On June 14, I was able to teach my second Debate Club lesson for the first half of Jason’s ESAL 0350/0450 Advanced Oral Communication class. For this lesson, I built up from the previous class and made sure to include more advanced language that I felt was more appropriate for the student’s level. The students surprised me again by demonstrating their knowledge of English adjectives and synonyms. This part of the lesson went by quickly, and I wished I had something else to extend the adjective section as I was not able to think on my feet to adapt the lesson and be able to focus more on the adjectives. Maybe the fact that the students did so well meant that they were ready to move on anyway?
The activities went well, but I found I struggled again with pacing as one of the end group work activities had to be done as a whole to save on the time it would have taken to do them both in breakout rooms as two separate events. The students were very talkative during the activities. I thought this was great as it meant I did not have to call on any students by name to share.
The lesson went as planned, other than not having time for both activities in small groups, but I felt disappointed after this time. I had some struggles with technology and felt that although the students were great participants in discussions, the lesson was more teacher fronted than I had wanted it to be. I thought I still spoke too much and will continue to work on this in my future lessons.