Figuring out how to create an effective and efficient co-taught lesson was the challenge for me, as I’ve never observed or taught in such a manner, nor I have I ever been the student in such a class. Nevertheless, I think my teammate and I did a fairly decent job. We decided it would be more efficient to have one “main” teacher, with the other working as assistant (in role play, initiating drills, time management, introduction, and of course monitoring during activities). I had assumed the students would ask the main teacher all their questions, but as it turned out, questioning was distributed evenly between us. I interpret this to mean we achieved a successful balance of responsibility which resulted in equal authority concerning the material.
I by no means underestimated the abilities of the children to pick up the material (perhaps not being as far removed from sixth grade myself, partly because of my age but mostly because of three younger siblings) but I did not anticipate the lack of (authority? respect?) of teachers over their class. It’s a slight exaggeration to say I experienced a bit of culture shock, seeing as the children did not have chairs but exercise balls, went outside for a two minute run during class time, and were uncharacteristically rowdy (from what I’ve experienced, having attended private schools from K through 12, specifically, those run by Catholics).

1. Description of the activity—— Kathy
2. Our Reflection —Kim
3. Pedegogical Application——Dee

        Reflection on “Cards and Crayons” Activity

1. Description of The Activity

We may call the activity done in class today as “Cards and Crayons”. Each group was given a box of crayons and an envelope with 24 cards, on which there are different tasks to play with crayons. Referring to the Bloomms’ XXXX, we are supposed to divide the 24 cards into 6 different categories, and each category matches one level. I regard this activity as for teachers to outline lesson plans based on scaled materials, since it’s helpful in deciding the level of difficulties of each task. However, in real teaching scenarios, it encourages students to discuss, negotiate and even persuade their teammates to agree on where should these cards go, for some of them can be fuzzy and complex. The highlight of this activity is, in conducting this activity, only several boxes of crayons and index cards will be needed so it’s quite applicable when there is no access to computers and projects in a classroom. After we classified the cards, professor Shaw provided his solutions and explained his logic. Then we were asked to pick 6 activities across the 6 levels to make two lesson plans targeting at kids and adult learns separately.

1. Pedagogical Implications

As mentioned above, one of the take-away points of this activity was that at times when there may be minimal resources in a classroom or at a school, or when unexpected technology issues arise and lesson plans fly out the window, there are endless activities that can be done using something as simple as a box of crayons. After receiving our materials for the activity, we were asked to sort the cards according to Bloom’s levels of taxonomy: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. Once we compared our groupings to the suggested ones, we were asked to rearrange the cards once more to create a lesson plan for young and adult learners (using 6 of the cards for each lesson plan). We were told that these lesson plans did not necessarily need to incorporate activities from each of Bloom’s levels. For this blog post, we will focus on our lesson for young learners, since admittedly we rushed through the creation of our adult lesson plan.

For the young learners, the order we decided on was MOAUWN. The kids would start with something quick and simple to get them warmed up: looking on the box to find out where Crayola Crayons are made. Then, they would choose their favorite crayon in the box and explain why they like it/what it makes them think of. This would then move them into identifying something in the world that is the same color as each of the crayons. This also transitions smoothly into completing a set of comparison sentences (Ex. red is to apple as yellow is to ____). The final two activities become more hands on: experimenting with mixing colors/guessing what color a certain combination would create and then creating a “crayon log pyramid” with a pile of crayons. In this lesson plan for young learners, we tried to create a balance of fairly simple written/verbal activities with some more hands-on ones.

After all of the groups finished organizing their lesson plans and we put the orders on the board, it was really interesting to see the overlap. For example, there were certain activities that a lot of groups felt would make a strong beginning/closing to a lesson. This shows that a lot of us have similar ideas about the structure of a “good lesson”.

III. Reflection
There are six levels in Bloom’s taxonomy: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. Some certain cards can be intrepreted differently and subjectively, and then being put under different categories. This is all depending on a teachers’s idea when he or she is addapting this activity to students of different age and with different languae levels. We found the discusssing process really inspiring and thought-procoking, which was not only benefitial for future class use, but also for the “thinking cultivation” of teachers. As futrue teachers, it’s always important to listend to other teachers’ opinions and try to figure things out by collaborting with each other–colleagues. We learned how to convey our own interpretaitons  in a more tactful way when we saw things differently.

(for Dee’s reference, our lesson plan for kids are: MOAUWN;

for adults: TCDSGV)

Coauthors: Kathy Yang, Dee Doucette, Chung-Hui Kim Liao

Class activity: Speed Dating (classroom version)

Procedures:

1. The whole class divide into halves, sitting in two lines facing each other.
2. Teacher raise questions, one of the two groups take the go to make a guess about the other group’s answer and then listen to their real answers to the questions. Each student has to respond to their own partner only.

For example, Teacher can start with an easy question type – yes/no question – such as “Would you live in California for the rest of your life if you were given one billion dollars? No travelling outside this state.” Then students A, B, C … in the group on the left would make a prediction about their opposite partner’s response and listen to the real answer to see if they made the right guess. After the last pair finishes, the teacher continues the second question, and now the group on the right make their guesses.

The activity keeps going with questions raised. Teacher can participate in the game in case odd number of students.

Teaching Target:

As this game can involve any topics and students’ answers may lead to the great diversity of the game itself, it may not be appropriate for a particular lesson theme, but instead will be a perfect icebreaker. Students can have a lot of fun and get to know each other more through personal information exchanging process.

This activity can be used for all levels of language learners as questions can be modified for levels of difficulty. For beginning and intermediate levels of language learners, it will greatly motivate them to talk without much pressure to produce a good answer. During playing the game, students can see how their classmates respond and then smoothly follow to express their “story”. Topics can be personal interests (e.g. favorite movies, music, hobbies), social life, or more generic stuff that always let students have something to talk about. Engagement in this game also offers a good chance to listening skill practice. Based on what students hear and understand, follow-up questions can be asked to clarify misunderstandings and request for more background information. For advanced learners, the justification can be an add-on as a comprehensive listening and speaking drill. For example, when one student makes a wrong guess for his/her partner’s answer, the partner can explain his/her opinions to justify the choice and persuade their partner.

Coauthors: Kathy Yang, Minh, Brieanna, Ayako