Teaching as a practicum teacher (Meets objective 1, 2, 3, 4, 6)
In my last semester in the MA TESL program, the course of practice teaching in ESL was required. This course is designed to provide instructional
support and professional mentoring as we complete our MA TESL practicum experience. In this course, we learned about, and participated in, the
daily instructional activities of our practicum placement, were required to create and teach appropriate instructional materials, tried to develop and implement appropriate
assessment measures to evaluate student learning and achievement. In addition, we were also asked to observe other lessons from a variety of ESL teaching contexts, reflect
upon and learn about our own professional development as an L2 teacher.
I was working with Ruth, and her Level 3 writing class in IECP program. I have to say that the teaching practicum was a fantastic experience. Especially as a novice teacher, I really appreciated the opportunity to first observe and learn from Ruth, as an experienced ESL teacher. This enabled me to, then design instructional materials, activities for my own teaching. The reflection papers I wrote and the meetings with Ruth each week helped me to look back to my teaching, evaluate it, and make improvements, and I could also see my professional development as an ESL teacher at the same time. The instructor meetings held by ESL program also provided us the opportunity to share teachers' ideas, activities, experience of their teaching, and it was absolutely helpful and functioned as a valuable resource for us as novice teachers. The final video-recording of my 40 min teaching and the follow-up stimulated recall with my instructor made me reflect my own teaching, and from which to summarize my overall practicum experience.
The materials below include:
Final video-recording of my teaching
Final reflection paper
Sample activities used for this course
I was working with Ruth, and her Level 3 writing class in IECP program. I have to say that the teaching practicum was a fantastic experience. Especially as a novice teacher, I really appreciated the opportunity to first observe and learn from Ruth, as an experienced ESL teacher. This enabled me to, then design instructional materials, activities for my own teaching. The reflection papers I wrote and the meetings with Ruth each week helped me to look back to my teaching, evaluate it, and make improvements, and I could also see my professional development as an ESL teacher at the same time. The instructor meetings held by ESL program also provided us the opportunity to share teachers' ideas, activities, experience of their teaching, and it was absolutely helpful and functioned as a valuable resource for us as novice teachers. The final video-recording of my 40 min teaching and the follow-up stimulated recall with my instructor made me reflect my own teaching, and from which to summarize my overall practicum experience.
The materials below include:
Final video-recording of my teaching
Final reflection paper
Sample activities used for this course
aplng_500-final_reflection.docx | |
File Size: | 24 kb |
File Type: | docx |
activity_1_scavenger_hunt.docx | |
File Size: | 27 kb |
File Type: | docx |
activity_2_brainstorming_1.docx | |
File Size: | 16 kb |
File Type: | docx |
activity_2_brainstorming_2.docx | |
File Size: | 15 kb |
File Type: | docx |
Teaching as a tutor (Meets objectives 1, 2, 4)
During my study in the MA TESL program, I'm pleased to have had the opportunity to work with EFL students and help them with their English learning in both APLNG 493 and 410. I really enjoyed this tutoring session because such one-on-one teaching sessions gave me the opportunity to design my course or prepare materials based on my tutees' needs. I think this was also a good opportunity for me to help them to work on something that they might not have chance to practice or learn in their regular class. So before we got started with our regular meeting, my tutees and I would discuss the difficulties that they were facing, or things they wanted to improve. Then I would prepare materials and activities based on our discussion about the learning focus for each session. For instance, one of my tutees is a PhD student from Iran, and he was planning to take the candidacy exam two months after our first meeting. We therefore spent some time preparing his presentation for that exam, and worked on word pronunciation, intonation, and prominence. After each tutoring session, I was required to write reflections about the session and my teaching. To sum up,I practiced to design and reflect instructional materials based on the students' needs and and I believe this helped me with my professional development as a teacher.
Below are my reflection papers after tutoring sessions.
Below are my reflection papers after tutoring sessions.
reflection_paper_3.docx | |
File Size: | 12 kb |
File Type: | docx |
reflection_paper_4.docx | |
File Size: | 15 kb |
File Type: | docx |
Volunteer at YSCP Chinese class
Throughout these two years of study, I kept volunteering in the Chinese class at YSCP Charter School. It was a fascinating experience. What I did there was to assist the instructor to help students during group activities, or I might tutor one or two students who might just come to the class for a short period of time and they should catch up with the other students as soon as possible. I received totally different experience when I was there compared to my tutoring sessions at Penn State. The age of the students was totally different, the classes I volunteered for were from kindergarten to 2nd grade, while at Penn State the students were primarily at the graduate level. So it was a good chance for me to use different methods and play different roles when I was interacting with and teaching them. And this volunteer work really made me happy because the kids were very cute!