Nicole Rutman

Professor Reilly
EDUC 359- Introduction to English Language Learning
4 December 2018

Pre-Teaching Reflection

1. I believe that pre-teaching vocabulary is beneficial for both English Language Learners

and non-English Language Learners. When teachers introduce students to vocabulary

prior to a lesson, they provide students with background knowledge. Students who have

never heard or seen a word before will be given a first time exposure to it. This will

increase their vocabulary, as well as help them learn and understand the content in the

upcoming lesson. Pre-teaching vocabulary will also help students who have already been

exposed to a word. It will assess their abilities to recognize and decode the word. It will

also give them the opportunity to commit the word to their memories. By pre-teaching

vocabulary, I believe that we prepared our students for our upcoming lesson. As the

teacher, I also believe that pre-teaching vocabulary was beneficial. It allowed us to see

which words were already in the students’ vocabularies and which words were unfamiliar

to the students. This will help us determine which words we should focus more on in the

lesson.

2. Now that we had the time to deliver our pre-teaching session, I would not do anything

differently if we had the chance to do it again. For our pre-teaching session, we provided

the students with vocabulary journals. The students were required to make a t-chart with

the labels, “My Prediction” and “Actual Definition”. We then put the vocabulary word,

authoritarianism, on the board and said the word aloud. We had the students talk with a

partner about what the word might mean and write it down in their vocabulary journals.

We followed this procedure for the rest of the vocabulary words. Afterwards, we had the
 students share their predictions with the class. I believe that our pre-teaching session was

effective because we accommodated a range of learners in the classroom. We helped

auditory learners by saying the words out loud, as well as visual learners by writing the

words on the board. By requiring the students to talk with a partner and then write their

predictions down for each word, we helped social learners. When we hand back their

vocabulary journals during the lesson and they learn the real definitions of the words,

they will be able to compare their prior knowledge to what they just learned. I believe

that we prepared the students for our upcoming lesson.

3. The pre-teaching session is a time to present information that may help the students in the

upcoming lesson. However, I believe that it is important to foster interaction during the

session. It is not enough for teachers to introduce a vocabulary word and provide a

definition for students to copy down. Students need to be active participants in their

learning. They should be provided with opportunities to interact with classmates, as well

as with materials, to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding. Interaction also

gives students confidence in themselves. When they talk with others, they get to see if

others have similar or different ideas from them. When they have similar ideas, students

feel more comfortable participating in class discussions. When they have different ideas,

they learn to become open to other perspectives. Because of this, we allowed the students

to discuss their predictions with a partner before sharing with the class.