Post Lesson Evaluation

WRITING POST-LESSON EVALUATION This is a post-lesson evaluation of the Writing lesson plan that took place on 27th November, 2008 at CELT Athens premises with a group of 5 Elementary students from Afghanistan. The primary aim of this lesson was to teach students how to write a postcard to a friend of theirs back in their hometown, using the writing-process approach as means of interacting with their classmates to produce a genre, which was achieved to a certain degree. Initially, the lesson started off well, with a set of photos related to my hometown, motivated them intrinsically, since all of them went around the walls of the classroom, talking to their classmates about visiting one town in Paros over the other. On the contrary, a couple of them did not seem to have grasped the intent of my questions and resorted for translation in Farsi from their classmates. However, I do feel that, at this point, I ought to have simplified my speech even more, so that they would have understood what to say in the TL. During the presentation stage, the photo of Joe set the scene in the model postcard and enabled students what to expect from it; the fact that the model postcard had been cut up into pieces facilitated comprehension of “content” and “audience”, since all of them were able to reorder it, in their teams and specify who wrote the postcard, to whom and the reason for doing it so. An unfortunate moment, though, was the one of my using the vocabulary item “fortress” to the simplified one of “castle”, which hardened comprehension of a lexical item in the photo of Naoussa that had been hung up on the wall. On the other hand, during three process writing stages, students enjoyed writing drafts about narrating their summer holidays on the island of Paros, exchanging papers with their classmates, reading through their life experiences and plans, editing their scripts in their groups, without my assistance. One of the two groups, though, experienced problems with the English script, since the group member that had been appointed to write, was a newcomer in the group. At this point, I felt that I ought to have appointed another writer in the group, but, I offered to help him with writing, by guiding him how to write the ideas he wanted to express and write them up on the clearly well – organized whiteboard. Unfortunately, time did not suffice for students to transfer their drafts onto real postcards, with stamps and addresses, but, it was assigned as a homework task for them to do.

Action Plan:

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I ought to simplify my language with lower levels so that I will be understood within group members. Group composition should be uniform, so that precious time will be saved and more activities will take place. “Coherence” and “cohesion” may be achieved in model genres, in which learners are invited to explore ideas and logical sequence, with T guidance and prompting.