e learning faizal

I would like to say that the paradigms involved in the lesson are that mainly of the Interactionist and Behaviourist theory.

Interactionist

Students were involved in student centred activities such as pair work and peer assessment in many stages of the lesson. A form of peer assessment is evident when a checklist is given to the students for reading aloud. They rated their peers' reading using the checklist. They constructed their own knowledge of what is a good or poor reading from their experience when assessing the various forms of resources (peers'reading, recordings). The activities are in line with Vygotsky's writings. Social interaction is vital in the development of language competence. Students will get to model after or learn directly from the interaction with the other students. The students in this lesson construct their own knowledge through interactions with the other students with the teacher acting as a facilitator to their learning.

The teacher as the facilitator provides explicit instructions of readings such as appropriate pauses and intonations. The students are then left to process the information through their interaction, making judgement of what is good or bad, and practice what have been perceived to be good and demonstrate learning by reading according to the outcome desired.

Behaviourist

For behaviourists, learning is said to be the result of stimulus-response habit-formation (Skinner). Students in this lesson were asked to listen and imitate ideal pronounciation. This is one of the various forms of drills and practices which are habit-forming.

Strengths

In Chapelle and Jamieson (2008), it is stated that the classroom is the place most likely for students to be exposed to a wide variety of learning methods for the English language. The use of the video to relate students to the real world albeit an exaggerated one triggers curiousity and recognition with past experiences. The varied form of technology used such as the video, audio recording and an e-portal gave the opportunity for the varied form of learning dynamics which retain interest and promote interactions.

Explicit explanations and instructions and a facil;itating teacher allowed the students to work by themselves most of the time as they are well-guided and have referral points ( a more knowledgeable other to turn to).

The provision of the checklist with rubrics allowed for checkpoints at the various stages. The various opportunities for immediate feedback allows the students to evaluate and process their learnings.

Weaknesses

The video chosen could have been more suitable. It could have been of a newscaster instead where it would be more of a reading than a conversation.

Resources could also have been more varied to suit the different abilities of a mixed-ability class.

E-Learning Individual Work - Beng Yu

The paradigms of cognitivism and constructivism can be seen enacted clearly in this lesson plan.

Cognitivism

Cognitivist theories view learners as “information processers” and “rational beings that require active participation in order to learn, and whose actions are a consequence of thinking” (Learning Theories Knowledgebase, 2011).

Right from the very beginning of the lesson, when students are shown the video clip from Friends and asked the pre-activity questions, the teacher is already highlighting the amount of importance she accords to the mental processes of thinking and recalling. Students are viewed as ‘information processers ‘, where the video clip acts as the ‘information’ and students are required to ‘process’ it.

As the teacher moves on to Main Activity 1, her explicit teaching of rules pertaining to the variation of pitch and tone and her (inferred) expectation that they would somehow be able to ‘process’ the rules, understand them and apply them to their reading further goes to show the paradigm of cognitivism she is undertaking.

Later, when students are asked to ‘listen to their partner reading the script and to give feedback using the checklist provided’, the teacher is in fact expecting the students to process information from two sources – firstly audio information from their partner, and secondly visual information from the checklist. The feedback eventually given by the student (i.e. the action) is viewed as “a consequence of thinking” by the student after processing information from the two sources (Learning Theories Knowledgebase, 2011).

As the lesson progresses to Main Activity 2 where students are required to ‘explain why they chose that answer’, and after that to the Post-Activity where students are asked to ‘give a reason for justification of the grade’, it becomes even more evident that the teacher views the mental processes of thinking, knowing and problem-solving as a main part of her learners’ learning, since getting students to explain and give reasons for their answers requires the use of students’ higher-order thinking skills.

Constructivism

Constructivist theories view learners as information constructors who “actively construct their own subjective representations of objective reality” as knowledge by “linking new information to prior knowledge” and “testing hypotheses through social negotiation” (Learning Theories Knowledgebase, 2011).

Constructivism can most clearly be seen in the Post-Activity of this lesson plan. As students “listen carefully to 3 audio recordings of 3 different pupils reading the same oral passage”, and “work in pairs” to “discuss and give an overall grade for the reader based on the checklist”, they engage in social negotiation with their partners. Whatever prior hypotheses they held with regard to the notion of ‘good’ reading is now subject to testing and negotiation, and when both students in the pair have settled on a common notion of what is ‘good’ reading, new knowledge is constructed.

General Strengths & Weaknesses:

Generally speaking, the wide variety of ICT tools used in the lesson seems to promise that students will be engaged. But Towndrow (2007) warns us to “avoid a product-oriented, technologized traditional classroom, where only the physical appearance of the learning environment is changed by the presence of technologies”. Therefore, I’ll attempt to use the 5 scales of the “language learning task designer’s ‘mixing desk’ suggested by him as a basis to draw out the general strengths and weaknesses of the ICT employed in this lesson plan.

The first scale is the choice of task. Broadly speaking, for this lesson plan, there seems to be no choice for the students. The materials are chosen by the teacher and instructions are issued by the teacher. There seems to be little freedom for the students “to negotiate topics and act on their novel ideas and curiosity” (Towndrow, 2007). The lack of choice of task is thus one of the weaknesses of this lesson.

The second scale is the media and tool use. At first glance, the wide variety of ICT tools used in the lesson – recordings, e-portal forum, Instant Feedback System (IFS ) and videos etc – seems to be a strength because they add variety, interaction and flexibility to the lesson. However, if we look deeper, it seems clear as well that the ICT tools are very much teacher-selected rather than student-selected. As Towndrow (2007) pointed out, student-centred learning could perhaps occur in much more beneficial ways when learners no longer need to wait to be empowered by their teachers in the use of technology and are enabled to bring their own media and ICT skills into learning contexts. Perhaps, the lesson could be made better if the slider for media and tool use could move a little more towards the right (i.e. student-selected).

The third and fourth scale points to the outcomes of learning tasks and strategies. For this lesson plan, there is a mix of learning tasks; some result in a single outcome that is known in advance, while others accept more than one outcome. For instance, Main Activity 2 requires students to answer questions using an IFS. This task had only a single outcome, since the questions had pre-determined answers that were either right or wrong. On the other hand, the Post-Activity was one with multiple possible outcomes because it was less-structured and predictable-- students were given the liberty to justify themselves by giving reasons for the grades they had given to other pairs. In return, other pairs could reply to indicate if they agreed with the justification. Because of this mix of outcomes and strategies, I would regard these areas as strengths of the lesson plan.

The final scale takes into account learning support. In this lesson plan, the nature of support provided by the teacher is more “fixed, predetermined and procedural in nature” than “flexible and contextual” (Towndrow, 2007). This can be seen in the way instructions and feedback are planned to be given to students throughout the lesson. For instance, feedback by the teacher seems to be missing in Main Activity 1, while the main form of feedback planned to be given by the teacher for Main Activity 2 is that the teacher would reinforce at the end of the activity ‘that the tones of speech must match the given description of how the speech is meant to be expressed’. Such feedback seems to be lacking in specificity and individualization and provide little support to learners – a weakness of this lesson plan. Although there is an attempt later in the Follow-up Activity (homework) for learning support to be flexible and contextual (by having the teacher give specific and individualized holistic feedback on each pupil’s recording after the deadline), such learning support seems to come a little late though; perhaps students could benefit more if more is given throughout the learning process in the classroom. Some might argue that the ‘support’ should already come from the mutual feedback provided by students themselves since the activities revolve largely around peer learning, but taking into consideration that this is supposed to be the first lesson aimed to “…correct their weaknesses before we proceed on to other speaking outcomes…”, I would think that it is important for students to receive more accurate feedback during the lesson itself.

Individual Response - Peggy

This lesson plan is mainly based on the Interactionist model. I feel that the teachers who did this lesson plan had planned to have collaborative learning which follows the interactionism model. According to Vygotsky, the interactionist model says that learning is acquired when students interact with their surroundings, which includes people around them such as their peers and students. This is evident in activities such as pair work which aims to foster collaborative learning and the e-portal platform where teachers can give feedback to the students.

However, there are some traces of the behavourism pedagogical approach found in this lesson plan as well. One of the tenets of the behaviourism model is that learning can be acquired through habit formation and this can be achieved through the drill and practice method which is evident in the activity where the students have to imitate how the people in the conversation speak.

Strengths
Generally I feel that this is a very detailed lesson plan. I like how the objectives are clearly stated and they used verbs like “read” which is an outcome that can be measured and observed at the end of the lesson.

Secondly, another strength is that they made use of a variety of ICT tools such as using video clips, the IRF feedback system which is controlled by a remote control, as well as using an e-portal platform where students can interact with not only amongst themselves but the teacher can also participate. This creates a less threatening platform for all students to express their views especially for the shyer students who are afraid to voice out in class. Usage of this portal would also lessen the teacher’s workload at the end of the day as she is able to assess everyone at one go during curriculum time and she can give immediate feedback to the students.

They have stuck quite closely to the interactionism model in the sense that they tried to incorporate pairwork during the activities. When students give feedback to each other, they themselves will also learn from their peers.


Weaknesses
One of the weaknesses of this lesson plan is that it is too teacher-centric and it allows very little space for the students to be able to explore on their own. Since ICT is a tool to facilitate language learning, teachers should make good use of the facilities instead of just altering the physical classroom but there is no change to the pedagogical approach of the lesson. According to Towndrow (2007), in order to fully utilize ICT as a tool, it is not enough for teachers to just change the classroom and make it more technologised but adopting a student-centric pedagogical approach when teaching is key. In this case I feel that there could be more activities where students can explore and learn about language pronunciation. So instead of giving them the checklist which is akin to spoonfeeding them, the teacher can divide the class into groups and give each group a different area to research online about good pronunciation. The class then comes together at the end to craft the checklist together. The teacher can play the role of the facilitator who guides the class discussion and to provide scaffolding as a form of learning support which is essential as one of the five characteristics when teacher delegate tasks (Towndrow, 2007).

Another weakness is the materials or resources used, as some are either not age-appropriate or does not serve to meet the objectives of the lesson plan. Since they are still primary students, I feel that the long conversation script is not suitable for them and the script can be altered to a shorter one. The video clip which was used for the pre-activity can be changed to one which actually shows the speakers engaging in expressive/non-expressive speech which is what the objective of the lesson is. The Joey clip would come in useful if the lesson plan was about teaching plosives.

Elearning - Renee

In this lesson plan, the main learning theory reflected, in my opinion, would be interactionism, alongside a tinge of behaviorism as well.

According to the interactionist model, language competence is said to be developed through social interaction (Vygotsky, 1978). As reflected in the lesson plan, the students were asked to work in pairs in the main activities 1 and 2, and also to partake in a class forum discussion in the post activity. In these ways, the students learn about reading and its various aspects such as tone variations, pace and pause, through the interactions (conversation exchange and practice) with their fellow peers and classmates.

According to the behaviorism theory, learning is said to be the result of stimulus-response habit-formation (Skinner, 1957). There are instances of influence from the behaviorist model of language learning in the lesson plan as the students were asked to perform imitations of the ideal pronunciations - drill and practice.

Generally, the lesson plan is one that is very detailed with specific instructions and objectives reflected in each learning task.

One of the dominant strengths would be its incorporation of ICT (video clips, e-portal system) into the learning process. Towndrow (2007) states that by employing ICT, it would add variety, interaction, flexibility and individuality to the lessons. Furthermore, the e-portal platform creates a less confrontational and less threatening medium for students to express their views, thoughts and opinions more readily at the comforts of their own homes. This also helps the teacher with convenience as they can assess all the class data in one click and not have to rummage through and manually mark a stack of papers.

The weakness of the lesson plan, however, lies in the fact that it is mainly teacher-oriented and that students don’t get to partake much in the decision making process in their learning. In the main activity 1, teacher provides the students with a checklist rubric without letting them know how and why it was derived this way. Towndrow (2007) says that there is no reason why students cannot make decisions about what they learn and how learning occurs. In fact, students ought to be given the freedom to negotiate and act on their novel ideas and curiosity. For example, they should be given inquiry-based learning activities to help them research, filter and gather information on the various aspects pertaining to reading and pronunciation instead of just taking the checklist from the teacher.

In addition, the conversation scripts provided to the students for the activities were too lengthy. This would not aid in the given short attention span that primary school students are expected to have. Last but not least, the video clip of Joey has been observed to be focused on only plosives, and not the adhering to the main objectives stated in the lesson plan.

E-learning by Xiao Ting

I will first begin with the strengths and weaknesses of the lesson plan:

Strengths

Main Activity 1

A student-centred learning approach, which is important for a CALL lesson (Towndrow, 2007), can be noted in the main activities 1 and 2. There were signs of collaboration between peers as they were told to converse using a script and provide construction feedback to each other. As mentioned by Chapelle and Jamieson (2008), providing learners with opportunities for interaction, between the learner and the computer or between the learner and another person, during CALL activities, is beneficial because ‘interaction often entails getting clarification about the meaning of the language that learners do not initially understand.’

Main Activity 2

Instant Feedback System allows prompt responses and feedback between learners and their peers, or facilitator and the learners. As learners count on teachers to provide them with explicit instruction and evaluation of their performance through specific feedback on responses in class (Chapelle and Jamieson, 2008), it is essential to allocated time for such feedback session during lesson.

Follow-up Activity (Homework)

The self-evaluation task, which is a form of assessment (washback) is crucial in the language learning process. This will allow student to be critical thinkers and take charge of their own learning as well. In addition, this is good form of checking for students’ understanding after the end of a lesson and teacher can place better emphasis and preparation for the upcoming lessons.

Weaknesses

Pre-activity

I felt that the CALL material, video scenes of Joey enunciates spitting in Friends, used is not pitched for the lesson. Though the video does show Joey enunciates spitting, this was overshadowed by the humour in the clip. As such, students might not be able to link that the spitting of words is actually caused by enunciating of the end consonants.

Follow-up Activity (Homework)

A self-evaluation in the form of writing a justification of the learner’s grade seems to be vague. Teacher could have provided some guidelines, perhaps in a form of a rubric, on what is expected of the learners in their reflection. This will allow students to make linkages between their learning processes to the assessment of their product.

In General

The entire lesson lacks of creativity and dynamic. Most of the time spent in the lesson is on teacher doing an explicit teaching before students performed the allocated task. Differentiated learning is not noted as well. Despite the students are of the weaker abilities in the class, the need for differentiated learning is still needed in order to motivate the better learners and to prevent discourage in the weaker lot. There was no much room of exploration for the students. As stated by Towndrow (2007), students ought to be ‘active, engaged and self-reliant and open-minded’ in their pursuit of knowledge.

Based on the strengths and weaknesses of the lesson plan, I felt that behaviourist theory is being enacted. Signs of behaviourist, such learning through observation (teacher plays a video in most of the segments), imitation (students were told to converse using the same script) and modelling (students were taught to take note of the expressiveness during reading), are prominent in the lesson.

There are signs of interactionist theory as well, when students were told to work collaboratively with their peers to accomplish a common goal, in this case, the task allocated. Students were also learning from the MKO (More Knowledgeable One) from their peers during the feedback sessions.

In my honest opinion, the lesson plan that has been constructed in line with the constructivist and interactionist theory.

Pupils were made to work in pairs and then to comment and on each other's work. According to Vygotsky (1978), social interaction plays an important role in the development of language competence because pupils will get to model after or learn directly from the interaction made with others. This form of learning is very much student centred and this is where the constructivist theory comes in: pupils constructing their own knowledge.

A reading aloud checklist is given to pupils and they are supposed to evaluate and rate themselves. As such, they are building their own knowledge of what is a good reading and what is a poor one from whatever knowledge the various resources have taught them (ie. the recordings).

In addition to that, explicit rules are taught to them, like a short pause after a comma and a long one after a full stop and an even longer one between paragraphs. And this is exactly how a constructivist theory works: information comes in, processed and there will be outcomes to it. So, it is exactly how these pupils are being treated: information given to them via the explicit rules when reading, they process it and then try to exercise it in their future readings.

Of course, in every thing that we do, there will always be room for improvement and exactly so for this lesson plan as well.

I feel that the 'Joey' video that was screened to the pupils as the pre-activity was rather irrelevant to the lesson that was gonna be done for the day. The lesson focus on was reading with varied pitch and tone for expresiveness, having an appropriate pace and volume as well as pauses. But i felt like the video featured none of this. The video featured on plosives and the need to emphasize on some consonants. If a more relevant video was played, I think pupils will be better focused on the lesson for the day and have a clearer view on what is expected of them at the end of the lesson.

In addition to that, despite the class already been divided according to their abilities, I feel that the lesson should be a little bit more differentiated especially since the pupils are working in pairs/groups. The teacher can then focus on particular weaknesses of pupils in that particular instead of everyone having to achieve being able to read with expressions, pauses and volume at the end of the day. Some pupils might already have their volume right but probably be reading too fast so it will be good for him/her to work on the pace.

Nonetheless, the lesson is particularly a workable one for me as teaching reading is definitely important especially when the pupils are already at the primary 5 level. A variety of ICT tools are also being used for the lesson (ie. immediate feedback, recordings, videos) to keep up with the digital age today.

e-learning task: Afiqah

In my opinion, the theories behind the planned lesson are interactionism and behaviorism.

Interactionism

This can be seen from the conversations between the students during pair work and also class discussion (peer feedback). Through interactions with their peers, students are able to learn from each other, and also, by giving them the opportunity to justify their opinions, they would better be able to articulate their thoughts and practice the English language. 

Behaviorism

This can be seen particularly in the acts of repetition in the lesson. Basically, the teacher first explains the concepts to the students, whilst the students are expected to listen and then practice with their partners. The classroom is more teacher-oriented and students are not able to be active learners because their teacher has laid everything out for them.

Strengths

I find that the use of ICT tools is a good idea because it captures the students' attention and also makes the lesson more interesting and engaging.  In Chapelle & Jamieson (2008), it states that the classroom is the place where students are more likely to be exposed to the different methods of learning the English language, Thus, the vast use of ICT in the lesson plan, such as the use of videos, audio recorder and e-portal, exposes the students to the different methods of learning the language, instead of learning it under the typical classroom setting of textbooks and workbooks/sheets

Another strength of the lesson plan is the scaffolding provided by the teacher. She provides immediate feedback (or rather, students provide immediate feedback to each other, while she supervises) to the students, and also provides them with a rubric in order to prepare them for the oral reading. 

The explicit explanations and instructions given by the teacher allow students to have a better grasp of the concept that is being taught. It also makes the lesson more focused (which is crucial for learners of language) and students would definitely find it easier to understand the lesson. 

Weaknesses

Personally I find that the video of Joey is not relevant to the lesson at all. I think that it demonstrates more on pronouncing (exaggeratively) plosives than on (proper) pronunciation and intonation per se. The teacher should choose a more relavant video that suits and meets the lesson objectives.

The "one size fits all" mindset can be observed in this lesson. The teacher does not provide differentiation and instead decides on what the students take away from the lesson. The teacher is also the one who decides what should be used in class, and this makes the lesson very teacher-directed. Teachers should instead allow students to "choose learning materials according to their needs and interests" (Towndrow, 2007) because by doing this, students would be actively involved in the learning journey.