Saturday, November 24, 2012
Production what's your function?
This week I decided to approach my assigned production activity to get a feel for what changes might need to be made as far as what the blog question suggested. In general, example one could be applied to several situations and still be a success. My students are at a relatively high level, so to limit my input, I had them write questions pertaining to the previous days student presentation on supply and demand. I had each student make one question for a panel of three experts to answer. As the went through the questions, I had no real input, so I wrote their answers down on a hidden whiteboard. After we worked through the Qs I asked them a few comprehension Qs to see if they remembered answers and then we flipped the whiteboard to check both grammar and if the answers were successful.
Friday, November 16, 2012
ICC Lesson # 2 - All Families are Psychotic
Video Part 1 - http://youtu.be/_SlQBpVcNHA
Video Part 2 - http://youtu.be/F7PFboZT6jQ
Video Part 3 - http://youtu.be/zhTlyDtpeOM
Video Part 4 - http://youtu.be/JpiAC7Fn16o
This is a lesson I did about interacting with strangers and families with different values and behaviors.We did this lesson in one of our classes, but I think the use of it in this class worked out fairly well. I had some really enthusiastic students and some that took their roles really seriously.
Problems with the activity: I perhaps spent too much time in the initial activation stage. This left less time for students to really get into character, and other parts of the lesson. Perhaps the reflection at the end could have been more focused and I could have planned more specific questions for them to think about and answer. I should have written the instructions in Korean as well, because I think there might have been a few students who couldn't grasp what they were supposed to do during the activity.
Successes: Students got involved using English to role play. They came up with good individual responses and judgments about the opposing groups. Students could see and felt how uncomfortable it is to be in a situation with people having different cultural values and behaviors. They were able to form opinions and then reflect on how their opinion might be overly biased to their own ideologies.
This particular group of students are fairly competent at communicating their opinions about our subjects. For this lesson, they were very judgmental about the opposing family, but they tend to do this in a number of lessons we have had. We actually did a reading lesson, which I recorded for meth, that was interesting in talking about family interaction and norms. This activity would have been good to follow up that lesson and have students watch the video of themselves behaving in the awkward family situation. I think that would have allowed them to see how they physically display their own prejudices.
Video Part 2 - http://youtu.be/F7PFboZT6jQ
Video Part 3 - http://youtu.be/zhTlyDtpeOM
Video Part 4 - http://youtu.be/JpiAC7Fn16o
This is a lesson I did about interacting with strangers and families with different values and behaviors.We did this lesson in one of our classes, but I think the use of it in this class worked out fairly well. I had some really enthusiastic students and some that took their roles really seriously.
Problems with the activity: I perhaps spent too much time in the initial activation stage. This left less time for students to really get into character, and other parts of the lesson. Perhaps the reflection at the end could have been more focused and I could have planned more specific questions for them to think about and answer. I should have written the instructions in Korean as well, because I think there might have been a few students who couldn't grasp what they were supposed to do during the activity.
Successes: Students got involved using English to role play. They came up with good individual responses and judgments about the opposing groups. Students could see and felt how uncomfortable it is to be in a situation with people having different cultural values and behaviors. They were able to form opinions and then reflect on how their opinion might be overly biased to their own ideologies.
This particular group of students are fairly competent at communicating their opinions about our subjects. For this lesson, they were very judgmental about the opposing family, but they tend to do this in a number of lessons we have had. We actually did a reading lesson, which I recorded for meth, that was interesting in talking about family interaction and norms. This activity would have been good to follow up that lesson and have students watch the video of themselves behaving in the awkward family situation. I think that would have allowed them to see how they physically display their own prejudices.
ICC Lesson # 1 - A Good Man is Hard to Find
Video Pt 1 http://youtu.be/wgwOzN1bN_c
Video Pt 2 http://youtu.be/L23wSVj1Wjo
I took this activity from the DeCapua book pretty early in the semester. I did a little adaptation to it by adding some information to the job candidates, specifically giving them educational levels. I thought this would be interesting to see if that had a lot of effect on how they evaluated nationality. I did this for two classes at different levels, but the recording for the more advanced class was interrupted by a lovely gmarket text message, so it only recorded about 2 minutes.
Problems: There were a couple of things about this activity that I might change. Time limits were not planned well for this first class, as it took them a little longer to complete the initial step. Perhaps for their level, i could have used fewer options and positions to fill. This left less time for the final discussion of why certain people were chosen. Also, I could have added more CI's and whatnot to activate the students more. I think what they could say was pretty limited.
Successes: These were probably limited in this class because the time limitation issues. We did have a few good instances to communicate about some of their decisions in class, but I would have like to have more time. This was a writing class, so I adapted the activity to have a writing response. For homework they completed a writing task explaining their choices and how culture, sex or background influenced their decisions. We did reflect on these in the following class, but I didn't record it.
After seeing this activity in two classes, I think it would be a great activity in a number of business class settings. It is designed to have the students think critically, but leaves room for their own prejudices and stereotypes to interfere with their choices. Having them speak and write about it are both good opportunities for them to use English to explain their opinion, or summarize details. The difficulty is approaching or evaluating this activity from a neutral perspective as a teacher. It was difficult for me to limit my own moral attitudes from the lesson in order to avoid sending some moral message. But I think responding to some of their biased opinions with no emotion would betray my own beliefs.
Video Pt 2 http://youtu.be/L23wSVj1Wjo
I took this activity from the DeCapua book pretty early in the semester. I did a little adaptation to it by adding some information to the job candidates, specifically giving them educational levels. I thought this would be interesting to see if that had a lot of effect on how they evaluated nationality. I did this for two classes at different levels, but the recording for the more advanced class was interrupted by a lovely gmarket text message, so it only recorded about 2 minutes.
Problems: There were a couple of things about this activity that I might change. Time limits were not planned well for this first class, as it took them a little longer to complete the initial step. Perhaps for their level, i could have used fewer options and positions to fill. This left less time for the final discussion of why certain people were chosen. Also, I could have added more CI's and whatnot to activate the students more. I think what they could say was pretty limited.
Successes: These were probably limited in this class because the time limitation issues. We did have a few good instances to communicate about some of their decisions in class, but I would have like to have more time. This was a writing class, so I adapted the activity to have a writing response. For homework they completed a writing task explaining their choices and how culture, sex or background influenced their decisions. We did reflect on these in the following class, but I didn't record it.
After seeing this activity in two classes, I think it would be a great activity in a number of business class settings. It is designed to have the students think critically, but leaves room for their own prejudices and stereotypes to interfere with their choices. Having them speak and write about it are both good opportunities for them to use English to explain their opinion, or summarize details. The difficulty is approaching or evaluating this activity from a neutral perspective as a teacher. It was difficult for me to limit my own moral attitudes from the lesson in order to avoid sending some moral message. But I think responding to some of their biased opinions with no emotion would betray my own beliefs.
How do you say that again?
Pronunciation 1 Part 1 http://youtu.be/YTxIVMxr40M
Pronunciation 1 Part 2 http://youtu.be/L23wSVj1Wjo
Pronunciation 2 Part 1 http://youtu.be/VjYvcqBAGC0
Pronunciation 2 Part 2 http://youtu.be/Mj1AkaJDt14
Here is a pronunciation lesson I did for two classes back to back.... Practice makes perfect, and I need more of it.
Both of these classes use the same activity to work on similar pronunciation features. It is one I used from the Harmer book that I thought would be useful, but I think there are some changes to be made if I want this to work efficiently. As a way to apply this activity to something useful, I started with phrases on the WB that they have been using to prepare for their speech contest to model how we use stress in certain syllables. After going through those, I briefly explained the what they need to do on the activity page and let them work in pairs. The first class spent too much time in my first step, and perhaps too much time in their pair work as well, but I expected a bit of this as it was my first run going through the activity, and their level might be a little lower than this activity or my intro were planned. The second class got through the first part quickly enough, but had more difficulty with some of the pronunciations with contractions, or incorrectly assuming the wrong number of syllables.
Some Problems - I speak to fast on too many occasions, and say too much at times. I really need to work on slowing down when students need clear, understandable input. For this particular activity, I might explain some of the stresses too much when I should let the phrase said correctly be all the input i give.The activity itself need a little more concise setup that what I gave it in the first class. The second class was a bit better, but I think it can be improved.Having students mimic me might be a little touch of good old behaviorism techniques, but I think it is called for in this situation.
After watching these, I though I would check out a video on learning pronunciation in a language I haven't studied. I watched Chinese with Gloria to see how it would be taught in a tonal language. The goes along quite slow and is a little repetitive but I think does a really good job an being understood. Next time I will slow down and limit my speech a bit more, and work on having students lead the talk to discover certain features of this kind of lesson.
Pronunciation 1 Part 2 http://youtu.be/L23wSVj1Wjo
Pronunciation 2 Part 1 http://youtu.be/VjYvcqBAGC0
Pronunciation 2 Part 2 http://youtu.be/Mj1AkaJDt14
Here is a pronunciation lesson I did for two classes back to back.... Practice makes perfect, and I need more of it.
Both of these classes use the same activity to work on similar pronunciation features. It is one I used from the Harmer book that I thought would be useful, but I think there are some changes to be made if I want this to work efficiently. As a way to apply this activity to something useful, I started with phrases on the WB that they have been using to prepare for their speech contest to model how we use stress in certain syllables. After going through those, I briefly explained the what they need to do on the activity page and let them work in pairs. The first class spent too much time in my first step, and perhaps too much time in their pair work as well, but I expected a bit of this as it was my first run going through the activity, and their level might be a little lower than this activity or my intro were planned. The second class got through the first part quickly enough, but had more difficulty with some of the pronunciations with contractions, or incorrectly assuming the wrong number of syllables.
Some Problems - I speak to fast on too many occasions, and say too much at times. I really need to work on slowing down when students need clear, understandable input. For this particular activity, I might explain some of the stresses too much when I should let the phrase said correctly be all the input i give.The activity itself need a little more concise setup that what I gave it in the first class. The second class was a bit better, but I think it can be improved.Having students mimic me might be a little touch of good old behaviorism techniques, but I think it is called for in this situation.
After watching these, I though I would check out a video on learning pronunciation in a language I haven't studied. I watched Chinese with Gloria to see how it would be taught in a tonal language. The goes along quite slow and is a little repetitive but I think does a really good job an being understood. Next time I will slow down and limit my speech a bit more, and work on having students lead the talk to discover certain features of this kind of lesson.
A Reading Rainbow
Reading Part 1: http://youtu.be/50pcbB_gFMY
Reading Part 2: http://youtu.be/-nAx__3wS_s
Reading Part 3: http://youtu.be/ZS-4HAIauOY
This is a reading lesson that my students did from their text
Reading Part 2: http://youtu.be/-nAx__3wS_s
Reading Part 3: http://youtu.be/ZS-4HAIauOY
This is a reading lesson that my students did from their text
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Vocabulary Schmabulary
Part 1 - http://youtu.be/ZkbwyGYOOas
Part 2 - http://youtu.be/bEK4-nNZgk0
Vocabulary is tricky in that it is hard to make into something interesting, at least beyond making a silly game out of it. So for this class I used bits of a Harmer activity meshed with the material from our textbook for the class. The whole activity took about 40 minutes, but I edited out a part where we brought in the ideas of family structure and and a short discussion about that. If I were to redo this lesson, I would go ahead and do that bit at the beginning to get them activated first, but generally I don't have a problem getting their attention.This particular activity ended up being a mesh of grammar and vocab with phrasal verb vocabulary. They were fairly talkative, and getting them to speak in pairs worked well as I heard some good things from their conversations to think about in the lesson. I feel like am am getting students to talk a lot, and spreading out the participation and speaking enough to cover everyone in the class, but I still think I am going a little too fast at times and while I know several students can follow, there may be some in the class that have difficulty. Also with this activity, I might practice my own delivery with these vocab words. I did this lesson with our much planning, and as I am in a rush to make this class on time, I am usually frantically organizing things right before class. I can definitely see how better preparation would be way better for this class, but with my current schedule, it is hardly an option. This lesson will flow into the next day's reading, so we will see if any of these stick and I can be a bit smoother in the way I direct this lesson.
Part 2 - http://youtu.be/bEK4-nNZgk0
Vocabulary is tricky in that it is hard to make into something interesting, at least beyond making a silly game out of it. So for this class I used bits of a Harmer activity meshed with the material from our textbook for the class. The whole activity took about 40 minutes, but I edited out a part where we brought in the ideas of family structure and and a short discussion about that. If I were to redo this lesson, I would go ahead and do that bit at the beginning to get them activated first, but generally I don't have a problem getting their attention.This particular activity ended up being a mesh of grammar and vocab with phrasal verb vocabulary. They were fairly talkative, and getting them to speak in pairs worked well as I heard some good things from their conversations to think about in the lesson. I feel like am am getting students to talk a lot, and spreading out the participation and speaking enough to cover everyone in the class, but I still think I am going a little too fast at times and while I know several students can follow, there may be some in the class that have difficulty. Also with this activity, I might practice my own delivery with these vocab words. I did this lesson with our much planning, and as I am in a rush to make this class on time, I am usually frantically organizing things right before class. I can definitely see how better preparation would be way better for this class, but with my current schedule, it is hardly an option. This lesson will flow into the next day's reading, so we will see if any of these stick and I can be a bit smoother in the way I direct this lesson.
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