Today was our first teaching assignment for some of us. The other half of the VIA group will be teaching later in the week. Our group was assigned to teach the intermediate class. We received the assignment yesterday and worked on it for the majority of that night. The most complex part in creating a lesson plan was following the plan that our ECC mentors gave us. They were great instructors, by the way, it was just difficult for us to combine our different teaching styles with the mold that they had for the class. In the end, we decided to go with our own dialog instead of what was on the CD we were given.

Our lesson was to cover conversation listening, split into five 15 minute sections: an ice breaker, 2 conversations & 1 activity, repeating the conversations to use with another activity, having the students brainstorm conversational questions, and a writing assignment. Throughout each section, the students were asked to participate in various ways such as small groups or pairs.

It was good to see what my teammates had in mind for their lesson. It exposed me to ideas that I either forgot or didn’t even think about using in my section.

Below is feedback from the instructor and our VIA peers that observed. The bold represents items that I felt personally needed improvement on my part.

1. The classroom setting could be intimidating for students since there are five of us teaching and ten of us observing in the back
2. Many students chose to speak in Thai during the assignments
3. When no one responds to a question posed…
   1. Call on them by name
   2. Have them discuss in pairs or small groups and then respond by calling on them
   3. Call on the most confident students first
   4. Split the class into teams to compete and have them answer as a team
4. Check for understanding of instructions
5. Have students play out the dialog instead of it always being performed by the instructors
6. Keep teaching language simple and brief
7. Pace yourself; no need to rush
8. Prepare the board ahead of time
9. Don’t write in ALL CAPS (apparently, Thai students are taught to copy everything that is written in ALL CAPS)
10. Address errors (either speech or writing) at the end of class as issues that came up for improvement
11. Use follow-up questions to encourage students to dig deeper