An Observation

While writing my report throughout the week I came across an interesting point in teacher student interaction.
I am not sure how relevant this is but I what became clear in my transcript was that if there is a dominant student in the class, teacher talk time increased. This became apparent when I opened the floor to the students for a chance to respond but the same student volunteered twice, so I ended up answering the question myself and talked through the answer in order to avoid this dominants student from controlling the classroom discourse.
I may really need to change turn taking techniques to avoid this type of situation, will make a concerted effort to try and clear this problem up. Any of you guys experience the same thing?

Ding ding ding, round 3

Last week, I discovered through talking with my partner and re reading my transcripts that I did ask a lot of referential questions. However they were ALL directed at individuals. At the time I thought that this had no negative aspects, but during this discussion time, I understood that maybe other students would have wanted to add their opinion, or maybe I was subconsciously neglecting some students and choosing other students to speak more often.
After this realization, I tried a few referential questions to the whole class. However my students were not used to that it seems, as no one answered. Maybe they did not want to look like a "smarty pants", what I am tempted to do is offer presentation points for students who are willing to offer their opinion. I am sure that this is also unfair to some students also...will see what happens.

Round 2

I taught two different kinds of classes this week, one was a regular speaking class which is graded. This consists of 24 students. The other is a "hagwon" style class consisting of 15 students.
I took 10 minute video clips of each of them to see if there were any differences.
What i noticed from my first viewing is that i tended to talk too much and not give the students enough time to answer questions. So I tried to work on this.
What i noticed from my transcripts was that i asked more open questions than closed questions. i will take this as a positive as it gives more opportunity for the students to say their opinions and use their English in a variety of different ways and scenarios.
In the first video (of general class) I was the one asking the questions and was making the choices of who speaks. This i thought was a negative thing as it restricts students who want to speak from speaking so i will take that into consideration for next weeks classes.
What i thought was good was that most of the questions were referential dialogic questions.
In the 2nd class (hagwon) I made it so the students asked the questions to other students, student initiated interaction. This proved successful, as it gave students a chance to practice the intonation with the questions they were asking, which was the purpose of the exercise. The only problem was the questions became so interesting I lost focus and did not keep up with correcting the intonation, but only kept discussion going. I still felt it was productive. I have to stay on task next time.
With regards to feedback i used reformation of students ideas most of the time. I did not want to disrupt the flow of the discussions so corrected the students when the discussion broke up.

I must also add that this was an introductory class. Next week I hope to record more "hands on" teaching. I do know, after watching for a second time,  that i need to get the students to answer and ask questions to each other and to me in full. I, over the years, have gotten into a bad habit of getting one word answers from students and this can be seen in the recording also.

my first view of myself teaching! Yikes!

Ok,
So I have just viewed myself teaching. How scary and weird is that!
First thing I noticed is that I am a shuffler. I tend to move around and sway while standing in front of the class. Now I do not know if that is necessarily a bad thing or not, but still was very surprising to see.
Also, I know that this was a class about explaining the course, but I talked too much. Maybe I could let the students do more talking. Will try to work on that.