I've submitted my lesson plan for the ITTT online course and it was rejected. After reading over the comments by the reviewer, it seems to me I did everything they were asking me for. Can someone please give me a better idea of what I did wrong.
Here is my lesson plan:
Date: 31-10-2017 05:07:12
Class level: pre-intermediate
Room: N/A
Expected number: 24
Language points: Affirmative present continuous
Teaching aids: flash cards, markers and worksheets
Learner objectives:
Students will be able to properly utilize the affirmative present continuous form.
Personal aims:
Get students to participate more and reduce teacher talking time.
Anticipated problems for students:
Some students may be shy in front of a large class. Some students might not feel as involved due to the class size. Students might feel bored.
Anticipated problems for teachers:
Might talk too much. Students might feel bored and not participate.
Solutions:
Pair work and worksheets.
Solutions:
Use the topic of hobbies to connect with students on a personal level also to grab interest. Pair work and worksheets to get everyone participating.
Procedure
Phase
Timing
Interaction
Ask students what is their hobby (hobby being a previously covered vocabulary word therefore the students are aware of it's meaning). Write the verbs on the left side of the board listing them vertically.
Engage
5 minutes
Teacher-Student
To the right of the verb list, put -ing and act out different verbs from the list and ask the students what I am doing adding ing to the end.
Engage
5 minutes
Teacher-Student
Write out the affirmative present continuous form on the board. Subject - aux verb ‘to be’ -verb+ing. Ask the class what am I doing. I (under subject) am(under aux verb) teaching(under verb+ing). Pick a student and ask the class what is the student doing now. (name of student) is learning (align the words like the previous answer). While asking this, write both the questions and the answers on the top of the board right below the affirmative present continuous structure. Below those answers continue to list: he, she, we, you and I vertically. Present the students with verb flash cards from previously learned vocabulary and point to he, she, we, you or I form the list and ask them what they are doing with each flash card. Make sure to refer students to the two examples that were written on the top of the board as well as the affirmative present continuous sentence structure that was written on the board and have them answer using that as a guideline.
Study
10 minutes
Teacher-student
Give students a worksheet. Questions would show a picture and ask what he, she, you are doing. Students would be instructed to write the answer following the form that was taught today (affirmative present continuous).
Study
10 minutes
Student
Have each student choose five random verbs from their vocabulary. Then ask the students to form affirmative present continuous sentences form those verbs and write them down on a piece of paper.
Activate
10 minutes
Student
Separate the students into groups. Ask each student to take turns acting out each verb and have the other student guess the verb. After the student should form affirmative present continuous sentence using that verb and write it down.
Activate
20 minutes
Student-Student
and here is the feedback I received:
Learner Objectives
1. Your learner objectives should state the specific usage of the present continuous you intend to cover.
Engage Stage
2. This stage is fine. No corrections needed.
Study Stage
3. As the task requires you to focus on one usage of the present continuous you need to choose a specific usage and base your lesson around this usage.
4. You need to elicit as much relevant information as possible from the students in the Study stage.
5. You should start the Study by eliciting example sentences in keeping with the usage you have decided to cover first, then you can use those sentences to elicit the structure of the present continuous and the usage itself. Please refer to unit 3 where elicitation techniques were covered.
6. All the information you are eliciting (example sentences, usage, structure) should be included in your lesson plan procedure - this would essentially be your ‘board work’. As a lesson plan should be considered a working document that could be used by a replacement teacher in case you were unable to teach a lesson, it’s important that these sorts of details are included.
7. Once you have elicited as much as you can, you can then follow up with clarification of the lesson point with further examples to ensure the students understand the grammar point if needed but the focus should be on eliciting the information from the students first.
Worksheets/Exercises
8. Please note that you have been asked to provide examples of questions asked and answers you would expect the students to produce for all worksheets/exercises completed during the lesson.
Activate Stage
9. In this stage of the lesson the students should be producing present continuous sentences in keeping with the usage you are covering in the Study stage.
10. In this stage of the lesson the students should be producing present continuous sentences in keeping with the usage you have given in the learner objectives and should be covering in the Study stage.
11. Please also provide examples of the type of language you would expect the students to produce during this stage of the lesson. This serves as a check for yourself that your teaching idea will elicit the correct grammar from the students. Sometimes the idea doesn't permit the correct usage and you don't realise it until you test out your activity.
12. At 30 minutes your Activate stage is really too long. In a one hour lesson about 15 to 20 minutes is usually appropriate for the Activate stage given that the students will be using the language spontaneously and independently.
Confused about my ITTT test results.
Moderator: Josef Essberger
Re: Confused about my ITTT test results.
I didn’t see your lesson so don’t know what went on there.
There’s a number of reasons why it could be a fail, some obvious and some not; but there is not a lot wrong with it:
1 The assessor thinks your activate section is too long and as pointed out in 8 and 11, you haven’t given examples of sentence structure. Have you been told that these are necessary in a lesson plan?
2 You’re giving your students too much; you need to get more from them by eliciting
3 You need to get clear on the use of the present continuous and put that across to the students. The situations you have created get close to the notion of present continuous and many assessors would give you a pass but by talking about hobbies (what people like to do and do regularly) and then miming hobbies (what am I doing now), you may have created some confusion. I think the lesson plan just needs tweaking to get it right.
You need to speak to the assessor so that (s)he can tell you why it’s rejected.
Lucy
There’s a number of reasons why it could be a fail, some obvious and some not; but there is not a lot wrong with it:
1 The assessor thinks your activate section is too long and as pointed out in 8 and 11, you haven’t given examples of sentence structure. Have you been told that these are necessary in a lesson plan?
2 You’re giving your students too much; you need to get more from them by eliciting
3 You need to get clear on the use of the present continuous and put that across to the students. The situations you have created get close to the notion of present continuous and many assessors would give you a pass but by talking about hobbies (what people like to do and do regularly) and then miming hobbies (what am I doing now), you may have created some confusion. I think the lesson plan just needs tweaking to get it right.
You need to speak to the assessor so that (s)he can tell you why it’s rejected.
Lucy
Lucy is the author of Lucy Pollard's Guide to Teaching English
Re: Confused about my ITTT test results.
Thank you for the reply. I'm in the process of trying to get clarification from my reviewer but I haven't heard back yet. Sorry for not including my instructions. I was instructed to teach one usage of the present continuous tense to pre-intermediate level adults in a straight arrow ESA format. Keeping in mind that they have been exposed to the present continuous form before. I'm mainly confused by comment 3 (and other comments relating to that) as I am pretty sure I already did select the usage of present continuous I was going to use (affirmative present continuous).
Re: Confused about my ITTT test results.
I agree that you are using one meaning of the present continuous. I think a rejection is harsh; I think it just needs fine tuning.
Lucy is the author of Lucy Pollard's Guide to Teaching English