QCE52B
Language Teaching Approaches
Narrative Comprehension - Reading & Viewing
Semester 1
Tutor: Dr Poh Soon Koh
Please download a copy of my QCE52B Narrative Comprehension Lesson Development Assignment below:
QCE52B Language Teaching Approaches was an opportunity for me to clarify and justify some of the teaching routines I had picked up thus far in my teaching experience.
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It aims to:
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help student teachers explore a range of strategies and skills for developing language proficiency in students,
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develop lesson outlines for the areas of language learning in an integrated way.
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familiarise student teachers with the theoretical perspectives, approaches and principles that underpin language teaching and learning.
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develop STs ability to select, evaluate, adapt and use a variety of resources for language teaching and modes of assessment of learning.
For example, we learned tools to enable student comprehension, such as lexical cohesion and unconventional means of schema activation. We also learned ways to teach grammar, including the analogical approach. The lessons on teaching critical viewing and reading were also particularly stimulating.
QCE52B also contextualised each of these teaching strategies and approaches to cater to different student profiles, which we called scenarios one, two and three. During class, we often created short presentations and shared our learning artefacts for the lesson with our peers for feedback and a record of our learning.
For the final assignment, STs were tasked to submit a 60-minute lesson plan that involved the integrated teaching of two skills. Our objectives were to:
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demonstrate our learning of planning a lesson in stages (pre, main and post)
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demonstrate understanding of the principles (CLLIPS) and processes (ACoLADE) of language teaching and learning
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justify our choice of activities by relating them to language teaching approaches, strategies and theories (including Gradual Release of Responsibility and Schema theory).
I developed a lesson on narrative comprehension based on the assigned passage on the experiences of a shark attack survivor, Mr Paul de Gelder. My lesson was designed for a class of 30 Secondary Three N(A) students. I focused on Reading and Viewing and Vocabulary skills.
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In planning the lesson, I was able to select suitable Learning Outcomes and Lesson Objectives from the 2020 English Language Syllabus. I was able to cohere a set of lessons as part of a unit and to understand how each lesson's objectives linked with the previous and subsequent lessons' objectives.
INTRODUCTION
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For the introduction phase of the lesson, I activate students' content schema (their "organised knowledge of the world") by showing them a supplementary video, "Don't Fear The Fin" (00:00 - 02:18).
The video material selection facilitates the application of EL teaching principles and processes.
One example is Raising Awareness, under the ACoLADE EL teaching processes, which includes the areas of arousing interest and activating prior knowledge. While students may be familiar with the image of the threatening and dangerous shark (prior knowledge), I wanted them to also begin to understand the ecological importance of sharks within aquatic ecosystems -- a point Mr de Gelder emphasises in the text.
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Secondly, I cater to students' learning preferences in their enjoyment of graphic novels and cartoons. One of EL teaching principles (CLLIPS) is Learner-centredness, or teaching according to "interests" and "employing effective pedagogies". Using a visual medium (video) to present the subject matter would have greater appeal to this student profile. This also ties into my earlier intention of arousing interest, which is also a teaching area under the Singapore Teaching Practice. QCE52B gave me the opportunity to think through and justify what we may sometimes view as intuitive or common-sense teaching approaches, with reference to research, theory and the syllabus.
LESSON DEVELOPMENT
Activity one in the lesson development phase focuses on students' Reading and Viewing skills. To establish cohesion in the text and to surface unfamiliar vocabulary words / phrases, students are assigned lexical chains such as 'Present Day Beliefs', 'The Accident', etc. They are tasked to highlight words in the passage that comprise these lexical chains, using a technology-mediated activity on Google Documents.
I practiced differentiated instruction (DI) by readiness by marking out suitable parts of the passage for learners of different progress levels. Other teaching practices incorporated into this simple activity include small group work and technology-mediated learning. These are essential elements to my pedagogical practice: small group work ties into the Learning-focused interaction aspect of CLLIPS; technology-mediated learning enables me to Facilitate Assessment for Learning (AfL) -- a key teaching process under ACoLADE.
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My lesson design also makes connections between this Curriculum Studies (CS) module and the Pedagogical Practices module. Here, I employ the STP Teaching Areas such as Facilitating Collaborative Learning and Deciding on Instructional Strategies. For the latter, I first scaffold students' understanding of the text through textual analysis before they discuss and refine their ideas. I am also able to Consider Learners' Profiles by providing DI opportunities within the lesson.
Activity two, which focuses on Reading and Vocabulary, is based on answering "language use for impact" questions.
This involves the teacher:
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explaining the use of "language use for impact" questions, including how to identify them and common answering stems,
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modelling the analysis of one example, using the appropriate language and metalanguage
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guiding students to attempt the analysis and finally,
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encouraging students to practice the skills they have just learned.
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This consistent use of Fisher and Frey (2013)'s Gradual Release of Responsibility ("I do, We do, You do") forms a key approach in my pedagogical practice. For steps one to three, teacher modelling is especially important (including the use of metalanguage) as this student profile is less accustomed to analysing vocabulary words for impact and effect. Oftentimes, Literature / Language teachers simply tell their students to "read between the lines" without equipping them with the appropriate cognitive and analytical processes.
In step four, learners are then empowered to practise the skills ("You do it together") in small groups, where group work forms part of the GRR to learners. I also provided differentiated tasks for different groups of learners:
CLOSURE AND CONSOLIDATION
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Lastly, for lesson closure and consolidation, I give feedback on student work through Google Documents. This gives students detailed feedback on their work in real-time, as well as a record of learning for students to refer to when they are reviewing the lesson at home.
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On the whole, this module gave me the opportunity to build a rich conceptual vocabulary that can serve as the building blocks and foundational tools for future EL lesson planning.
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