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Part 4 Teaching Materials

4.2. Reflection on Teaching Unit: Language in Hawaii


AL 6715 Second Language Reading has been one of the most rewarding and useful
classes that I have taken. One of the requirements in this class was to create a content-based
teaching unit of several English lessons for a particular group of students based on a collection of
readings called Discover America: Hawaii. My unit consists of four 90-minute lessons designed
for an integrated skills course for high school students in Japan and centered on the reading
entitled Language in Hawaii.
The core reading for my unit was about the multilingual mixture of languages in Hawaii.
At first it was difficult for me to expand on this topic and create lessons with both content and
language goals. However, I identified one linguistic feature in the reading that was useful for my
target students and that was prefixes. As I worked on the unit, I tried to think about my target
students and remember the time when I was a high school student who enjoyed studying English
and it did not matter what the topic was. Most high school students in Japan usually study
English for their stable future job and not so much because they enjoy studying. Therefore, I
decided to challenge myself to make a unit plan that students can enjoy studying and maintain
their motivation.
There are some strengths in my teaching unit. First, Hawaii and Hiroshima Prefecture
have various connections and relationships such as they are sister cities; there are a lot of
immigrants from Hiroshima in Hawaii; World War II in the Pacific began and (nearly) ended in
these cities, and so on. Moreover, Im from Hiroshima and also have experience studying in
Hawaii so I can use my background to help my students get interested in English, travel and
overseas Japanese communities. For example, at the beginning of the class, I can show some

pictures that I took in Hawaii and share my experience with my students as one of the icebreaking activities. Other benefit points are because my activities and tasks came from the
content they are more authentic than traditional textbooks which most likely will not have as
much of a connection between content and tasks. For example, students learn the history of the
Hawaiian Language first, then they will sing a simple Hawaiian song to be exposed to the
language. Their final project is to choose one Hawaiian word, research the meaning, make a
poster and do a poster session with other classmates. This order of the activities will be
supportive as students work to understand the main aims in order for them to attain their class
goals easily. Another strength of my teaching unit is I tried to balance teacher- and studentcentered activities in the lessons. Both teaching methods are important for conducting enjoyable
and meaningful lessons, for letting students understand the class content and the goal, or for
promoting individual initiative through the tasks. For example, I made sure to provide
opportunities for students to talk to their partner or group members in order for them to share
their ideas after the teacher gives some instruction and examples. Using colors and pictures in
my student materials also helped to make my materials attractive and easy to read. These features
will help students motivation.
However, there are also some weaknesses in my teaching unit. I sometimes made lessons
that might be difficult for students in a real classroom situation. For example, I asked students to
discuss and review what they learned in the previous class without any support. I might be able
to help students by giving some examples, but it is difficult to check how many and how much
students remember from the last lesson with just a large group discussion. It would be better to
prepare a task sheet asking questions related to past lessons to help students show what they
learned or remembered. Other weak points were that I sometimes expected too much without

considering students levels or breaking down the skills that I was trying to teach. For example,
in one lesson, I suggested that students skim and scan through the one reading without helping
them understand the difference. However, I was able to address some weaknesses in the unit. For
example, at first, I did not know how to organize handouts so that students can easily understand
them. After I received some feedback from my mentor teacher, I put the tasks and lessons on one
sheet of paper and made a graphic organizer. The revised handouts are much better than the
originals.
Through this unit lesson plan, I learned how to plan consecutive lessons based on a theme
such as languages used in Hawaii. At the same time, creating the teaching unit was difficult for
me because this was my first unit plan that I had to create in the program and the template used is
different from the one I used in my other university. It was a good experience and practice for my
preparation as a future English teacher in case I need to develop and create lessons according to
some specific topics. I would like to challenge myself and create more content-based lesson
plans for my future English language classes.

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