Wednesday, March 31, 2010

A new group of Students...


Warmer:
have students brainstorm how many types of sports they can think of and write them on the board.
Presentation:
video WeeWiiMee, or a Wii review
Controlled practice:
give students an article the paper to fill in the blanks where articles are left out.
Free practice:
Students work in small groups discussing questions about sports from Conversation Inspirations by Zelman
Feedback: go over the handout correcting errors and go over speech errors.



Dog Squats - Watch more Funny Videos

Monday, March 29, 2010

practice with first year students

I'm having the first year students today since Easter holidays will unofficially start on Friday afternoon :-/

We'll do my restaurant power-point where we go over first mention, and count nouns, hope to be able to drag this out for the full class time....

Friday, March 26, 2010

Teen sleep again

I did this same lesson with the first year students, saves me time prepping.
I showed this group the video twice, and we talked about it some, which helped them to understand it better the second time.
This group seemed to relate well to the video I showed them.
Setting up the game went well as I remembered to bring dice and game men.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

sleeping teenagers

  1. warm up: Try reviewing words from last week using 'crosswords' from 5 Minute Activities by Penny Ur.
  2. Presentation: a short video  
  3. Controlled practice: Fill in the blank worksheet to supply missing articles.
  4. Free practice: Students play a game based on Jim Scrivener's Resource 6 from Learning Teaching.
  5. Feedback: Go over the worksheet, touch on errors made during free practice.

Friday, March 19, 2010

the article and the Proper Noun

I have a request to do this for next week, anybody have any good ideas?  I need your comments before March 26th, 2010... helloooooooo?

Carlos and the bandits

Today I worked with 1st year students. I introduced 911, and we discussed emergencies.  I showed them a news clip about Carlos, divided them into two groups and handed out a news writeup on the story and had the students list the nouns and determiners.  This took them about 10 minutes.  They wrote the nouns on the board each from their own group, then a member from the opposite group filled in the determiner for each noun.  Then I gave them a fill in the blank sheet, which they did perfectly because they copied from their notes :-/
We went over the sheet in class, then watched a different Carlos newsclip.
Students then wrote 5 questions and in 2 co centric rings asked each other questions.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Inspired by St. Patrick

I must have been inspired by St. Patrick!!! My first time to sit in on a class and observe the teacher's teaching technique. He was quite nice about it... a little nervous at first...and so was I!!! There were 13 students there and the topic was: Past perfect tenses. It was the first year students. I could tell some weren't very clear on the subject... so when I was invited to share with them a little about myself, I tried to use some past perfect examples. I was also asked to correct them when they made errors and suggest better ways of expressing themselves. There were a few errors using the article "the" especially when years were talked about. However, my ear needs to be trained to understand their accent because i did miss a lot!!! I like the kids... said I'd sit in again on their class. The teacher has offered an opportunity for me to sit in on a 4th year class, so may do that soon too... if I can fit it in with my lesson schedule!!!! One question stumped me... Does anyone know what you call a person who falls in and out of love easily????

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

St Patrick's day

the 4th year students learned about St. Patrick's day today.
I used this 13 page handout as a guide for the lesson.  It seemed to go ok, nothing here about the article however.  Students seemed to enjoy the last part where they interviewed each other.  I had them stand in rotating co centric rings for the interviews.  I was able to listen in and correct some errors in article use.

Friday, March 12, 2010

cancelled due to illness

didn't see my 4th year Ss today as Helen phoned me to say she was ill.  Natalia was to have both groups together and show them a film.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

second mention

4th year students
I made a restaurant power point production using a picture from The Oxford Picture Dictionary to talk about the restaurant. 
I also made activity cards with pictures and phrases where the article was left as a blank for students to fill in and use for telling a story.
Class did an exercise from Azar's Fundamentals of English Grammar to review second mention.

Friday, March 5, 2010

International Woman's day

Is the 8th of March.  Seems that students start celebrating it today.  My class was nowhere to be seen when I showed up for our 16:45 lesson...

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

non count nouns

4th year students
We went over exercised from Fundamentals of English Grammar by Betty Azar.  We did this with lots of drills.  I also showed a power point presentation to review count and non count nouns