Overall I was surprisingly satisfied with how my lesson went. I did, however, pick a class that I thought could perform the activities and carry out discussions to a reasonable level. The class was a sophomore reading and writing class with most students being at a relatively high intermediate level. I suppose it would have worked well with my freshman classes, but due to time restrictions and work that needed to be covered I couldn’t really fit this lesson plan into these particular classes.
Going into the lesson I had a few doubts that the class may be a little flat as the students might not fully engage with the activities and the class could possibly run short. Although, I felt the students could complete this lesson, it is the last class on a Friday and some of the students are exhausted by then. Therefore, I did bring some back up materials such as a list of questions relating to cosmetic surgery. This was just to kick start the students into discussing the topic. I also brought in my regular lesson from the textbook, just in case!
The lesson plan did go to plan! I didn’t really deviate away or change much to the lesson plan, apart from the final homework writing activity. Of course, students mentioned other issues that were related and that got discussed which was great as they were open to new ideas, building on the original topic.
In class (after taking in groups) we all discussed about cosmetic surgery and shared any questions, queries and problems that were related to it. Other topics such as tattoos and piercings got brought up as these are similar topics as people have these procedures to change their original appearance.
After the discussion and the first video clip the students had to choose a corner corresponding to the categories of strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree and strongly disagree on the statement of “we should not take part in cosmetic surgery procedures”. I heard a few sighs at the back from students who were reluctant to move about but most seemed ok to participate in this activity. The results were about 50:50 in terms of agree and disagree. With about 20% of them being in both strongly agree and strongly disagree. Most of the strongly disagree were females and most of the strongly agree were males. Somewhat disagree had a mixture of male and females and somewhat agree consisted of mainly males. (There are more males in the class 60/40). I was quite surprised that almost all of the students participated in the discussion and voiced their opinions. In the categories that had a lot of students I divided them up into smaller groups to allow all students to join in.
Next, I showed the second clip and I realized that, I maybe forcing them to think differently about the topic and pressure them into changing from their original category to a different one. The second clip was just an extreme of what can happen and that there are obvious cases of cosmetic surgery addicts. I explained that to the class and we had another class discussion for 5 or so minutes. Following the discussion I told the class that they may change groups. A few students did, with the biggest change being from strongly disagree to somewhat agree. There were only 4 students that changed over from disagree to agree.
During the group discussion I was pleased to see that most students were engaged in the activity, there were a few who didn’t really get involved though. Obviously, the biggest obstacle here was the actual language barrier and some students couldn’t really express themselves fully and they got a little frustrated. However, they all did manage to get their point of view across. When it was time for someone from the groups to share their thoughts, some students were reluctant to do so. Only the most fluent students in the groups spoke out, but the ones who did had some great collective views and opinions from their group. I was also, surprised to see members from other groups questioning and challenge those who were speaking, there were a few heating discussions which was great and I didn’t expect to see.
At the end of class, students had to write an opinion paragraph (for homework) and the only change I made to the original lesson plan was that I brought in the book to help them understand how to write an opinion paragraph. It was just one page on how to give reasons about their opinions and had some common phrases to help them with their sentence structure.
They all seemed fine and the following week, I was quite impressed with their work. I feel with the group collaborating together and the students sharing their ideas it helped them to have a greater understanding on the topic and they had a lot more to produce in the written work.
What my aims and goals are in class are to get the students more involved and contribute more. I feel that if the topics are interesting and meaningful to the students, then hopefully they will be motivated and more inclined to talk about it. What I plan to do at the start of every semester on the first class, is to get the students to make a list of any topics, issues, basically anything that they are interested in and want to talk about it. I will take these lists and each week select a topic and prepare some kind of activity that can be done in the second half of the class. The main idea is to get away from the text book where the same topics always come up and that the students have done them a 100 times before. I still think because of the language ability of the students, to critically discuss about a topic, they may find it difficult. They can critically think but to be able to produce it orally in English might be a challenge. I feel by giving them the chance to develop part of the lessons and choose their own topics then they will engage more, be motivated and produce more in class. To discuss more, this could be critically at times, and overall, an increase in verbal communication from the students.
