Topic: Speaking – Group Discussion on E-sports
Sharing by Miss Man Chui Fan, CCC Tam Lee Lai Fun Memorial Secondary School, 1st Runner-up (English Group)
Getting started from learners’ perspectives
I designed a flipped lesson on e-sports to arouse students’ interest in speaking English and prepare them for the public exam. The theme was adapted from a DSE speaking topic. A pre-lesson questionnaire was devised to find out students’ understanding of the topic, their learning preferences, and their difficulties in doing group discussion. I then devised flipped learning activities to scaffold learning as their readiness would determine the lesson’s success.
Preparing students for active engagement
Students were assigned to watch a video on gaming classes in London to learn the prerequisite knowledge on the topic. Each student was then assigned to read one of the four differentiated reading texts that introduced ideas related to e-sports and complete a gap-filling summary. As for vocabulary, students could listen to the audio or watch the video produced by me. They practised the pronunciation at their own pace and submitted an audio recording as a pre-lesson assignment. Moreover, target expressions for group discussion were reviewed.
Integrating cooperative learning strategies into in-class activities
The lesson began with various pre-lesson tasks to follow up what they learnt at home. Afterwards, I showed a video of a Taiwanese e-sports school to activate students’ schemata. They interacted in pairs to brainstorm more ideas. They then formed heterogeneous groups of four to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of e-sports and decide whether the school should hold an inter-school e-sports festival. During the discussion, students completed a checklist of target expressions to monitor their own learning. The two activities created an information gap to facilitate communication. After discussion, students reported their conclusions verbally.
Measuring the effectiveness of the flipped lesson
To consolidate their learning, I asked students to create a video clip to promote the e-sports festival. Students’ final products were diversified. Some used their smartphones to present with confidence, some used a video-making app with presentation slides and background music, and some used their favorite cartoon characters, pets and soft toys to make their videos with a dubbing app. The learning outcomes were encouraging as shown in the post-lesson questionnaires.
Enhancing deep learning in flipped classrooms
Employing a flipped classroom approach is one of my endeavors to enhance teaching and learning effectiveness as it generates ample opportunities for students to engage in deep acquisition of knowledge.