3/23/06 Tonight I had Manuel plus 2 of the returning newbies. It looks like I have a real class again. Isaac wasn't there tonight though and I was disappointed. He seems so eager to learn and I had planned some upper beginner work especially for him. Teodora came last week for the first time and she'd only been in the US 2 weeks! She told us last night that she works from 5 pm to 1 am at Shoney's every day but Thursday. Now that takes some kind of dedication to spend your one off night in English class.
I've decided that I need to build some consistent routine into each evening. I'm beginning each lesson with mini-conversations. So tonight we reviewed conversations for greeting a friend and meeting someone new. I added 2 new sentences to the "meeting" conversation -- Where are you from? I'm from ________. I always ask this question to all the new folks anyway. I love to find out where people are from and they now consider the map a regular part of our classroom! Even the students from the other 2 classes come into our room to look at the map. I just love that!
I'm also going to build in a grammar "bite" into every class. So tonight it was the "where" interrogative. "Where are you from?" Then we reviewed numbers 1-12 from last class. Teodora hadn't been there so this was new to her. She seemed to know 1-8 pretty well. I had made flash cards with numbers and words and I gave her a set to keep. She spread them out on the table and used them as an aid as we worked with the numbers.
I'm also going to have a segment on pronunciation and tonight's lesson went over and over pronouncing the final consonant of words. They continually fail to do that. I write "five" or "nine" or "eight" on the board, model pronouncing the last consonant, underline that letter, etc. I've gone over and over this for the past 3 lessons and finally tonight I heard Manuel correct himself. This has really been an example of how important it is to recycle. The other sound we've been working on is the "i" sound in English. I've written on the board and explained
"i = ai" many times and they still say "Hee" for "Hi" or "neece" for "nice" if they're not thinking.
Then as a "K+1" activity, I spread out a deck of cards 1-10 and asked "Where is the 8?" "Where is the 10?" etc.
My last segment in each class will be, of course, some way to tie the lesson to real life. Tonight I introduced the clock with new vocab for clock parts and then used the numbers 1-12 in telling clock time -- just the straight up hours first -- they would've been way overwhelmed with half past and quarter past. I had a couple of worksheets dealing with clocks. And in the middle of the second one, it dawned on me that I had done a stupid thing! But let me go back a little. In looking for materials on telling time, I had bought a little workbook at Walmart. As I read it, I realized that it did give someone practice in telling time, but my students already knew how to tell time! What they don't know are the words for time in English! Duh! So there was actually very little of the workbook I could use. So on the internet I found a worksheet with blank clocks. I drew in the hands and asked them to write the time below. While they were writing away, I realized I was doing the SAME THING that the Walmart workbook had offered! So when they were finished, I made sure that they read out loud the times they had written. That at least was practice in speaking and listening. In some of these very beginner lessons, I am going to have to watch for that trap -- it's the language and NOT the actual skill that I need to teach them. However -- there was one interesting thing in this. As Teodora filled out her worksheet, I watched her silently count around the clock -- 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 -- putting her pencil on each number until she reached the number where the little hand was pointing. Then she wrote 9:00. Did that mean that she could barely tell time??? Very interesting.
I want to note something here about speaking and listening. One of the things that I have come to see is very important is for them to talk to each other so they can hear each other's pronunciation, so they can self-correct their own pronunciation based on feedback their classmates give them as to whether or not they are making themselves understood.
I've decided that I need to build some consistent routine into each evening. I'm beginning each lesson with mini-conversations. So tonight we reviewed conversations for greeting a friend and meeting someone new. I added 2 new sentences to the "meeting" conversation -- Where are you from? I'm from ________. I always ask this question to all the new folks anyway. I love to find out where people are from and they now consider the map a regular part of our classroom! Even the students from the other 2 classes come into our room to look at the map. I just love that!
I'm also going to build in a grammar "bite" into every class. So tonight it was the "where" interrogative. "Where are you from?" Then we reviewed numbers 1-12 from last class. Teodora hadn't been there so this was new to her. She seemed to know 1-8 pretty well. I had made flash cards with numbers and words and I gave her a set to keep. She spread them out on the table and used them as an aid as we worked with the numbers.
I'm also going to have a segment on pronunciation and tonight's lesson went over and over pronouncing the final consonant of words. They continually fail to do that. I write "five" or "nine" or "eight" on the board, model pronouncing the last consonant, underline that letter, etc. I've gone over and over this for the past 3 lessons and finally tonight I heard Manuel correct himself. This has really been an example of how important it is to recycle. The other sound we've been working on is the "i" sound in English. I've written on the board and explained
"i = ai" many times and they still say "Hee" for "Hi" or "neece" for "nice" if they're not thinking.
Then as a "K+1" activity, I spread out a deck of cards 1-10 and asked "Where is the 8?" "Where is the 10?" etc.
My last segment in each class will be, of course, some way to tie the lesson to real life. Tonight I introduced the clock with new vocab for clock parts and then used the numbers 1-12 in telling clock time -- just the straight up hours first -- they would've been way overwhelmed with half past and quarter past. I had a couple of worksheets dealing with clocks. And in the middle of the second one, it dawned on me that I had done a stupid thing! But let me go back a little. In looking for materials on telling time, I had bought a little workbook at Walmart. As I read it, I realized that it did give someone practice in telling time, but my students already knew how to tell time! What they don't know are the words for time in English! Duh! So there was actually very little of the workbook I could use. So on the internet I found a worksheet with blank clocks. I drew in the hands and asked them to write the time below. While they were writing away, I realized I was doing the SAME THING that the Walmart workbook had offered! So when they were finished, I made sure that they read out loud the times they had written. That at least was practice in speaking and listening. In some of these very beginner lessons, I am going to have to watch for that trap -- it's the language and NOT the actual skill that I need to teach them. However -- there was one interesting thing in this. As Teodora filled out her worksheet, I watched her silently count around the clock -- 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 -- putting her pencil on each number until she reached the number where the little hand was pointing. Then she wrote 9:00. Did that mean that she could barely tell time??? Very interesting.
I want to note something here about speaking and listening. One of the things that I have come to see is very important is for them to talk to each other so they can hear each other's pronunciation, so they can self-correct their own pronunciation based on feedback their classmates give them as to whether or not they are making themselves understood.
posted by Connie | 5:41 AM
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