Lesson 1 was for ice breaking to get to know each other and make smoothe atmosphere. I was very nervous before starting teaching, but everybody was so cooperative that the lesson went quite well as we planned. It was effective to organize the activities from easier to more demanding levels.
It was helpful to modify the first activity into much simpler one. Describing physical characteristics would have been too hard for the students and overwhelming from the beginning. As the lesson proceeded, the activities needed more information exchanges of each individuals, and thus required the students more language skills accordingly.
But time spent on each activity was not as we expected. And the students were not willing to "act." I doubt if that was too much for the first class. For the future lesson plan, I need to think about the time management, and the students' affective factors more.
Reply
Haewon
3/10/2011 01:04:49 pm
For lesson 2, JongSik and I prepared few games to play before students were assigned to big siblings. The games we prepared did not follow a certain theme or a topic and they were mainly for ice breaking and also for making students feel comfortable using English before they started their first Mate mock up interview. Since there were four groups, other practicum students could join each group and help them out however it was hard for me to keep track of all students and check to see if one student felt left out. Most of all, timing was the issue for lesson 2. We miscalculated the time, and students could only spend 10 min for poster making. Few students complained that they needed more time to finish their posters. The last part of the lesson was designated for mock up interview and since it was my first time also, I had some problem setting up recording device. (my voice was louder than the students’) I felt that I need to make more clear interview questions so that when my little sisters do not understand the question I can simply switch and give them another one to answer.
Reply
Jeongeun
3/10/2011 10:34:54 pm
March 10, 2011
Week 2’s activities were ice-breaking. At first, Haewon and Jongsik asked students to come up to the front. In my opinion, it was great idea because the table setting made me very comfortable and stable. I guess that students felt the same way. That was much better than students had big space between them and the whiteboard. The first activity was “Actionary” to read a sentence strips and act out. The level of the acidity was just right for majority of our students. Students seemed like having fun as I did. Next activity was “Ten Questions”, which made students guess the word that others thought about by questioning. It gave all to get closer each other through group working. I think that the general purpose of two activities accomplished their objectives. After the activity, a question came up to me, “When I couldn’t say yes or no, which way was the best answer?”
About poster making, my groups had no problem with time matter because two of them are studying arts at university and they were very confident of drawing. I hope that they will have a confidence in speaking English through this course, too.
Lastly, I was really scared of interviewing someone following the procedure. However, after interviewing students, I had a very strange feeling which was not fear. I felt strongly attached to my little sisters. They were not the scary people who I was frightened of but someone who will get through the process I did. If my English is better than them even a little, I want to help them and scaffold them within my ability.
Reply
Jeongeun
3/10/2011 10:37:09 pm
It gave all to get closer(hmm mistakes)->It made all get closer each other
Reply
Jeongeun
3/10/2011 10:43:14 pm
I found another mistake. How can I delete my tag???
Reply
Mr.Lee
3/11/2011 03:33:37 pm
Overall, the class went ok even though it looked a little too hectic, which should be taken for granted since there was a lot to be covered including an interview and poster-making. Before the break, three (two long and one short) games were played and the overall purpose was to get students to feel comfortable. They were fairly actively participating, and few looked reserved. Although those games were designed to promote group work, it should be mentioned that ‘Ten Questions’ seemed to be a little dragging on, and got modified to a shorter version on the spot. Those games took up quite a time, and that might explain the shortage of time in the second session after the break. Poster-making required at least twenty minutes, and the interview itself claimed at least forty minutes when the finish time wasn’t too far away. That might have affected the quality of the interview process. Therefore, planners (group 2) should take time management into deeper consideration next time.
Reply
Jooyeon
3/11/2011 09:21:31 pm
I liked the activities we did for lesson2. They were simple, but motivated the students to speak by making them competitive. What was important was that the activities did not require complicated languages which might scare the students from the beginning. Everybody could participate in the activities taking turns. But I think it would have been better to include one short ice breaking activity before activity 1, because there were so many new students who seemed to feel awkward to be in English speaking atmosphere. (There was a student who almost cried) I agree with Mr. Lee's opinion that we need more time to make posters and decide on group names. Our group barely talked to each other, and the poster was not completed. It could have been a good opportunity to get familiar with group members as well as develop a better poster. Overall, Lesson 2 was a good beginning for GEP and Practicum students both.
Reply
Soohyun
3/12/2011 04:58:20 pm
I learned a lot from our first and second class. Since I and Soyeon are going to do the actual teaching for the upcoming class, i tried to look at the flow of the class carefully and how it can smoothly go on between the activities.
The very first game called 'Actionary' looked quite suitable for ice-breaking activity due to its rule of simplicity and less use of language. I think it helped to lower students' affective filter that they might have been pressured to use English whole time. However, it could be a little more easier to be cooperative playing games in a group if there was knowing-each-other sort of game was preceded. The one, I have done in the Professor Levi's Reading Class was quite useful to get to know new classmates by asking certain questions to as many students as possible while walking around the room.
The second ‘10-questions’ game was pretty brilliant idea as an ice-breaker. However no one got the answer right at the end of the game. It was a definitely fun game but it could be more intriguing if there were a little higher possibility to get the answer right by giving them limit of deciding things in mind (something that they can see in the room etc.)
Also it was a bit awkward to get to poster-making work right away with new people. It could be much natural and fun if there were more chances to get to know my group members before we did the next task.
The leaders led the class smoothly with confidence. I think I would be very nervous and blush standing in front of many university students. The best part of this class was that it got fun and natural element in the class that I think I should keep in mind in my teaching.
Reply
So Yun Kim
3/13/2011 09:06:55 am
The objective for Week 2 GEP class was for the students to be able to identify their big siblings and to be assigned to their groups. The teaching group did a splendid job in motivating the students. It was easy to tell that the students were having fun and participating in the game very eagerly. The first activity was the Actionary. Students were divided into 4 groups with one sibling in each group. One person from each group came out in front of class and acted out as the card reads. Students seemed to be a little bit shy at first, but soon became engaged in the game and found themselves enjoying the game. It was really good idea to make students say the answers in full sentences. The activity motivated the students to connect the subject and predicate and produce a sentence in a correct form. Students were producing sentences while they were having fun. One thing that came to my mind was that what if we made students raise hands before saying the answer. It was a little bit difficult to decide who was first to say the answer since everyone could just shout out the answers.
The second activity was the Ten Questions. Students were asked to decide on a word and give answers to the students from other groups. Students from the other groups asked questions in a full sentence in order to guess the word that the team had decided upon. The group was only asked to give Yes or No answers. The activity was very good in making students close to each other in a team. They were cooperating with each other using target language (though it was only words and phrases).I saw a lot of interaction among students and you could tell that they were having fun. The activity motivated students to produce a sentence in order to ask a question about the word they wanted to find out. But the word was very difficult to guess because the words didn’t have any limits or range. Therefore, some answers were ambiguous and this caused a little confusion in playing the game. I thought what if we gave some range to the words that the student could choose from, such as things that things that you can eat, things that are in the classroom and things like that.
Reply
Leave a Reply.
Author
Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview.
RSS Feed