Rabin takes over next class after my model lesson

These special 10th grade English classes provided an excellent opportunity for the expat Indian teachers to put into practives the instructional and classroom management techniques I'd taught and modeled.

Short, direction instruction, followed by an activity which provided students with an opportunity to process the information taught.

Checking for understanding...





Continually moving throughout the classroom to monitor and assist the students.



The first thing I do in these reflective conversations, is to ask the teacher to tell me, step-by-step, each of the activities of the lesson. 

Then I ask they when they, as the teacher felt frustrated, unsure, or anxious?  When were the students the most engaged?  Finally what would they do differently?

These after the lesson reflective chats have helped the teachers not only process what they did, their feelings about it, but more importantly to learn from the experience.



Writing demonstration lesson and follow-up teaching

First I demonstrated the entire lesson for the expat English teachers to observe.

Here, after explaining the writing brainstorming process, I had pairs of students come to the board to work togther to brainstorm ideas on a topic.

Here was one group's brainstorming on three types of animals.

Another group's brainstorming on rivers.

Having students work in pairs at the board, has proven a successful strategy for teaching this part of the writing process. 

The next class, Anil took over and taught the lesson, based on the demonstration lesson he'd just observed me present.

The third class of the day, Rabin taught the lesson, based on my demonstration, with Anil co-teaching with him.

Another day, another demonstration lesson

Class begins with my greeting the students as they enter the classroom..... getting a pulse on what might lay in store for the next 45 minutes.

Objectives are written on the board.

Students are on task, engaged in the assignment.



For this listening activity, students first listened only as I described a scene.... only after I finished my description, could they pick up a pencil and start to draw..... Here's what I described to them......

There's a house in the middle of the paper.
Two trees on the left of the house and one on the right.
Five mountains behind the house.
The house has one door and two windows.
Six clouds in the sky.
Four birds in the sky.
The sun is on the left hand side.
A river begins in the first mountain on the right,
It flows down in front of the house.
There are three fish in the river.
A cat sits in front of the house.



After the lesson, I met with the teachers to reflect. 

Mr. T's Demonstration lesson with Co-Teaching mixed throughout

After reviewing the lesson objective of this demonstration lesson, it was time to move to the next activity.

The starter activity (bellwork) for today was a series of sentences containing errors, which students were to correct. 

As students worked on the assignment, I moved throughout the classroom checking for understanding.

Randomly calling on students, I asked them to identify the mistakes and how to correct them.

After having demonstrated this Starter Activity in the first period class, I had the expat English teacher, Anil, co-teach this part of the lesson with me in the second and third period classes.

Co-teaching with Chinchu, one of the expat secondary English teachers, the introduction to the reading comprehension part of the lesson.

Reading comprehension.... first the students numbered the paragraphs, then drew a double box around the title, I had the students identify vocabulary words they did not understand, so front loaded them with the meaning of these words, before I slowly read the story to them.

By my reading the story to the students, I help them work on their reading comprehension as well as reading fluency skills.

Again, after my demonstrating this lesson during the first period class, I co-taught it with Aravindan the second and third periods.

Before reading the story, I'd written on the board the who, what, when, where, how, and why questions.  I noted to students that these were the questions I wanted them to think about as I read the story to them.

Each class did a great job with this assignment.