Warm-up Lesson 1 Reflection

The initial idea for the warm up is to introduce the students to the life of a writer and how her personal background and environment might shape her work. Most of my students, 22 year old females in a beauty arts program, have had little or no exposure to literature in English but we are trying to broaden their scope with a project class centered on classic literature and try to find themes that might relate to their own existence. For this first exercise, I created a fairly simple reading of 5 paragraphs that focus on Jane Austen's life and social norms from her time. I have been incorporating vocabulary from TOEIC lessons as much as possible, as they are studying it in their other classes during the semester. This will be a pretty straightforward reading and comprehension review. I assume my function will be asking various types of questions to help the students understand the material. I feel most of them will have few problems, but I want to focus on four or five key details of Austen's life and times that will play a heavy role in her novel. These themes will be the focus of several class discussion, and featured in their midterm exam as well.The only area I am concerned with this lesson is the student's willingness to participate in a fairly simple question and answer session. I had the same group in a grammar class two semesters ago, and certain classes were a nightmare. I have to admit, it was a real challenge keeping them in participation mode in many of the classes.