The main function of the class this time was to describe a series of pictures. Group 2 (Hae-won and Jong-sik) chose the theme of food. The theme is like a double-edged sword because it can be very exciting and fun when going well. However, nothing would be more boring and painful than that if it fails to draw attention. Thankfully, no one was caught falling asleep during the class.
A warm-up activity was to talk about food or dish students have tried before. It was about five minutes long. Then, students watched two video clips, both about cooking. The first was part of a famous cooking animation, and showed about six cooking action verbs. Then, the next clip was an actual cooking movie, and presented a cooking process in a vivid and graphic way. The purpose of watching clips was to encourage students to brush up on diverse cooking action verbs so that they can use them while cooking in person in the next activity. After watching clips, they got involved into actual cooking in small groups. They saw another clip about cooking rice ball which they were going to make themselves. The clip was not that clear in sound and ran a little too quickly. I doubted if students benefited from watching that clip. I saw some students following the recipe from the clip. They might have thought they needed to abide by the boy’s recipe. Since they were given the liberty to create whatever they liked to make, and every group produced something different from one another. Thanks to the devoted big siblings and passionate students, cooking time went fine. I saw and heard students using diverse cooking verbs during cooking. After cooking, each group presented their work, and every member was supposed to participate.
Then, it was a tasting time, and every dish was great. Everybody was also very supportive in cleaning up, thus some time was saved.
A post-break activity was a quiz contest, food trivia. In fact, this activity was scheduled for about twenty minutes, but it seemed to pass quite speedily. Students turned out to have better common sense than expected. They did not miss a single question. Based on the points they earned from the quiz, they were ranked from 1 to 4, and given different numbers of cards. The last activity was to create an imaginary dish using ingredient cards, utensils etc. Every group was given common ingredients and extra ones. After that, each group presented their dish. Once again, everybody was supposed to say at least one sentence, and they firmly stuck to that rule. The last activity was a pair work in which each one described a recipe by looking at a series of pictures, and the partner guessed what it was.
Overall, students seemed to be speaking fairly much this time, not because the class was interesting or exciting, but because recipe-description did not look too daunting. Plus, they recycled many of the words from the reading assignment. It was a pity that Group 2 posted the reading homework way before they found the video clips. Some of useful cooking verbs in the video clips such as ‘scale’ or ‘gut the fish’ were not included in the reading assignment. Last but not least, big siblings played a critical role throughout the class, and they encouraged and motivated students to use and speak as many action verbs as possible. They do deserve to be praised.
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Haewon
3/31/2011 03:30:32 pm
Yesterday was our (Mr. Lee and Haewon) teaching day and the theme was about food. Since we had to develop our lesson plan based on Task 4 of MATE, Mr. Lee and I could only come up with activities about the process of preparing some dish (due to our lack of creativity). Firstly, students had to brainstorm about variety of food that they’ve tried overseas (or within Korea) and we hoped this would activate their memory based on the theme, FOOD, and perhaps to visualize the cooking verbs from the reading assignment. Next, students watched two short video clips about making food and we tried to select something to vividly show them the action verbs that they’ll eventually use when cooking on their own. After watching the clips, students made their own food. I noticed that most of the students tried to use the cooking verbs when they were cooking and they were a great help with cleaning up as well. Of course, big siblings were guiding students to use certain verbs while making their own food. Next activity was a group-based game activity where students can answer with their common knowledge about food. The points that they gained here were used in the next activity which was to create their own dish using the picture ingredient cards that they earned. Lastly, students were to review those cooking verbs in pairs using the picture cards (4 recipes per group- so different food for each member) to describe how they cook the dish and the person next to you had to guess what her partner was actually describing. The purpose of this activity was to review/recycle the cooking vocabulary words.
The timing was a big concern for Mr. Lee and I so while one of us was teaching the class, the other member checked the time and wrote the expected finishing time on the piece of paper for the other member to notice. Sometimes we had to cut the activity short even though students were enjoying the activity a lot. I found that since we did not make students to come up to the front when presenting, they were more relaxed and thus spoke more. Mr. Lee and I were worried about losing control of the time and leaving students in chaos but thankfully everything went smoothly w/o any major problems. Although we arrived early, we did not have an access to a computer in the classroom, and we had to make some changes just before the class started. Next time, we should proofread few times more and perhaps show it to big siblings for precaution. One more thing about the last review activity, it was my fault that I couldn’t deliver more clear direction on how to do the last review, since some students and even some big siblings almost showed their food pictures to their partners and the goal of this activity was to guess what the other person’s food was. If time permits, before our class begins, to go over the ppt with big siblings will be a great help for students and for us as well.
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Jeongeun
3/31/2011 04:21:21 pm
Week 5: Food
The lesson performed by Teaching Group 2 was successful in terms of students’ input and output. First, the reading homework was very comprehensible and authentic. In other words, it was just right for students’ level. “i+1” input was well absorbed into their background knowledge. They confirmed the meanings of the verbs that they already knew and learned a few new verbs through the pictures and the video clips. Moreover, after watching the video, students noticed what they didn’t know by comparing their verbs and the presented verbs. Next, about their output, I was amazed to observe that my little sisters took a note about the new verbs to remember them. They tried to use new expressions when they presented their recipe. In addition, they were eager to talk more voluntarily.
The reason of the successful teaching was that students were fully motivated by real cooking. The activities provided students many chances to speak out. The lesson was a very good (epitome) example of CLT. Teachers were motivators, facilitators, and guides and students were the center of the activities. I can’t help mentioning teaching group’s effort to prepare all the materials and set up cooking stations.
In addition, their management skills, especially time management was punctual and the organization of activities was smooth. It also was a great idea to put Food Trivia right after break time.
However, Food Trivia was a little bit challenging for slower readers. In MY opinion, it would be good for slow readers or slow speakers that teacher told us the questions instead of showing the written form questions and gave us three seconds to think about the answer, and then let students to shout their team names when they knew the answer.
Lastly, it was about a cultural thing. Students came up with the western food culture in the last presentation, that is, the serving order: appetizer, main dish and dissert. Cultural aspect was not explicitly mentioned during the lesson, but it was taught covertly.
Thank for letting me experience the great CLT class.
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SoYun
4/2/2011 07:35:44 pm
The objective for Week 5 GEP class was for the students to be able to describe a set of pictures. The theme was about food and the function required was to describe a process of making a dish. First of all, Mr. Lee and Haewon deserve a very big applause for preparing all those cooking materials so that the class would have an authentic setting for making real food. It was very impressive that they even brought the rice cookers!!! All the materials needed for the cooking were in place and I could see how they put a lot of efforts in preparing for this week’s class. All the activities were a lot of fun and motivate students to speak the target language. I think it was the class where students used the most of the target language they have learned from the reading materials. The materials they have prepared, including the video clips, PPT slides, and pictures of different ingredients, food, action verbs, and utensils were also very helpful.
These are some of the observations I want to share. First, it was really good to see that 은정 asked a question in front of class about a word she didn’t know on the slide. I could feel that little siblings are now feeling more comfortable to speak out in front of their classmates. Second, students are becoming more motivated to speak out the expressions that they have learned and are becoming eager to ask for the new vocabulary and expressions to describe what they were doing. Third, two of my little siblings had difficult time when they encountered the new words on the slide. After watching the second video clip, there were some new action verbs on the slide. I think that it would have been better if more explanation were given for the new words. Forth, when we the groups were competing with each other, I could see that there was only one person in the group that mostly gave the answer. I wondered if we could somehow find a way to make more group members have the chance to get the answer in such competition activities. Another minor opinion is that if there is too much text on the slide, the low level students have difficulty in participating in the competition. I could feel that low level students found themselves frustrated when the question was over before they have read the slide. In my personal opinion, the picture-based questions were better. Lastly, I could see that students felt more comfortable when they were giving their presentations in their seats. They definitely spoke more. I wonder if that’s because they felt more comfortable seating in their seats while they were giving presentation or because of the help of the big siblings that were available during the presentation.
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Soohyun
4/2/2011 09:11:33 pm
I think week 5 class made a very effective CLT lesson with entertaining and motivating activities. Since most complimentary comments were already said above, I’d like to point out a few things that I want to share. Not only because the speed of speaking by the teacher is fast when giving instruction, but also the students’ proficiency level is not yet to reach to the level to understand the instruction, I felt a need to do a comprehension check for the whole students to make sure if they know what to do. One of my little siblings stared at me after the instruction is delivered and I figured she didn’t understand what to do so I had to explain to her. Secondly, like Jeoneun mentioned earlier, there were a few cooking verbs presented during the lesson (from the PPT and the pictures on the paper) that students didn’t understand. It would be better if the reading assignment covered a whole range of vocabulary that students get to use during the activities. Third, I strongly agree what Jeongeun said regarding competitive quiz activity. For the slow readers and those who raise their hands first without finishing reading the question, giving a quiz in a verbal way would be better idea. Last but not least, I also realized little siblings looks more comfortable sitting when presenting, however, I wonder if they become more likely to depend on big siblings’ assistance. I was not quiet sure how much I should get involved when they were giving a presentation. It would not be bad if big siblings can be a help for them, but giving them a chance to control all the works from organizing and presenting will also be a great for them to practice. Again, the class was a definite success since I could see myself enjoying the lesson as well! Thank you for the great sample of a devoting lesson!
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Jooyeon
4/3/2011 11:32:18 am
Reflective Journal Week5
The class was never been so enthusiastic and dynamic. I admire the effort and devotion the teaching group showed on the day. Nothing is more motivating than to invite the students into the real world where they can actually experience and communicate through meaningful interaction. I have attended cooking classes but usually those classes couldn’t catch two birds with one stone. They used to provide cultural experiences and fun, but were not successful in leading the students to produce (topic-related) languages. Activity one was a very good warm up activity for activating schemata that leads well to the next activity. Students not only focused on making rice rolls but also tried to speak and use the expressions they learned. I think it was because the input they earned from reading assignments were quite simple but interesting and at the same time the big siblings are getting better at guiding the students. After making rice rolls, all the students moved from group to group to listen to the procedure and taste other’s dishes. The students contingently learn to express their ideas better by listening to their classmates’ presentation over and over again. The quiz was also very interesting, but too speedy to catch up for some students. Even though I shouted “Spam” loudly, I didn’t even read the quiz questions. Only some quick-witted students did a good job. This happens a lot when the teaching group prepares such an activity. I wonder if there’s any way to make it more balanced. Activity 4 was a good consolidating activity to practice learned expressions. The students became more confident in explaining the procedures. But the students had to do the same procedure as activity 2 with less fascinating materials. When the students were moving from group to group, I noticed several students losing concentration. I understand there was a limitation, but the presentations could have been done in a different way. Overall, I myself enjoyed this class a lot and it was a very productive class. Just one more thing, how could Mr. Lee be so funny in English as well?
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