Today I observed the same 600 C1 English class as two days ago as I was interested in observing whether or not the highly organized, structured and respectful classroom environment from a couple of days ago was a one-off, or a true reflection of the environment the students and teacher have co-created. To my surprise, it was the latter.
The teacher in this class had amazing classroom management; the students were polite and following along with the lesson, when asked a specific question the students raised their hands to answer, never speaking over each other. The focus of today’s lesson was IELTS listening. The teacher played a video, asked a set of questions, re-played the video and asked a different set of questions. Students were asked to submit their answers through an online assignment submission system through Teams.
It is becoming more apparent that structuring learning online takes a bit more time and effort to ensure learning outcomes are being met. While this lesson progressed appropriately, it moved at a much slower pace than it would have taken place in-person. In order to ensure each student was engaged in the lesson the teacher was checking the WhatsApp group, the online chat and the raise-hand function within Teams. All of this tools take time to check, and thus slow down the pace of the lesson. In addition, with 50-minutes for each class, minus the time at the beginning and end, there is approximately 30-40 minutes of lesson that can take place.
In conclusion todays observation reinforced the need to spend considerable time on narrowing the scope of the lesson to one or two objectives while identifying one or two activities that can take place in an on-line environment. Lessons can progress slower or faster than anticipated and ensuring you, as the teacher, have enough content to engage students is key to an engaged classroom experience.