not be thinking of the bigger picture. You as the teacher also have the role to say what you think you should be teaching. I think that is good your correcting her conversational phrases. Many of these become 'stabilised' ... they were learned inaccurately in the first few months of learning English and so are difficult to shift. This was the 'formulaic' stage where learners acquire whole phrases for different contexts. This would badly affect her classroom interaction and people would assume her English to be worse than it is ... so GOOD IDEA. I don't know about Year 5 behaviour. When I tookd a kindergarten class once I had a child wee on my shoe. .. I don't think you can role play that however.
Megan,
That also sounds good. I like your picking up on the shape of the mouth. There is a good article in Prospect on Vietnamese ... Dora has it. Because it is a tonal language, Ai takes short breaths and has a clipped monotonous tone to her English. She needs to breath and practise whole phrases. Also, Vietnamese is produced more from the back of the mouth. She needs to try nad hear English spoken from the front of the mouth and then try doing it herself. What you were doing, getting her to open her mouth more, is a way to do this.
I realise the site is open ... but I won't give the address to students.
Ken Cruickshank | (129.78.104.203) | Wednesday, 17 April 2002 8:43:14 AM
I am sorry ...I couldn't help but responding. Jackie, I think what you are doing is great. I think you are correct in being a bit more insistent on doing what you need to do also. Because she is SO concerned about prac and her fears of classroom management, she may not be thinking of the bigger picture. You as the teacher also have the role to say what you think you should be teaching. I think that is good your correcting her conversational phrases. Many of these become 'stabilised' ... they were learned inaccurately in the first few months of learning English and so are difficult to shift. This was the 'formulaic' stage where learners acquire whole phrases for different contexts. This would badly affect her classroom interaction and people would assume her English to be worse than it is ... so GOOD IDEA. I don't know about Year 5 behaviour. When I tookd a kindergarten class once I had a child wee on my shoe. .. I don't think you can role play that however.
Megan,
That also sounds good. I like your picking up on the shape of the mouth. There is a good article in Prospect on Vietnamese ... Dora has it. Because it is a tonal language, Ai takes short breaths and has a clipped monotonous tone to her English. She needs to breath and practise whole phrases. Also, Vietnamese is produced more from the back of the mouth. She needs to try nad hear English spoken from the front of the mouth and then try doing it herself. What you were doing, getting her to open her mouth more, is a way to do this.
I realise the site is open ... but I won't give the address to students.
Jackie | (172.17.70.116) | Friday, 19 April 2002 5:26:14 PM
Thanks Ken for your response. Tuyet and I met again on yesterday.
It was a fruitful lesson but again time ran away from us and I didn't get
to do with her what I had planned. I'm going to have to be NAZI like with
the time I think.
Tuyet presented a lesson which she had prepared for her B.Teach course. It was in the English KLA and involved introducing yr 5 to the more formal version of Cinderella.
Jackie | (172.17.70.116) | Friday, 19 April 2002 5:43:46 PM
Sorry. Got too eager with the clicking of buttons and posted off my email.
Where was I? Tuyet presented her lesson while Renee, Vu Ha (the student Renee is coaching)
and I behaved like what we thought we typical yr 5 students.
Bickering, poking tongues out at each other etc. We had fun.
Renee and I particularly kept "acting up" and finally Tuyet was forced to
say out names out in an insistent voice. Towards the end we pushed it
enough that she actually increased her volume. This is difficult for Tuyet.
She finds it difficult to speak loudly. After she presented her lesson, Renee
Vu Ha and I gave her feed back about her lesson.
She has real difficulties with classroom management and
and it is not all related to her English language skills. She comes from a different cultural stance re how teachers and students interract. I pointed this out to her but this is clearly beyond the scope of
what coaching involves.
I also gave Tuyet feedback on her pronunciation. I focussed mainly on words I found hard to understand or which interfered with what she was trying to communicate (words such as "conflict"; "sweep", "shoe").
I drew to her attention the sounds in those words that she needed to focussed on. We did some short drills. We recorded this. Next week she is going to read the Cinderalla story to me again after practising some of the drills.
Next week I'm going to go first with my part of the coaching.
Jackie
Jackie | (63.34.196.162) | Friday, 26 April 2002 11:37:54 PM
Anybody out there in coaching land?
soph | (203.109.250.98) | Tuesday, 30 April 2002 9:17:26 PM
hi guys...just thought i'd drop a line about one particular incident at holroyd that amazed me. i turned up one thursday and everyone in 9a had gone to the show but i ended up in a JEFF class (i think). the teacher asked me to take wassim and work on the alphabet with him cause he only knew up to the letter g. gosh if that! i started to go through the alphabet chronologically with him but soon realised how futile it was. so, i found out the name of some of his family members and wrote them down for him. we read them once, repeated them and them i pointed randomly at some and he read them to me. it was so cool cause he had learnt how to read about 12 names all starting with different letters so quickly. then i broke down some of the names for him phoetically and showed him patterns within them. i was really really proud of him and so happy that the strategy employed worked. learning a for apple, b for boat was driving us both nuts! hope prac is going well for you all
suzie | (203.54.175.252) | Wednesday, 1 May 2002 7:10:51 PM
Hello!!
Far out - is anyone else swamped??? I SOOOOOOO don't that my school should have taken anyone for this prac, but the school shall (for the moment) remain nameless. So yeah, I'm teaching History (????) and a welfare subject with the topics of racism and 'feelings' - how broad can you be????
Anywho - it;s very interesting....
Will give feedback re tutoring later...
good luck all yr 2s out there in cyberland - hope your prac experience is fruitful!!
Suzie