Psychology action plan report

To be more specific, we use Metacognitive Theory and Piaget’s Cognitive Theory to improve Khanh’s English skills, especially speaking and writing.. Using videos, movies, songs, and power

VIETNAM GENERAL CONFEDERATION OF LABOR TON DUC THANG UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

DAI HOC TON BUC THANG TON DUC THANG UNIVERSITY

PSYCHOLOGY ACTION PLAN REPORT

Class:

Lecturer:

Course: Pedagogical Psychology - 001163

Hồ Chí Minh, January 2021

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Student’s Information

The participant of the research is an eighth-grade student (13 years old) named Nguyen Gia Khanh in Ho Chi Minh city He is a student at Nguyen Tri Phuong junior high school Since

2018, he has taken extra classes at VUS English Center According to his 2021 academic transcript (Appandix A), Gia Khanh has a pre-intermediate-level English learner He has a decent grammar and vocabulary range, as well as great reading and listening skills However, his speaking and writing still need more improvement

1.2 Student’s characteristics

Having the characteristics of an extrovert, Khanh usually has trouble focusing on his

lesson due to his high energy level As his previous teachers have described his learning traits as

smart, progressive but talkative, inattentive, and procrastinative In addition, Khanh stated that

his learning styles are visual and auditory learning styles

1.3 Aim of the research

The main objectives of this research are to enhance his English abilities and to correct his learning indiscipline To be more specific, we use Metacognitive Theory and Piaget’s Cognitive Theory to improve Khanh’s English skills, especially speaking and writing Secondly, to correct his learning habits by increasing his attention span and reducing his distractibility, we apply behavioral theory, in this case, positive/negative reinforcements and punishments

2 CHAPTER 2: ACTION PLAN REPORT

2.1 Course Information

Initially, we were planning to teach Khanh every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and

Sunday However, due to having conflict with Khanh's in-school schedule, we can only have two

classes with him on the weekend from 18 p.m to 20 p.m His course starts on November 13",

2021, and ends on January 2™ , 2022 With a total of eight weeks (16 lessons), the course is

divided into three periods Our main course materials are 8"-grade English Textbook (school-

box) and Expert on Cambridge IELTS Practice Test 10 by Hai Jim (Appendix B)

2.2 Period 1 (13 — 28 November)

13 - 14 November

1 The student did not know about

his suitable learning styles

2 The student talked about other

topics unrelated to the lesson

1, Encouraging him to share how

he wants to learn by asking him questions and sharing my personal learning preferences with him

2 Verbal warnings: “Let get back

to study’’, “Hurry and finish your

homework”

1 The student listened to my story enthusiastically and excitedly

shared his thoughts

2 The student concentrated for 15 minutes and then proceeded to talk again

The student asked to do his other subject homework

20 - 21 November

1 The student talked about other

topics unrelated to the lesson,

usually about games

2 The student kept asking to get

either water or food as a reason to

stop learning

1 Encouraging him to focus on

the lesson: “The faster we finish our lesson, the sooner you can play games.”

2 Verbal warning: “Go get your food and water and then return quickly”, Providing physical need: “Go and get him food or water while he continues to do his homework”

1 The student quickly switched his focus on the lesson but after about

20 minutes he started to talk again

2 Accepted but go for more than 5

minutes anyway

The student was playing around while I got him what he needed

27 - 28 November

1 The student talked about other

topics unrelated to the lesson 1 Encouraging him to focus on

the lesson: “You can take a break

if you finish the lesson” 1 Similar to the previous week, the

student quickly switched his focus

on the lesson but after about 20 minutes he started to talk again

2 The student had trouble

practicing linking sounds

2 Using videos, movies, songs,

and powerpoints to help him understand the usage of linking

2 The student knew how to use linking sounds in his speech but rarely used them

1.1 Period 2 (4 — 19 December)

4 - 5 December

1 The student forgot to use linking

sounds in his speech

2 The student made many ending

sounds mistakes

3 The student still talked about

other topics unrelated to the lesson

1 Practicing using linking sounds with him by striking basic English conversations

2 Using a PowerPoint about ending sounds for him to better understand and use them

3 Switched back to the main subject every time he tried to talk about other topics

1 The students attempted to use linking sounds in his conversations, although they felt unnatural

2 The student knew when to pronounce ending sounds but still often forgot to pronounce them

3 Student also switched back to the

subject

11 - 12 December

1 The student constantly used his

phone in his learning period

2 The student could not form new

ideas to write an essay 1 Giving him warning “ I will

take that if you don’t put it away

and focus”

2 Guiding him to do an outline before starting writing 1 The student put his phone away

but continued to use it when not looked at

2 The student could organize his ideas with the outline but still forgot to use the outline in many

writings

18 - 19 December

1 The student constantly used his

phone in his learning period

2 The student didn’t fully

understand how to use present

perfect

3 The student often forgot to use

the outline in many writings

1 Giving him warning “ I will

take that if you don’t put it away

and focus”

2 Using videos and PowerPoint

to help him understand the usage

as well as when to use present perfect

3 Encouraging him to use the outline before writing by

1 The student put his phone away

but continued to use it when not looked at

2 The student quickly understood the basics of present perfect and its usage, but still made some errors in advanced exercises

3 The students started to use the

outline more frequently in his

rewarding him (candies, writings, breaktime)

1.1, Period 3 (25 December — 9 January)

Problems/behaviors Intervention Response/consequences

25 - 26 December

1 The student still forgot to use the

outline in his writings, but less

frequently

2 The student still sometimes used

his phone in his learning period

1 Continuing to encourage him

to use the outline before writing

by rewarding him (candies,

breaktime)

2 Took his phone away and promise him if he finishes his

work soon, he can have his

phone back sooner

1 The students immediately started

to use the outline

2 The student started to focus on

the lesson but expressed

discomfort

1 - 2 January

1 The student still sometimes used

his phone in his learning period

2 The student had good results for

his assignments but still made

mistakes in pronunciation sections

1 Took his phone away and promised him if he finishes his

work soon, he can have his

phone back sooner

2 Complimenting him and encouraging him to keep practicing

1 The student apologized and

focused on the lesson

2 The student showed positive excitement

3 CHAPTER 3: EXPLANATION OF CHOSEN INTERVENTIONS

3.1 Period 1 (13 - 28 November)

In the first period, our main objective was to understand Khanh’s learning style, his strengths and weaknesses Therefore, we used Metacognitive Strategies to maximize his learning outcomes with the suitable approach to learning English In this case, Nguyen spent most of the first two lessons to help Khanh understand what are his suitable approaches To achieve this, Nguyen asked questions about Khanh’s characteristics such as “Do you like listening to music?”

or “What would you prefer: books or movies?”, and shared how he discovered his learning styles

to Khanh Fortunately, in lesson 2, after observing Khanh in his first lesson, as well as analyzing

his answers, we managed to identify Khanh’s dominant learning styles — visual and auditory Simultaneously, it appears that Khanh has a fairly bad attention span, so we also wanted

to fix his negative learning habits Throughout the first period, he usually talked about unrelated topics and tried to avoid learning Thus, we used Behavioral Strategies to fix his inappropriate

behaviors At first, we tried Presentation Punishment through the form of Verbal Warning to

decrease his undesirable behaviors This had proven to be ineffective since he continued his

behaviors after roughly 15 minutes Because of this, we tried to use Positive Reinforcement, this

time through encouragements that he would be rewarded with a breaktime if he finished his lesson sooner The method failed but had better results than the previous attempt Therefore, it is possible to keep using this method in future periods in order to improve his behavior

After the first 4 lessons, linking sounds seemed to be a problem for Khanh However, thanks to the previous lessons, we have already known his dominant learning styles - visual and auditory Hence, we gave him videos, movies, songs, and powerpoints to help him understand how to correctly use linking sounds He quickly understood the lesson

3.2 Period 2 (4 - 19 December)

The second period focused on improving Khanh’s English skills We continued teaching him with visual and auditory aids, as well as monitored his progress In the second lesson of period 2, Khanh expressed his trouble with ending sounds, specifically -ed and -s sounds Similar

to how we taught him about linking sounds, a PowerPoint was used to demonstrate how to

correctly pronounce the ending sounds In addition, we also tried to encourage his cognitive development based on Piaget’s cognitive development theory Khanh belongs in the Formal Operational Stage Therefore, after he learned the basic knowledge of linking sounds and ending sounds (schema), we asked him to practice with us by striking many conversations, each of which has a different scenario, allowing him to explore hypothetical situations related to the usage of linking sounds and ending sounds

Another problem appeared in this period is his writing Khanh took a long time to start his writing due to the lack of ideas In this case, we also applied Piaget’s theory by introducing him to an outline before writing The outline helps him formulate new ideas, as well as organize

them in a coherent order By helping him learn how to use the outline, we provided him a schema

to apply to other writing tasks This approach was proven to be useful as not only did he take less time to finish a writing, but also his writing was more coherent than before However, he rarely

used the outline and only used it in extremely difficult tasks Thus, we used positive

reinforcements by providing him candies or allowing him to have a short break to encourage him

to use the outline as frequently as possible

His negative behaviors were still manifested However, instead of talking about unrelated

topics, he used the phone this time Again, we tried verbal warning to decrease his time spent on the phone, but it failed as he only put his phone away to temporarily deal with us and used it again when he got opportunities to

3.3 Period 3 (25 December - 9 January)

Due to our failed attempt to stop him from using his phone in period 2, in the later lessons, we used a combination of positive reinforcements and negative punishments Our goal was to increase his attention in the lesson We first took away his phone as a punishment for his action, then we encouraged him to focus on his study by promising to return his phone if he finished his exercises on time, if not we would give it to his mother This approach seemed to be more effective as he started to understand his wrong behaviors and focus on the lesson, though at

first he was uncomfortable with it Moreover, we continued to encourage him to use the outline with positive reinforcements At the last lesson, he automatically used the outline

On the last two lessons, we asked him to do two tests to monitor his progress The results were good with the first test at 9.5 and the second at 7.75 (Appendix C and D) After these two tests, we complimented him and encouraged him to keep practicing so that he could improve further

4 CHAPTER 3: EXPLANATION OF CHOSEN INTERVENTIONS

4.1 Final results

Through Khanh’s final results of the last period, we have accomplished our first objective

to help him improve his English skills Khanh has learned how to use linking words, ending sounds, as well as the usage of the present perfect tense Moreover, he has developed the habit of using outlines before writing an essay As for our second objective - fixing his negative behaviors, Khanh did take his classes more seriously and understood what he did wrong We managed to record a video of him learning the lesson but due to his consent, we could only have

1 video to prove this (Appendix E)

4.2 Evaluation

We have learned a lot from this research Not only did we practice using Metacognitive and Behavioral Strategies, but we also applied Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory into practice We believe that Metacognitive Theory is extremely important in teaching Students must not only use their memory and internalized language abilities to be great learners, but they must also build their own learning styles Understanding students’ personal learning styles is the key to maximizing their learning outcomes Moreover, it can help teachers adjust their teaching

methods so that they are suitable for their students In our research, visual and auditory aids have

proven to be extremely effective in explaining key points of our lessons to visual-auditory

learners like Khanh

Fixing students’ undesirable behaviors with positive/negative reinforcement and punishments from Behavioral Theory can be a difficult challenge for teachers For most of our period 1, the strategies only work temporarily The likelihood of students stopping repeating their wrong behaviors or increasing their desirable behavior could take a long time, so it is necessary

to be patient with students In our teaching, there are many frustrating moments when Khanh did not pay any attention to our lesson However, after continuing to use the method in future

periods, the results are worth it since students will eventually realize what they do wrong

Applying Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory is also a difficult task for new teachers like us At first, it was hard to find the right teaching plans that include Piaget’s Theory which helps students build their basic knowledge about the language or as Piaget called - Schema Fortunately, by understanding his learning style using Metacognitive Strategies, we can provide

Khanh with visual-auditory aids to illustrate the key knowledge In addition to this, students from

12 years old develop the ability to think about abstract concepts, and logically test hypotheses Thanks to this, we were able to help Khanh practice different situational conversation dialogues

in English Thus, he were capable of using linking sounds and ending sounds

In conclusion, Metacognitive, Behavioral, and Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theories are essential tools to help teachers in their classroom Using these theories correctly will benefit

students For example, increasing students’ motivation, helping them be aware of their own

thinking, fixing their wrong behaviors while promoting positive behaviors, and aiding students’ intellectual growth

5 PEER ASSESSMENT TABLE

1 |N suyen sone Neue Song N 020K0116 Khanh’s negative behavior

x P ing | 1 itori 100%

2 | Neuyén Hoang Dang 020K0029 reparing lesson plans and monitoring 0