You've had the chance to think about different contexts for teaching and learning, and now I want you to take that knowledge and apply it. Let's find a lesson, and then modify it for a different age and proficiency level.
Valentine's Day is coming up, so let's use that as the theme. Google around and find some classroom activities for Valentine's Day - make sure they are educational and that you can pinpoint a particular communicative objective! Discuss at least 5 specific things you would change in order to make that lesson more appropriate for a different age/proficiency level, and tell why each of the changes would be appropriate, based on what we know about different contexts for learning and teaching.
Note: If you so choose, the lesson you modify could also be the one that you teach for your first demo, but that is not a necessity.
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The Valentine’s Day idea is a really good one for my class of 18 Hispanic women. I “Googled” around and found a great site: ESL Holiday Lessons.com. The Valentine’s Day lesson had a number of activities that would work for my class. For comprehension, there’s a paragraph that I could read and the students could do the “put the words into the gaps in the text” exercise. I would read it twice and then I would have each student read a line with the blank filled. My class likes word order tasks, and there is one of those. In fact, most of the exercises looked good. There isn’t anything that gets them up and moving, but that’s tough to do in our crowded space anyway.
ReplyDeleteThe “holiday class” is a really good idea and I got enthusiastic about it. The site has an exercise for Mardi Gras. Since the class knows I’m from New Orleans and several have been there, this would be very topical. I would change around the types of tasks, especially incorporating one where small groups come up with questions to ask and classmates or the teacher could answer them. I would bring Mardi Gras beads for correct answers, put on mask I have when someone makes a mistake, and bring a Mardi Gras King Cake to end the class with.
Then there is Semana Santa coming up. I would request volunteers to work with me prior to the class and write the paragraph and do the exercise outlines with me. These students would “teach” that part of the class.
Holidays! There are so many possibilities to make the classes meaningful and fun.
I found a particular lesson on ESL Holiday lessons. The lesson partly focuses on listening and reading comprehension. This particular lesson stars off with listening and reading then enters into filling the gaps and correct word usage by oneself.
ReplyDeleteI would change this by having the class first work in pairs to fill in the gaps, trying to pick out the right word or usage of a word, then have members of the class volunteer to read aloud their answers and with me the teacher reading the in between lines. I feel by combining the elements of a few activities of the same reading into one would provide sufficient difficulty for an intermediate level student while still being very doable.
There is also a writing portion that has the students write 10 minutes on anything about valentines day. I think that is too broad. I would instead have them write about what new things they learned about the holiday and what additional information they know about the holiday or insight about a particular aspect of the reading.
There is also a spelling and sentence structure portion of the lesson. This parts just has the student correct misspelled words and fix sentences that are in the reading. This is too easy because they can just look at the reading on the handout. I would change this by having: separate handouts that they turn in after each activity, or buy using different but similar sentences or mix up words relating to the reading or valentines day. The first option would allow for recall in the L2 language and the second one would also prove for a new problem solving activity.
The last change I would make is to give out chocolate at the beginning of the lesson, during the lesson, and the end. Why? The beginning because it releases endorphins putting everyone in a better mood. During for correct answers or volunteering which would help to get people to volunteer. And the end no one would have hurt feeling of not getting anything during the lesson.
I very much like the idea presented by this website for adult learners:
ReplyDeletehttp://bogglesworldesl.com/valentines_day_worksheets.htm
However, I would change it up a bit. I like the idea of using Valentine's to go over vocabulary about dating and relationships. This is a topic that could prove tricky for ESL learners since there are so many terms for romance.
If someone wanted to talk about dating and wasn't familiar with the terminology, they might go to a dictionary and find a variety of terms. Take the word "courting" for instance. While English speakers will probably understand this term, it's just not used today.
However, I wouldn't utilize a crossword puzzle (mainly because I don't care for them myself) but rather I would go over some common and possibly slang terms with the students and have a "cloze" type activity where they can fill in information about their own lives and practice the words.
I think it would also be fun to have the students do a fun interaction activity with each other where they have to pretend to be in different relationships and use the vocabulary. And perhaps wrap it up with a little You Tube video or something of English, cheesy, pick up lines just for fun.