The new school week - For me that is an 8 am observed lesson with a
group of 14 year olds! Due to the
delayed start at School last week I haven’t yet had any chance to meet or even
see this class. Hey ho, I’ve chatted
with their Teacher, and the subject for the lesson is to revise the past and
future tenses.
The class starts with the Teacher taking the register and
reading a ‘Thought for the Day’ to get them into the correct frame of mind –
they all listen diligently. I then start
with my usual introduction, using the STAR game, and as they are older than the
classes I observed last week, I extended the game to encourage them to ask
additional/follow on questions, which they were able to do.
We continued with a warm up activity - I had made scrunch
balls out of screwed up plastic bags (to ensure no actual violence or injury would
ensue) and they played a game in groups of throwing the scrunchball to each
other, the ball catcher having to give a past tense verb. This went down well – all good so far.
I ran through some vocab, then commenced with the main
worksheet activity (provided by the teacher) – speaking in pairs to find out
specific information about what the characters had done at the weekend from
information in a paragraph. They
participated in the exercise diligently and very loudly – although it was
apparent they hadn’t understood the finer details of the instruction, and
generally were talking around the questions asked, rather than the specific
questions. On the plus side they were
mainly doing something around what was asked and were attempting to do it in
English – I’m taking this as a positive!
I introduced another talking activity, again provided by the
teacher, which had even more complicated instructions – I could barely work out
what the students were to do. Nevertheless,
they manfully ploughed through this, again participating well in some type of
speaking activity, in English – I think it was more about what they had done at
the weekend, than the exercise in question.
I’m taking this first lesson as a personal success – quite a lot of English
was spoken, around the subject and using the correct tenses, they had fun with
the game and no violence, injury or anarchy ensued! Obviously, I’m not losing sight of the
purpose of me being here which is to provide me with much needed experience –
plenty of scope for development.
I then went with the BACH (6th form) classes –
groups of 5-6 students had all created plays of children’s stories, (in
English) to perform to the nursery and primary classes. The 6th formers had had to adapt
the story, write the script, create some scenery and devise some simple
costumes. Additionally, they had also
created some pre/post play worksheets.
Whilst the 6th formers seemed a little shy of donning some
kitten ears, fairy wings or other paraphernalia to be Cinderella or the
Gruffalo, they generally got into their
plays, and the small children were delighted with it - I simply can’t image British 17 year olds
acting drama scenes, in another
language, for 2-10 year olds, so I was
most impressed with this……….
The 3 Blind Mice
Goldilocks
The Gruffalo
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