A True Czech Experience

This has been a very exciting week for students in the education classes here in Prague! On Wednesday we were given the opportunity to go into a local Czech school and teach a group of middle school students a lesson in English. The topics for the lesson were endless—we could choose to teach the students about fruits and vegetables, the parts of the body, American sports and pop culture, or North Carolina history. My partner and I thought it would be beneficial to teach the students some American pop culture since so many of the songs played on the radio and in restaurants are American songs and a lot of American movies get translated into Czech and are played in local theaters.

When thinking of how we should teach our lesson, Erin and I discussed several different assessments to measure how much the students already knew about American pop culture and how we could test them on the new information we gave them. Thinking about our most recent discussion in ELM 350, I thought it would be important to consider the different levels of Bloom’s taxonomy in regards to what type of assessment to use. We had no knowledge of how much English the students would already know so we had very little to work with. After reviewing the levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, we decided against the upper levels of synthesis and analysis, and instead chose to use the knowledge and application levels. As we learned in our ELM 350 class, the synthesis and analysis levels of Bloom’s taxonomy require students to have a deeper understanding of the information presented in class such as being able to write a comparison essay on two time periods in American history or to write an analysis essay on an important figure in American history. The levels of knowledge and comprehension can usually be addressed in assessments such as multiple-choice tests or matching exercises. This is what gave me the idea to use a matching game in our lesson. Erin and I presented information on different aspects of American pop culture to the Czech class and followed up the lesson with a game that required the students to match pop icons with their respective type of pop culture, for example Britney Spears had to be matched with singing. This allowed us to measure how much the students learned during their mini-lesson on American pop culture because we were able to see if the students matched each pair correctly. We also made the students form complete sentences to describe what images they were looking at which allowed us to measure if the students understood how to properly use the verbs we provided them with.

In EDP we’ve been discussing how to transfer material from the working memory into long term memory and different activities that teachers can use to make sure their students understand the material correctly. One concept that really stuck out in my mind was the idea of teaching a lesson and making the students apply it in context immediately after. This helps give the student something to relate the material they’ve recently learned to and it shows the teacher which students are still struggling with the lesson content. This was at the forefront of my mind when thinking of a lesson to teach the Czech students because it would be pointless to go in and teach a lesson if we didn’t expect the students to remember anything. This too contributed to the use of a matching game during the lesson. Erin and I taught the lesson and asked the students several questions to see if they comprehended the lesson, but by adding the matching game, we allowed the students to apply the knowledge they had just learned. I felt that using the game was very important because not only did the students look at pictures of American pop icons, but they had to match which icon went with a specific aspect of pop culture. By immediately applying the information they had just learned, this should help the students in the long run to remember the information we taught them.

I had a great experience teaching in the Czech school and really enjoyed getting to see a traditional Czech town. The people and culture in this country never cease to amaze me!