Third class. Present: 9 again, but not the same 9! One was new. Now, some people believe that 9 is a magical number, and 3 x 9 = 27, and 2 + 7 = 9. Mmm…
In the last reflection, I pondered over the pace and the dynamics of the second lesson, so I must confess to a certain sense of relief upon leaving the third class. Did they feel the same way though, I wondered…
Smoothing the rocks by Chiew Pang
The rocks are piling, the water’s flowing around and in between them, and I have good reason to believe that rapport is increasing and this, in turn, leads to a higher level of interaction albeit impeded by lack of fluency and/or confidence.
As usual, I started by reviewing the previous lesson. I asked one of the students to summarise what we did the previous week. I then asked another, “Pedro, how was your weekend? What did you do?” We had a couple of minutes’ worth of conversation where I encouraged him to tell us more by using questions and interjections.
When we finished, I told them to work in pairs, using the conversation that they’d just listened to as a model, and find out what their partner did at the weekend. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go around to monitor the emergent language as, at that moment, I was summoned to help the new student with setting up a Google account.
When that was done, I got a couple of students to report on their partner’s activities. It would have been too much to have them all do it, so I asked them to write an account of each other’s weekend in our class “notebook” for homework.
Language that emerged:
- washing machine
- tumble dryer
- to be in bed: She was in bed all weekend/the whole weekend.
- What was wrong with her?
- sore throat
- to lose one’s voice
- cutthroat /ˈkʌtˌθrəʊt/ (Macmillan: a cutthroat activity or situation is one in which people behave in an unfair or immoral way in order to get an advantage over other people)
- ache /eɪk/ (headache /ˈhedeɪk/, toothache, stomach ache, backache, earache /’ɪəreɪk/
- ride a horse
- go + -ing for sport & recreational activities (go horse-riding, go swimming, go shopping, go dancing, go clubbing, etc.)
- take turns
I had prepared a PowerPoint of the answers they had written to the questions I’d asked the previous week in our class notebook; these came next – I beamed them up, one by one, and we analysed them as a class. These went rather well, I thought. Here are some of the more common problems we encountered.
- Negatives: There is anything I didn’t like today
- Spelling: topycs, diferent, pronuntation
- Countable/Uncountable nouns: many vocabulary
- Incorrect translation of the relative pronoun ‘that’: We learned words what I didn’t know
- Adjectives in the plural form: differents expressions, news links
- Position of adjectives: activities diferents
- Capitalisation: english
They had been repeatedly asking for listening and a lesson on prepositions for the past two weeks, so I thought I’d killed two birds with one stone and showed them this video.
When they’d watched the video lesson, I removed it so they couldn’t see the notes, and asked the new student to explain to the class what she’d learned. With my help, we recapped the explanation.
For practice, I directed them to some online exercises (which included the use of these prepositions for more than just time). This brought us to the end of the 2-hour period.
Apart from the writing homework, I also encouraged them to read my reflections on the first two lessons (Paperless dogme {lesson 1} and What’s in your handbag? {lesson 2} and also more preposition exercises, the links of which I put in our Google Doc.
What I liked:
I felt they were a little bit more talkative or was it just my imagination? As usual, they were attentive and receptive.
What I didn’t like:
I wasted time in helping the new student get to grips with the use of our “class notebook”. “Waste” is too harsh a word perhaps, but I would have preferred to solve these problems before class began.
I wasted even more time when the PC didn’t have the codecs necessary to play a simple mp4 or an flv.
All in all, I was quite happy with this lesson. They still have to work much harder than what they’ve been doing so far. As I told them from the beginning, I can only do so much; the rest is in their hands.
Scaffolding by Chiew Pang
Hi Chiew,
Will you be following the prepostions up in the next lesson? Secondly, when the students are reporting back, why don’t you get them to report back to another pair or group. That way everyone is involved, listening or speaking and you can easily weave in and out listening and making notes. It might cut down on the time, as well as making all the students feel as though someone is interested in what they did at the weekend.
Adam
Thanks for the suggestion, Adam. I normally start the lesson by asking someone to summarise what we did in the previous lesson, so, yes, they’re likely to come up again. They’re asking for prepositions on movement now, so I’ll have to find a way of incorporating those next. Regarding reporting to another group, yes, when it’s a longer activity, I may move partners around.
Hi Chiew.
Another slightly shorter way to elicit reporting back is to ask them just to highlight salient similarities or differences in their weekend (or whatever.)
PS Glad I’m not the only one who gets tangled up in missing codecs and the like
Thanks for the suggestion, Alan; yes, that’s an option.
It isn’t too bad because at least, we’re allowed to download & install stuff! Dangerous, really, but I’m happy! Some places are so outdated but their firewall won’t allow even updates let alone downloads!
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