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Unit Six made use of two videos: the first was an example of essentially everything that a teacher can do incorrectly in the classroom while the second was an example of a teacher who is skilled at engaging and building rapport with his students to make the lesson effective. In the first video, the teacher was very accusatory of the students for not understanding the complicated phrase \"modal auxiliary verb\" and then continually gave them no positive feedback for any attempt at answering questions, making the students afraid to volunteer in front of the grumpy, irritable teacher. He also rushed through parts of the lesson with very little explanation, didn't seem to have an organized lesson plan, and had poor physical positioning within the classroom for different activities. In the second lesson, the teacher immediately started with a smile, a positive attitude, and by learning all the students names (I really liked the use of name tags on desks to avoid awkward interactions or struggles with names). He led in with an engaging activity based on the animals that students knew, making it a fun partner competition to build confidence and gauge what prior knowledge the students had. He then used the animal knowledge to build the concept of their abilities, leading into the concept of modal auxiliary verbs, but not using the confusing label. He then ran through different examples that the whole class did together, which smoothly led to the completion of an individual worksheet, during which the teacher was physically available but not overbearing. He allowed opportunities for the class to practice pronunciation as a group and individually, all the while being engaging and fun, even providing physical examples of the verbs \"crawling\" or what a penguin does. He then provided an example of the imaginary animal activity and made it into a fun partner activity to activate the knowledge they had created during the class. I learned from this lesson what a huge difference not only the outward attitude of the teacher makes, but the physicality of the teacher. I was immediately feeling attacked and nervous in the first video because of the way the teacher held his expression and seemed to expect fluency from the students. In the second video, I immediately felt welcome and excited to participate in the activities, as well as excited to volunteer information without fear of judgement from the teacher. These videos reminded me how important it is to be friendly and encouraging with students to create a class environment that is more conducive to learning. The difference between the two examples was huge in terms of physical positioning, planning, engagement, and general attitude, which will definitely help me consider how my personal affect is affecting the classroom.
