Reflecting on what you do in your lessons, why and how you do things and what the effects on your learners are, helps you to improve your understanding of the learning and teaching processes. Making a video recording or taped recording of a lesson adds to reflective practice, because it provides an accurate and objective record. It shows you exactly what you did, what your learners did, reminds you of things you may have forgotten and shows you things you may not have noticed. Using recordings as a basis for reflection helps you to identify where you can take action to change and develop.

How to do it

Record

• Will you use video or tape recorder?
• Where in the classroom will you position the recording equipment?
• Is it possible for one of your colleagues to record?
• Talk to your class about recording - the idea is that they should behave as they normally do
• Do a trial run to make sure you know how to use the equipment and to get your learners used to it
• Test the equipment before you use it to make sure it is working properly

View

• Choose an area to focus on - trying to use the whole recording can take up a lot of time
• Examine your area of focus. For example if you have chosen to focus on a communication activity, you could look at how and when learners interact, what causes them to break into mother tongue, whether the activity motivates them, how efficiently you organized the activity, how well the learners worked together.

Reflect

• What did you learn from watching or listening to the recording?
• What could you do better next time?
• What changes will you make to your approach? Do you need to find out more about any of the areas you recorded?
•  How can you do that? For example, if learners used their mother tongue, do you know what caused them to do this?
• Would it help to speak to your learners to find out more?

Act
Take action based on your reflections. Try out a new idea or a different approach, technique etc.

Review
What happened as a result of the action you took? Was it effective? What have you learned from this process?

• Printer-friendly version