teaching portfolio
TRANSCRIPT
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Hyundai Senior High School
Student, Teacher and Self Evaluation of Teacher: Alex Walsh
Spring Semester
2012-07-04
Section 1 – Structured Student Responses – Page 2
Section 2 – Unstructured Student Responses – Page 3
Section 3 – Co-Teacher Evaluation – Page 9
Section 4 – Self Evaluation – Page 10
Notes - Page 11
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Section 1 – Structured Student Responses
Totals Strongly
Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree
Strongly
Agree Total
You were given clear information
about what you could hope to
achieve in this course.
2 7 28 58 53 148
The lessons helped you prepare for
the assessment. 2 4 24 65 53 148
The level of the exam was
appropriate. 21 23 27 43 34 148
Started and ended classes on time. 1 3 20 38 86 148
Provided organized classes. 0 1 11 38 98 148
Used different methods of presenting
activities e.g. audio, visual, and
written.
0 0 9 41 98 148
Provided opportunities for students
to practice creative thinking,
divergent thinking and critical
thinking.
0 3 27 53 65 148
Provided students with enough time
to complete activities. 0 4 21 51 72 148
Gave instructions clearly and
repeated instructions. 0 0 14 43 91 148
Made students feel free and
comfortable to ask questions and to
ask for help if they didn’t understand
an activity or expression.
1 1 13 41 92 148
Encouraged all students to
participate in class. 1 1 7 58 81 148
Gave students a chance to practice
using the key expressions in class
time.
0 1 16 47 84 148
Was enthusiastic about teaching. 0 0 7 36 105 148
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Had clear rules for the classroom. 0 0 8 39 101 148
Provided praise when students
completed an activity well. 0 1 7 27 113 148
Offered advice on how students
could improve on their performance
in class.
0 3 10 51 84 148
Was available outside of class hours
to talk to students and offer advice. 2 4 34 46 62 148
Treated all students fairly. 0 3 12 35 98 148
Made you feel comfortable in the
classroom and created a good
learning environment.
0 5 8 34 101 148
Did not provide answers, but helped
students discover their own answers. 0 1 12 41 94 148
Provided opportunities for individual
work, pair work and group work. 0 0 7 34 107 148
Made students feel appreciated for
their hard work. 0 3 13 37 95 148
The teacher displayed students work. 0 0 6 17 125 148
Created a bright and energetic
looking classroom that encouraged
learning.
0 3 8 35 102 148
TOTAL 30 71 349 1008 2094 3552
PERCENT 0.844595 1.998874 9.82545 28.3784 58.9527 100
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Section 2 – Semi-Structured Student Responses
Note – These questions were optional, so if a score, for example, is 23%, that does not mean 23% of all students,
but 23% of the students that responded to that question.
Questions:
What would you like more of next
semester?
What would you like less of next
semester?
What type of activities do you enjoy the
most?
What type of activities don’t you enjoy?
What type of activities do you learn a lot
from?
What type of activities don’t you learn
from?
Any further comments?
Student Responses (see next page)
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Creative
Activities
14%
Films
51%
Group Work
9%
Culture/Places
5%
Role Play
3%
Key Expressions
1%
Songs
2% Writing
1% Outdoor
Work
7%
Pronunciation
1%
Games
1%
Speaking
4%
Sports
Related
1%
What would you like more of next semester?
Homework
15%
Writing
19%
Individual
Work
10%
Vocabulary
8%
Role Play
2%
Films
2%
Nothing
15%
Creative
27%
Group Work
2%
What would you like less of next semester?
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Creative Activities
30%
Group Work
19%
Films
49%
Quiz
1% Sports Related
1%
What type of activities do you enjoy the most?
Homework
13%
Key Expressions
30%
Writing
13%
Creative Activities
14%
Films
3%
Individual
3%
Nothing
24%
What type of activities don’t you enjoy?
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Key Expressions
29%
Group Work
13%
Divergent Thinking
3%
Films
29%
Creative Activities
11%
Games
3%
Presentations
1%
Everything
8%
Speaking
3%
What type of activities do you learn a lot from?
Key Expressions
22%
Drawing
45%
Writing
11%
Homework
22%
What type of activities don’t you learn from?
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Section 3 – Co-Teacher Feedback
- He presents clear objectives before the class begins.
- He knows how to motivate students.
- He controls students very well and knows when he must be very strict and fair.
- His class is well-organized and goes as planned in advance.
- He encourages students to do creative and divergent thinking.
- In every lesson students are needed to speak, listen, and write.
- Through group activity, students learn how to cooperate to complete their task.
- He uses a variety of educational teaching materials.
- He is always concerned about how to make his classes helpful and interesting to students.
- He pays careful attention to each student while they are working in groups, especially to low-level
students.
- He involves Korean co-teachers in classes and is very open to get opinions from them.
- He finds and uses proper video clips for the class topic.
- He gives the students more than three chances to practice the target expressions through a variety of
activities.
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Section 4 - Self Evaluation
The feedback from both my students and co-teachers has been overwhelmingly positive, however there is still a
huge amount to learn from the feedback I have received and my self-assessment of the lessons I have taught. I’m
going to split this into four sections: firstly, I’ll look at things I need to keep doing (that I have started doing and
have worked well), secondly, I’m going to consider things I need to start doing and finally, things I need to stop
doing!
1) Things I Need to Keep Doing (I’m going to concentrate here on things I don’t feel I did so well in previous semesters.)
i) Use of Short Films
The response to the use of short films in class (usually between 1 minute and 10 minutes) indicates that students
are really enjoying them and seeing the benefit of them. I think there are a number of reasons for this:
1) Teenagers now live in a much more visually stimulating world. Everything is on
computers or T.V’s, and this is what the students are used to.
2) Some of my classes are very mixed ability. Short films allow my extremely low level
students to understand the general gist of what is happening, what information they get
visually can help them understand and contextualize the language that is being taught.
For my highest level students videos often come with very natural pronunciation and
expressions, this presents a great opportunity for them to hear language how it is
naturally used.
3) Videos allow students to absorb culture as well as language. I find my students
genuinely interested in other cultures around the world and video present a great way
for them to explore that.
ii) Praising the Students and Displaying Their Work
It has really become apparent to me this year just how important praise is to the students. My girl classes visually
show how much they want positive feedback and so it is easy to find opportunities to provide them with positive
feedback and praise. At this age boys can’t really be seen to desire positive feedback from the teacher, I think this
is especially apparent if the teacher is male. This means it is harder to find opportunities to provide them with
positive praise and feedback. From the student feedback it seems I have done this successfully with my first grade
boy classes, but not my second grade boy classes. The classes are much larger and the boys are naturally much
louder and more boisterous, so it is harder to find opportunities. Next semester I really need to actively find
opportunities to provide them with positive feedback.
We’ve done two activities this semester purposely designed to give the students opportunities to make some
really great work that can be displayed all over the class. The feedback shows the students have both
acknowledged and appreciated this. Other than this feedback I have noticed the students really taking a keen
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interest in other classes’ work that is displayed around the room. It seems to have created a kind of competition
between the classes.
iii) Having Clear Rules
Although I have the same rules this semester as last semester, I am working at a different school that provides
more levels of support when enforcing rules. This semester has shown just how important the support of the
institution is in enforcing rules. As an example, last year if a student walked into class 5 minutes late eating cake
nothing was done about it, although I disciplined them, the institution itself took no interest in this. This semester
there are clear consequences, both from myself and the institution, regarding the consequences of a student’s
actions. It has become very clear how important having your institution on your side regarding discipline is.
iv) Multiple Intelligences & Learning Styles
Something that has been made absolutely clear in the feedback from the students is the variety of learning styles
and preferences the students have. The students indicated that they recognized the use of many different forms
of activities, but when asked what they would like more/less of next semester and what they enjoyed/didn’t enjoy,
other than wanting more short films, there was a huge variation. For me, this clearly shows the importance of
providing students with a range of activities and stimuli in order to keep all students motivated and interested in
class.
2) Things I Need to Start Doing
i) Giving Students More Time to Complete Activities
Although the students rated me favorably for this it was still one of my lowest scores, and I have to say that on
reflection I absolutely agree with them. For the majority of the semester I was at conflict with my institution. They
wanted me to teach key expressions every class, I wanted to teach skills. This meant I was trying to fit both into a
50 minute period and the classes felt a bit too rushed. I’ve now reached a compromise with my school; we are
going to have spread topics over two classes, meaning half the compulsory amount of expressions and more time
for skills. This will hopefully result in the classes being less rushed. It’s amazing just how observant the students
are.
ii) A Better Introductory Lesson
I started at a new school this semester and my directives were to start teaching my syllabus from the very first
class. They asked me to only take up 10 minutes for introductions etc. and I used this time for making the rules of
the classroom clear and introducing myself. I think this was a mistake and something I should have strongly
objected to. The students have shown in their feedback that they weren’t sure exactly what they were supposed
to achieve from the course, something that should have been made clear to them in the introductory lesson.
Although almost all the classes adapted well I think this could be partially responsible for the behavioral problems
one class faced at the beginning of the semester. Quite simply they weren’t sure why they were there. This is a
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mistake I won’t be making again.
iii) Explaining the Reason behind Activities
On reflection something I hardly did this semester is tell students why we were doing the activities we were doing,
what skills were we practicing, what could they achieve from the activity, how is it useful for them in real life etc.
This is shown in the relatively low score for ‘providing students with opportunities to practice creative thinking,
divergent thinking and critical thinking’. Although I strongly believe these skills were practiced in almost every
class I didn’t make the students aware of this. This is definitely something for me to bear in mind next semester.
3) Things I Need to Stop Doing
i) Compulsory Homework
Feedback from the students is quite clearly against homework, and on reflection I think they might be right!
Why am I giving them homework? The honest answer is ‘I’m not sure.’ Maybe because it’s what my teacher did
when I was at school, maybe because I want them to see my class is serious, maybe it just felt right.
What did I achieve from it? Probably not much, the students who wanted to do it did it, and I hope gained from
it (it was usually to interview someone, in English, on the topic we had done in class), but by forcing students to
do it who didn’t want to meant that all they were probably doing was either copying their friends answers or
making it up. Next semester I will make students aware of the reasons for doing the homework, but make it
optional. This will also mean I have fewer to grade and so can do a more thorough job.
ii) Presuming I Can Motivate 2nd Grade Boys with Stamp Sheets!
The 2nd grade boys have made it very clear to me this semester they really don’t care about stamp sheets (a
technique that works very well with my other classes). So, I’m going to have to think of something new,
something sports related. At this point I’m not sure what, but I have a month to figure it out!
Notes
i) This is the first time I have performed such an extensive self evaluation and the amount I have learnt from it has
been invaluable. I wasn’t required to do it by my school or regional office, and it took a lot of time to put
together all the data, but I highly recommend doing it. The main reasons I have never done this before is firstly,
because I’ve never been required to do it, and secondly, because I was nervous that the feedback might be
negative. However, I really encourage teachers to do this once or twice a year as you will be surprised how much
you will learn, both about what your co-workers and students appreciate in your work, and what you can improve.
In terms of professional development, it seems essential.
ii) The low score for the ‘level of the exam was appropriate’ is something I haven’t mentioned as it is not