Losing the plot

Teaching Practice Two finally happened in the afternoon of Friday 14th March at Open Doors school. Eleven learners attended- far more than I have been used to of late. The learners are preparing for their reading test, but also need to prepare for their writing test, which they will do in the summer term.

The aim of the lesson was that they would be able to plan and draft a letter of complaint. I had changed a few things since the first attempt at this lesson with my own learners, mainly because when I observed this class, they seemed at a higher level generally. I felt they needed to be challenged a bit more - but that was really my first mistake.Also , though I had tried, I had not managed to obtain a Class Profile - so believing this was a Level 1 group , only discovered today that some of them were actually only Entry 3. Mistake number two. The other thing I did wrong was to not stick to my plan !

The lesson started well and I was able to use the starter activity with the learners who arrived early. This activity was to get them thinking about formal and informal language in letters - those that did this actvity did it well, and seemed to be able to distinguish between formal and informal words and phrases.

When most of the class had arrived, I began the lesson with a jumbled letter activity, asking the class to work in pairs. They had to put the letter in a logical order and then tell me the purpose of the letter. All except for one pair managed to put the letter in the right order , the other pair just had one paragraph out of place. I had got an easier letter in case it was needed, and in fact feel it might have been better to use the simpler version at this point in the lesson after all, as I only wanted to focus on the format of the letter and not the details really.

One learner was able to tell me clearly that it was a letter of complaint. At this point I forgot to write the aim on the board and needed to explain more clearly what the aim of the lesson was and why we were doing it - though I had talked about the need to practise for the writing exam.

I had managed to photocopy the full version of the letter onto an OHT and used an OHP to show them the letter in the right order, and to look at the different parts of the letter with them. I had given them some cut up headings to place alongside their full version of the letter, to decide on the purpose of each section of the letter. This would have been clearer with the easier letter too. I pointed out the linking words, the greeting and ending of the letter and elicited from them when to use "Yours faithfully" and "Yours sincerely", we also looked at the opening sentence, main complaint , description of the problem and the request or demand, as well as the closing sentence.The words "request" and "demand" seemed quite new to them, and after eliciting their meaning , I checked they understood.

Having looked at the format I then went on to ask them to read parts of the letter aloud one by one, and to check pronunciation and understanding- this had not been in my plan and took quite a while to get through, especially as the letter was quite long and complicated. I think it was useful for the learners to practise pronunciation , word roots , stress and spellings too, but it took away time from the main focus of the lesson which was to get them to write a plan and draft of a letter of complaint.

Realizing the time was passing quickly, I chose not to do what was in fact a vital part of the next stage of the lesson. I gave them a picture of a vandalised playground, which was going to be the focus of their complaint, and then explained the need to write a plan first, giving them a blank plan with headings, and encouraged them to jot down some ideas onto the plan, before writing a draft.

Some learners embarked on this with no problem , but others struggled particularly with a lack of vocabulary to describe the park and its equipment.This vocabulary was not in their schema, and I needed to address this, so I gave some vocabulary on the board , but it would have been much more helpful if we had spent some time looking at the picture and discussing the complaints and requests together first, collecting some words and phrases together which they could then have used in their letter. A picture that was more suitable to their schema might have helped too. The previous lesson had involved mostly mums who have children,and so the picture was probably more relevant to them.

Some learners were also too keen to get started on their letter or draft of their letter, and I had to insist on them jotting some ideas onto a plan first. Some learners were writing full sentences on their plan - so I needed to make it clearer that this was not necessary on the plan.

One hour had passed already and most learners were still completing their plan or just beginning on their draft, so I did not manage to ask them to proofread each other's work, or review what we had learnt before the end of the hour.

I think the learners had a good idea of how to format a letter of complaint by the end of the lesson, though I needed to review this to be sure, and all seemed engaged in the task of writing their letter of complaint at the end. ( One learner had decided on a different topic to complain about - something that he felt strongly about himself ) but it was not a satisfactory end to the lesson, as not all aims or objectives had been achieved in the time.

I gave the learners a reading task to do for homework which consisted of a letter of complaint and several questions on comprehension, punctuation, and spelling, so it was similar to the kind of thing they will have to do in their reading test.

On the whole I think I needed to stick to the plan more and especially to the original plan and the original jumbled letter, so that I could have had more time to elicit vocabulary and phrases from the picture prompt and could have moved on more quickly to the planning and drafting stage of the lesson.

They say put it down to experience and move on. Sometimes I think I think too much....