September 29 journal

I was not sure if it was appropriate to put a students name in my post, even though I will be giving them a skills analysis and likely assess not only the class in general but the individual student. Also, below what I have done is wrote out the lesson that I did, how I felt about it, and some ideas for my next weeks lesson. I also spoke with Dr. Stadnik about using the students for what she thinks might be "research" and how this may need to be approved by someone. Please let me know if this is okay! Thank you!

·         We first went over last week’s idiom “cross your fingers.”

·         We then went over the hotel activity that we did last week to see what they remembered. I thought they did a good job and it seemed to go faster than last week. We did this twice.

·         We then wrote some common prepositional phrases on the board. They knew more than I expected, but I had to help them out with a few. For example, when they would say a preposition I would ask them the opposite, and Sari would confuse his opposites and would say the opposite of above was down, up was under, etc. This concerned me a bit and I may need to somehow incorporate this in next week’s lesson.

·         I then explained the activity and made sure the students knew their shapes. I would draw a shape on the board and Hye Kyoung knew many of them, but Sari struggled.

·         I then handout out the handout to one of the students while the other student stood at the board.

·         One student described the picture so that the student at the board could draw based on what they said. They did a good job and I think they had a lot of fun

·         They continued to switch off and we got through about four pictures

·         Throughout the lesson I emphasized some prepositions that they commonly missed,and we also went through the difference between vertical and horizontal

·         Their idiom for next week is “it’s a toss-up” and for homework they are to come prepared ready to summarize their favorite movie for a movie lesson.

Comments:

I have done this lesson before and it worked well, and it worked well again. The students had fun and it was great to see them laughing. Furthermore I think it was a good learning experience and pushed them, however it was so much harder for this class than my other. Sari had to bring up a sheet with the names of the shapes on it, even though they were on the board, which concerns me. I told him to study the shapes and hopefully by next week he will know them well enough to be quizzed, in a way. Next week I am planning on doing the movie lesson where I will keep it on mute and have them mimic the characters. I also think I’ll stick with review for this class, so we might do one or two more drawings on the board.