MINI PORTFOLIO

  I'm Jayani Samaraweera, studying as a fourth-year TESL undergraduate at the University of Kalaniya. I have done a teaching demonstration under the course unit TESL 41545 – Principles and Practices of Classroom Management. There, I taught how to make a paper ship for the intermediate-level grade 7 students. Giving instructions and grading are the two classroom management strategies I mainly applied in this demonstration. I hope this demonstration helped me to seek myself as an ESL teacher.

Education is an umbrella term for countless aspects like curriculum, teachers/instructors, students, learning materials, assessments and evaluations, schools/institutions, pedagogy, extracurricular activities, policies, etc. Among them, the role of the teacher has an excessive value. A teacher should have a dynamic character because according to my point of view, a classroom is a place where we cannot predict things happening. The teacher who plays the role of the sole instructor of the class can switch his or her role into a controller, the role model, or the mentor of a classroom. Whatever the role you play, reflecting on your teaching at the end of the day is mandatory because that predicts the teacher’s and student’s progress. Also, when teaching, the teacher should be mindful to bridge the lesson with its practical use. That is why the communicative teaching approach should be incorporated when teaching. I believe, a classroom is not a place where only the subject mat...

    Super grading! When grading the language, I avoided the grammar and vocabulary that were unfamiliar to the students. Instead, I spoke in simple sentences especially because my assumed classroom consists of intermediate-level grade 7 students. I lowered the speech speed, made pauses and stressed important words so the students could catch the facts I was conveying to them. Stating information logically, first, I taught all the new vocabulary and its meanings. Then I taught the steps of making a boat because, when it comes to this part, students can easily understand the steps of making a paper ship. I broke the concepts into smaller comprehensible pieces, I took one step at a time and I modeled it and repeated the step in the target language. Moreover, I used bilingual grading through code-switching since my target student group was not supposed to understand concepts completely in the target language. THE mistake! I failed to demonstrate the most prominent ste...

I observed Sharanya Gajanayake who demonstrated giving instructions and feedback as her classroom management techniques. She taught me how to give instructions The instructions were given systematically. Firstly, the completion of the last activity was signaled, then stated whether the activity was a group activity or a pair activity, explained the students’ task, and informed what students had to do after finishing the task. Also, she modeled how to do the activity before students started the activity. Moreover, she tried to be brief in giving instructions especially when students are assigned to the groups. It is recommended to include the purpose of the activity and the allocated time for the activity in the instructions.   Feedback on 'giving feedback' The feedback provided at the end of the activity was not effective for several reasons. The activity aimed to assess students' ability to use the present conti...