A tantárgy tanításának elméleti és gyakorlati kérdései 3.

- angol ( Pedagogical Grammar)

Lesson Plan with Reflective Essay

04.01.2021

Student 1, Student 2, Student 3

Topic: Past Simple and Past Continuous

Age group: Secondary School

Proficiency level: A2-B1

Aim: To familiarize students with the past simple and past continuous tenses, their grammatical structures, and rules while focusing on the
differences between them and when to use them through several interesting and motivating exercises.

Students 1 (substitute your own name here)

Allocated Time Name of Activity Description
9 minutes Remembering Yesterday – I welcome the students and introducing the game „Remembering
warm-up task (grammar Yesterday”. I am showing them a roulette wheel with the following
practice, speaking activity) categories on it: wake up, clothing, activities, food, people, bedtime.
Then I tell them to think back to yesterday. I choose a student, spin the
wheel, and the student has to pose a question about yesterday to a
classmate using the given category. The other student has to respond to
the question with either Simple Past or Past Continuous.
6 minutes Comparing Past Simple and Students already know the forming of the two tenses, and they roughly
Past Continuous know when these are used. We are comparing them and I am also
explaining the case when we can use the two tenses together.

Reflection
This was not my first microteaching, but definitely the most successful one. I could work really well with Student 2 and Student 3, we helped
each other a lot and could give valuable feedback on each other’s works. This microteaching was a really positive experience for me. I could try
my teaching skills without having pressure on me, I felt comfortable in my situation, and I was not that nervous, so my performance was close to
valid.
In the first task, I aimed to lead the students into the topic of Past Simple and Past Continuous with a game. I assumed that they have some prior
knowledge about these tenses, in this lesson Student 2, Student 3 and I gave tasks and explanations where the two tenses were compared. I
believe the task was successful, although if I could do it again, I would add more topics to the wheel, and I would somehow project the
instructions of the game or play an example round with the students. The time for the task seemed enough, „in real life” it would probably require
a bit more time since my groupmates are proficient in grammar, but in the case of high school students, who are currently learning these tenses,
will not be this quick. As far as I could see, my groupmates enjoyed this task.
In the second part of my microteaching, I was giving a grammatical explanation of Past Simple and Past Continuous. I aimed to compare the two
tenses with examples, and also to give examples of when to use them together. I believe I could collect the most important rules quite well, my
explanation was short, understandable, and straightforward, the time was enough here with my groupmates. If I taught this part to secondary
school students, I would slow down a bit and gave for example some drill exercises to the students to help them understand the certain uses of
these tenses. In this case, online teaching was really hard for me, since I could not see students’ faces, their responses to my explanation, so I
could not figure out if they understood everything (I experienced that asking them if they understand everything is not the most efficient thing to
do, somehow students in Hungary are not willing to ask questions or indicate if something is not clear even in their first language). Also,
motivating students through a camera is a really hard task to do. I tried my best, but in real class-time, it would probably go much smoother.

Attachments:

Link for the presentation about Past Simple and Continuous:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Estje8t3AO23f6uuuxoUUQe9s2eDYbXN/view?usp=sharing
Roulette wheel: https://wheeldecide.com/index.php?
c1=wake+up&c2=clothing&c3=bedtime&c4=activities&c5=food&c6=people&t=Remember+Yesterday&time=5

Student 2 (substitute your own name here)

Allocated time Name of activity Description

After Student 1’s introduction of the two tenses (past simple, past
continuous) I welcome the students and tell them about the task
we are going to do. I ask them to open a website (joinmyquiz.com)
and enter a code because we are going to practice the differences
Grammar practice, between the two tenses with a Quizizz quiz. First, I show them a
4 min.
speaking activity picture full of people and animals doing different activities and
ask the students to create meaningful past continuous sentences
with them. E.g. The girl in the pink shirt was doing a cartwheel. /
A squirrel was climbing up a tree etc. Each student must say a
sentence and they can call on each other to continue.
Then, we move on to doing the quiz. They will see sentences on
the screen with the verbs missing from them. They will have to
choose whether the simple past or the past continuous form of the
5 min. Grammar practice
verbs belong to the sentences (they will be able to see the right
answers after submitting theirs). After completing the quiz, we
discuss the answers if there are mistakes.
6 min. Reading exercise, After practicing simple past and past continuous sentences on their
grammar practise own, we are going to deal with a task where students will have to
combine the two and decide which one goes where (e.g. there is an
activity that goes on for a longer period of time and a sudden one
interrupts it -> I was doing my homework when someone
knocked on my door). I will show them a text where they will
 have to do the same thing.

Reflection
When I first heard that one of the requirements of this course was a micro-teaching session, I got a little bit scared because up until now I have
never done anything like this - I only gave presentations - but this semester I had to do at least 6 micro-teachings altogether. My teammates were
Student 1 and Student 3 and I think we could work together really well, and we succeeded in making a lesson where each presentation or micro-
teaching part was logically following the previous one. Unknowingly, we put together tasks that were in connection with the same topic (mystery
and detectives, etc.) which worked out pretty well in the end, and it was a good surprise since we have not discussed it while we were trying to
figure out our parts.

I have mixed feelings about my actual micro-teaching because while I was planning it and putting together the tasks, they seemed fine and
interesting to me but when I was actually performing my part with my classmates, I felt that it was quite repetitive, even almost boring to them - I
might be wrong – and I found it very hard to try and get them as excited about the tasks as I was which is understandable since no one can really
be motivated through a computer screen. I think my feelings arise from the fact that I found it difficult to only create one-third of a lesson when
normally I like to prepare and figure out everything by myself from the beginning to the end and so I think I wanted to cram as many things in 15
minutes as possible and that is why I have this impression of my performance. For example, one of my tasks was a Quizizz quiz in connection
with past simple and past continuous sentences and after the quiz, I wanted to go over the answers and discuss them because there were quite a
few incorrect ones but since I only had 15 minutes, I had to skip that part which made my presentation quite weird with these wrong answers
hanging there in my opinion.

All in all, I think it was a good experience because I learnt a few things from it, for example, that in the future I should focus on the quality and
not the number of tasks because it might be a lot more beneficial for students to have only one or two meaningful and comprehensible tasks
instead of four or five that do not really have a deep meaning and they just drill students and also when things do not go according to plan I
should be more prepared to handle the situation.

Attachments

1, The picture before the quiz:

2, The Quizziz quiz:

https://quizizz.com/admin/presentation/5fc603d210fcd1001d3f1e82/simple-past-past-continous
3, The worksheet with past simple and past continuous sentences:
https://www.liveworksheets.com/worksheets/en/English_as_a_Second_Language_(ESL)/Past_simple_and_past_continuous/
A_mystery_story_yz284410bp
 Student 3 (substitute your own name here)
Allocated Time Name of Activity Description
15 min (5 +10 Timeline activity The last task will focus more on communication. In this task, the students will have to rely
minutes) on their knowledge of several different grammatical structures.
The students are going to investigate the murder of Lord Eagleton. In order to solve the
case, they must reconstruct the events of the day of the murder. They must work together to
create a timeline of the events, using statements from the people who saw Lord Eagleton on
the day of the murder. Each student will get a statement (from a certain character), and they
will have to work together to get the events of the day in the correct order.
In the first part of the task, each student studies their statement, while I will share my
screen and share the timeline. (5 minutes)
Then they begin adding the information to the timeline I will share my screen and write the
statements on the timeline based on the students’ instructions (the reason for this is to save
some time). The result of the task will be a completed timeline of the events of Lord
Eagleton’s last day. (10 minutes)

Attachments:
Statements:
Lady Eagleton: We had breakfast together at 7:30 that morning.

Sophie Eagleton (daughter of Lord and Lady Eagleton): We all sat in the living room after dinner.

George Appleby (friend of Lord Eagleton): I had something important to say to him, so we talked in
the garden at around 10 pm.
Alice Appleby (wife of Adam Eagleton): I saw Lord Eagleton walking towards the house when I
arrived for dinner. It was around 6 o’clock.

Adam Eagleton: I want hunting with Lord Eagleton and Matthew Eagleton.

William, the Butler: I let all of the guests out at around 11 pm.

Mrs. Winston, the housekeeper: I saw Lord Eagleton go outside at around 10 pm, but I don’t know
what he was doing.

Mary, the cook: He came to the kitchen after lunch to compliment my soup.

Jess, the kitchen maid: I didn’t see him, but I heard him talking with someone in his study at around
midnight

James, the stableboy: I got the horse ready for Lord Eagleton at 9:30 that morning.

Pat, the driver: I drove him to the bank after breakfast.

Bob, the gardener: I was doing some work outside when I saw him on his horse at around 12 o’clock.

Becky, the lady’s maid: I saw him in his study at around midnight, while I was on my way to my
room.
Matthew Eagleton, Lord Eagleton’s brother: We went hunting together after lunch.

Lady Margaret, Lord Eagleton’s sister: I had lunch with him at around 1 o’clock.
Reflection:
In this last part of the lesson, my aim was to engage the students in an interesting and useful, but simple activity. It is often difficult to spend the
last few minutes of a lesson with something useful because the students often get bored or tired, so my goal was to make the task exciting and to
come up with something new. I believe I managed this, because everyone was eager to participate, or at least it seemed that way. Because we
planned the lesson for beginners and wanted to focus more on practising certain structures, I wanted to create an activity that would allow for
everyone’s participation and would also help to develop multiple skills. I believe I achieved this, because this activity required the students’
cooperation and imagination, included written materials, and also required the students to speak.

The biggest challenge when planning the lesson was the online format because everything takes longer than in the classroom. Sharing the screen,
sending links, and even giving instructions takes more time away from the tasks and can make the lesson less dynamic and the students tend to
get bored. I had to keep all of these things in mind when planning the activity, and in the end, I believe I was able to overcome the challenges of
the online platform. Of course, I have to mention that this group was very easy to work with, and they are also very proficient. This would not be
the case in a real classroom, which is something one has to keep in mind.

Overall, I can say that the microteaching was a success, and I am satisfied with myself. I wanted to experiment with something new and
interesting, and I got several compliments on my activity, which I was happy about. I have to admit that I was a bit nervous beforehand, and I
found giving instructions and explaining the task to be the most difficult part. I definitely need to develop in this area. Ultimately, I feel that my
activity was a good way to finish the lesson, and I succeeded in managing the time well. It would be interesting to try this activity in a real-life
setting with actual students to see how they would react to it and to see whether they can actually do the task.