The objectives of Halloween are to write an organized narrative paragraph with a topic sentence, clear characters, settings and sequence of the story using transitions. The atmosphere of the class seemed a little tiring because it was Saturday and a lot of students were in the middle of their mid-terms, still it was enjoyable to make Jack-O-lantern and watch video clips of Jack-O- lantern and Charlie Brown cartoon because those are authentic material. In the very beginning of the class, it seemed redundant to watch pictures of house decoration for Halloween and answer questions about the holiday. Thus, it was also likely to be one reason to cause students’ struggling from insufficient time during the whole class. In the first activity students made a narrative paragraph using strips of the origin of Jack O’ Lantern after watching a video clip to help students give its outline. My little sisters were struggling for combining trips because they didn’t pay attention to the video clip. Thus it seemed important to give concise and clear direction and reason why they had to listen carefully to the video clip. The first activity included carving pumpkins, which took lots of delicate and dangerous handcraft but resulted in quite impressive and satisfying Jack-O’-lantern. I think students’ final work makes students and teachers proud of themselves especially when they use authentic material While writing a scary story based on a cartoon in the second activity, they didn’t remember to use descriptive words like scary, spooky etc, which the leaders had pinpointed in the beginning of the class, and, thus, might have encouraged them to use again. I think that the idea about a shadow puppet show for storytelling in the last activity was great and the Snoopy cartoon was also interesting but things I felt missing here were to have students understand the concise goal of puppet show and to check how the original story of ‘Snoopy, the great pumpkin’ ends. The second activity, writing a story based on a scary cartoon and the last activity, Halloween story telling looked a little overlapping. Because students could finish the second task as a collaborating work, it would be better to have students write each part and combine it using transitions in the last activity. The reason why I think this way is that according to my observation, they try to figure out and even ask questions to me when they have to complete the task alone; on the other hand, some students are likely to rely on me or a student when they can finish it as a group work especially when their level of English is lower than others. Overall, we could enjoy the beauty of the class in which we used authentic material because students could learn even more than language competence. However, there were still problems such as time management, specific directions and students’ engagement.
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Joohee Park
10/24/2010 03:45:24 am
Reflective Journal of Week8 Practicum I/GEP II - Halloween
by Joohee Park 0754010 October 24, 2010
I admit that I was very much distracted during this weekend make-up class due to my own fault. First, because of my personal schedule that I couldn’t miss I had come to the class 20 minutes late. The class was already decorated with Halloween theme, all the tables were set up for the activities and my classmates were getting dressed-up in costumes. I had to hurry myself and rush to jump in and go through the briefing session, feeling somewhat guilty for not participating in the preparation stage. Secondly, I had taken the tables at the back of the room, and my back was facing the back wall which made my group and me to be seated at the farthest place from the teaching group. I realized this when I was misunderstanding and not getting the messages properly as the lesson proceeded. Finally, leading a group with a material that I’m not thoroughly aware of is very disadvantageous. The procedure of lesson activities, carving a pumpkin, Peanuts’ characters and all, I guess I was busy catching-up with things that I could not oversee some of the things that I should have. Usually I would have the final lesson plan in front of me so I can follow the activities and prepare myself, but for this lesson, I guess there were so many things going on the table and I didn’t think twice to look at the materials. I felt like I was not different from my little sisters sometimes.
However, the Halloween lesson was done very well by the teaching group. Group 3 has prepared appropriate video materials to help students understand the activities and be interested in the upcoming assignments. Different writing practice formats and stages took place to give lessons on writing a narrative paragraph, to describe a sequence using transitions, although my group had trouble fully understanding it. Pumpkin carving was a fun and exciting activity and most effective way of understanding the North American culture for everyone, but it was very long and time consuming, so it was quite challenging to incorporate it with writing activities. It would had been better to break down each stage of making a Jack-o-lantern by gutting out a pumpkin, stencil tracing, flour scrubbing, carving with knives into time frame so every group could keep up with the pace with other groups and be aware if they are behind the schedule or not. All the students and the leaders got carried away and lost track of time until the teaching group announced to wrap-up the work.
Although we managed to go through 3 activities within the lesson, all the activities seemed to be rushed and wrapped up abruptly by the end of each activity. Maybe it was just our group sitting at the back of the room, but we never got to summarize each activity properly before moving on to the next one. I should certainly stay more alert for next week’s class and find my position back as the leader of the group. It was a shameful leadership I showed for this one.
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Park Hyunyoung
10/24/2010 08:09:53 am
The GEP class on Saturday was about writing narratives with the topic of Halloween. Before students came, we decorated the classroom with some Halloween stuff. We also prepared Halloween costume for students. When students entered the room, we could see them being surprised to see the decorations. The class started with the story of Jack O'Lantern. After watcing the video clip, students were asked to fill in the outline chart about characters, setting and the topic sentence. Even though topic sentence includes the general idea, my sisters had a difficulty to write because they didn't understand the whole story. However, when they got the sentence strips, they had the idea. I thought students would have been confused less if they had got the sentence strips before writing the topic sentence. I liked the idea to make students put transitional words between sentences. It was a good activity to learn how narrative writing forms. The most exciting part of the class was carving Halloween pumpkins. Teachers prepared the real pumpkin and students were really interested in the activity. The video clip on how to make Jack O'Lantern was clear and easy to understand. Most students haven't made it before, so the classroom atmosphere became quite lively and exciting. It showed that using realia is effective when students learn not only Enlish but also its culture. GEP students won't forget this experience. Next, students made the outline with the given cartoon. The outline format was same with the first activity, but they had to write stories in sentences again. I think using cartoons was great because students could complete the outline more easily with the each scenes on a cartoon one by one. The last writing activity was making a scary story with the cartoon 'Peanuts'. I think it would have been better if the teacher had given the direction that students were going to make the ending partr of the story before watching the video. Even though it was a cartoon, it was a little hard for low level students to understand english. However, students were familiar with the format of the outline, so they completed the story using ransitional words. Playing the shadow puppet in the front was a new idea but it was not effective that much. Rather, my siblings enjoyed it in a group. The shole class was related to the topic Halloween and it was meaningful class to learn American culture.
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Jung-ok
10/24/2010 08:48:18 am
Week 8. Jung-ok
Along with narrative paragraph writing, we had a Halloween party, for most of us it was the first experience. We practiced writing stories using story map which has topic sentence, characters, settings, sequence of the stories, and conclusion. We could also practice transitional words.
Teaching group prepared many video clips and pictures to introduce the stories and explain background or information of the activities in every step. They were quite appropriate to each step and the visual elements were good enough to get students’ interests. The visuals helped a lot to make the atmosphere of the Halloween party today. We do need proper visual effects to keep students focused on the class.
We wore costumes, well.. actually some simple accessories and then welcomed students. Maybe everybody except just one or two, it was the first Halloween party in our lives. Most of us were not used to this kind of western parties even if it’s very simplified one. Since learning foreign language is not just learning language itself but also experiencing the new culture through languages, we need to give students more chances to feel the cultures and ways of living and thinking through as many opportunities as possible. The students would not forget that they carved the pumpkin and the adjectives such as scary, spooky, and haunted.
The story map the teaching group used in each story-writing was clear and easy to follow. The students who are not good at making paragraphs need some repetitive practice to make them and in my group through those practices I feel that they are used to making sentences and using transitional words now.
However there were some difficulties in betweens. When the leading teachers talk for instructions sometimes they need to talk again and again. While each group is doing their own work or talking each other, we don’t usually concentrate on the leading teachers. Big siblings should be more careful to manage that and leading teachers also should be careful of giving clear instructions at first and let students have that through using PPT for students to get help whenever they want till they finish that work.
Also planning is very important. Well-organized planning before the class is the key which make the class successful. Sometimes we just need to imagine the flows of the activities which is not easy at all but we do need to do it to make the lesson more complete and not to hurry at every corner of the activities. Today we also didn’t have enough time to enjoy each group’s Jack O’ Lantern, vote for the scariest pumpkin, and play a shadow puppet show.
One last thing for overall schedule, Halloween party right after the GEP midterm was a good idea but actually I found that none of my little sisters finished their mid-term period yet. They looked very tired so somewhat sorry that we had the party in the middle of their tests.
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Hyunjeong
10/24/2010 12:15:21 pm
Reflective Journal Week 8 Hyunjeong Kim / 0954006
This week’s lesson was for practicing narrative paragraph, again with more unfamiliar topic. We designed the class like a Halloween party and students worked with several scary stories. Students had read eight scary stories in a paragraph form as reading homework. I believe that provide them some idea about a narrative paragraph. The classroom was decorated with Halloween decorations. As students came into the class they grab a Halloween costume. This made the atmosphere of the class more fun. Before the actual activity started, we showed them some Halloween pictures and asked them adjectives that can describe the pictures. I think that was a good warm-up that activated the students’ schemata. I also think, we can also review the reading homework in the beginning of the lesson. That can help the students more because reading homework includes all the stuff that we want to cover in the lesson. For the first activity, students watched a video about Stingy Jack. Then they have to complete a form that is asking the characters and settings of the story. They also received sentence pieces and unscramble them into the right order using sequence words. After that, we gave them instructions how to carve a pumpkin. Students as a group made their own Jack O’ lantern. They enjoyed the pumpkin carving. The instruction for pumpkin carving was effective; however, instructions for the paragraph could confuse the students. It could be better if I give them instruction first, hand out the outline sheet, and show the video instead of showing video first. Second activity was to make a narrative paragraph based on a scary cartoon. Each group got a scary cartoon and an outline sheet. They easily filled in the outline and made a paragraph. When the finished the outline with the sequences of the story, they exchange the outline with another group’s and reviewed it. We wanted them to comprehend other’s writing and negotiate meaning when they found some errors. One thing to mention was that we did not have time to present the result of this activity. The actual plan was to display the story on the table, and students visit tables to read scary stories. We made them display the story on their table later, but had no time to look around. The last activity was shadow puppet show. Students again watched a video ‘The Great Pumpkin’ of Peanuts series. This time, they watched the first 3 minutes of the story and together as a group, created the ending. They also received an outline sheet that can help them to organize the story. After that, three volunteer groups played a shadow puppet show with one person narrating the story. After all the activities, students displayed their three stories, cartoons, puppets and Jack O’ lantern and decorate their table with Halloween decorations. Finally, each group took a picture together before they go home. This week’s lesson was fun. However, we had to be very careful to manage time because there was pumpkin carving activity which took 40 minutes. Considering too much about timing, I think the instructions became unclear. I have to organize the power points and explain what they have to do in advance they start to work.
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HannaLee
10/30/2010 09:09:41 pm
Reflective Journal Hanna Lee October 29, 2010
Topic for GEP class on week 9th was job and carrier. The focused function was on writing a formal letter. There were three different purposes of class as followings: (1) students should be able to complete a procedure of applying for a dream job and write a resume thinking about the jog (2) students should be able to accomplish the task of two job interviews while asking and answering interview questions and carrying out a mission and (3) students should be able to write an interview thank you letter using proper vocabularies and following an adequate format. Four main activities were designed for this class. The activities were making job wanted ads, writing resumes, having interviews and writing interview thank you letters.
Point that I can count as positive aspect from this class were first, well organized lesson. Under the big issue which is job & carrier all activities were lined up reasonably form introduction to closing. Second point could be live atmosphere in the classroom. The class looked still alive even at the end of it when we were about closing the lesson with the thank you letter presentation. I can assume that is because of the practical topic of the class.
The thing that would be more carefully cared are first, the template of the resume. Considering the job interview activity, the resume should have two different job objectives, but it had only space for one job object. Second, the class was a little bit of lack of serious writing. Since the class had dense interview and completing job wanted ads as simple writing activity.
For later class, we can keep very carefully planned lesson procedure, organized stream of lesson procedure, and the most of all we will prepare class with practical and active activities to make it alive.
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