Reflection

This is my reflection on my first observation of a lesson in Chinese, titled "My Dinner," delivered in Mandarin. In this lesson, I attempted to implement the three-dimensional objectives of the "Food" theme through real-life scenarios.

Cognitive Development

I used homemade teaching aids and photographs of real food items to guide the children in establishing connections between the meanings and forms of words like "fish" and "rice." The end-of-lesson assessment showed that 85% of the children were able to correctly match the word cards with the teaching aids. However, some students still struggled with the categorical concepts of "fruits/vegetables," indicating that the selection of teaching aids needs to be more representative (e.g., using an apple instead of a starfruit).

Emotional Engagement

The guessing game effectively stimulated participation enthusiasm, with 22 out of 27 students actively engaging with the teaching aids. However, it is important to maintain discipline to avoid overwhelming noise levels.

Skill Development

The extension activity, which involved matching un-taught foods (eggs, bread), was quite clever and helped assess transferability skills. However, I noticed that the children had difficulty pronouncing the multisyllabic word "vegetables." In the future, we should enhance support with tone gesture aids.

Time Management

Time management was a significant challenge. Since this was my first lesson, the content wasn’t particularly rich, leading to an early conclusion of the class. I should design the lesson to be more comprehensive and practice delivering the content to better adjust the timing.

Teaching Aid Design

The size of the word cards was too small, affecting the visibility for students in the back rows. I will use A3-sized cardstock in the future and include pinyin annotations. This teaching experience demonstrated that children can effectively construct the concept of Chinese characters through multi-sensory experiences, but there is still room for improvement in differentiated teaching strategies. I need to design tiered task cards for students with weaker language abilities.

Reflection on Teaching Practice (Theme: Component "Fire")

In this lesson titled "Let's Go Barbecue," the focus was on component teaching, integrating drama and situational games to reinforce the connection between "火" (fire) and "灬" (the component). On the cognitive level, through the role-play of finger puppets (Fire Guide / 灬 Guide) and barbecue image associations, most students successfully identified the component features in new words such as "煮" (to cook), "燈" (light), and "燒" (to burn).

In terms of emotional development, the barbecue competition effectively stimulated participation motivation, with most students actively completing physical challenges to obtain food teaching tools. However, two structural issues were observed:

1. Need for increased task difficulty: The exercises of standing on one foot and bending down to touch the ground put pressure on students who develop motor skills more slowly. Additionally, the size of the fish ball teaching tools marked with "火/灬" (5x5 cm) made it difficult for students in the back row to identify them.

2. Skill application: In the dual stove classification activity, most students were able to respond correctly.

Specific Optimization Plans:

• Introduce "Component Perspective Cards": Semi-transparent red plastic sheets can be overlaid on new words to highlight target components.

• Improve teaching tool specifications: Increase the size of food teaching tools to 8x8 cm and add tactile textures (the "火" part will be rough, while the "灬" part will be smooth).

• Design tiered task groups: Physical challenges will be divided into three levels: ★ (bunny hop), ★★ (jumping jacks), and ★★★ (standing on one foot), allowing students to choose their difficulty level.

This teaching practice confirmed that gamification strategies can enhance sensitivity to components. In the future, I plan to develop an "Component Detective Flashlight" as an extended teaching tool to strengthen recognition of character structures through light and shadow projection, ensuring differentiated instruction.

During this teaching internship, I had the opportunity to participate in the planning and implementation of multiple lessons. This experience gave me a deeper understanding and reflection on my teaching abilities. Overall, my observations and reflections focused on three areas: personal observations, the effectiveness of the teaching plans, and insights for future teaching.

In my personal observations during the teaching process, I noticed the students' enthusiasm for interactive learning. Particularly during group activities, students showed a high level of engagement and actively exchanged ideas. This made me realize how important it is to create an open and inclusive learning environment. However, I also observed that some students experienced anxiety and discomfort when facing challenges, which reminded me to consider the diverse needs and abilities of different students when designing activities.

Regarding my feelings about the teaching plans, I recognized that thorough preparation beforehand is key to success. I included various learning methods in my activity design, which made the lessons more diverse and engaging. However, at times, my time management was not sufficient, resulting in some activities not proceeding as expected. This prompted me to reflect on how to better manage time in future teaching to ensure that every segment can be fully effective.

These events led me to reflect on past situations and also fostered my professional development. I realized that as a teacher, adaptability and continuous learning are essential qualities. In my future teaching, I will place greater emphasis on reflecting and adjusting my teaching methods to better serve the learning needs of my students.