Task 1 – You are about to take your first lesson with a group of monolingual students in their own country.
Write a lesson plan for the class, including introduction, warmers, an activity/exercise/test that will indicate students’ different levels, and finishing with a game or other activity that involves all the class. Use the same lesson plan format as all previous lesson plans (page 6/7 of unit 14).
Teacher:
Room: 1A
Observer: n/a
Expected numbers: 8
Date & Time: 21/04/2008
Class level: Unknown
Context:
Introductions
Focus:
Meeting and greeting
Teaching aids: Questionairres, whiteboard markers or chalk
Learner objectives:
Learn how to communicate with and become familiar with strangers
Personal aims:
Become aquainted with students' skill level in speaking English
Anticipated problems for students:
Motivation
Solution:
Use dynamic lesson plans
Anticipated problems for teacher:
Finding students' correct skill level
Solution:
Use a creative questionairre
Procedure
Phase
Timing
Interaction
First of all write your name on the board so the students don't forget who you are. As each student or group of students enter the classroom say a friendly 'hello' and maybe a 'please sit down' with body language indicating your request. Once everyone is seated introduce yourself whilst pointing to your name, i.e. My name is Adam
Engage
5 mins
T-S
Engage in conversation with the students and attempt to get a feeling for how much (if any) English they may have learned elsewhere. Ask questions such as 'have you studied any English?' or 'have you ever been to an English speaking country'.
Engage
5 mins
T-S
Dull down the previous conversation and provide students with a tailored needs analysis as per students requirements. If they are school students simply prompt them to write down their hobbies/interests, if they are business employees then use a proper analysis (similar to the one in the previous unit). These analyses will be used to structure future classes.
Study
5 mins
S-S
Prompt several students randomly for the interests they used in the analysis and write a few on the board. If the students are only beginners who do not yet have the vocabulary then provide the translations and write them on the board too. Initiate some basic sentence structures such as 'Hello, my name is John and I like playing football'.
Study
5 mins
T-S
Ask for a student to help demonstrate a basic role-play activity. In front of the class say to the student 'Hello, my name is Adam and I like teaching English'. The student shall reply with something along the lines of 'Hi Adam, my name is Jane and I like playing guitar'. The students should understand the activity very quickly.
Activate
5 mins
T-S
Now, using sentences and vocabulary learned during the study stage, all students are to meet and greet each other in front of the class until they can reproduce an introduction comfortably whilst switching partners each time. At the end of the activity ensure the students can bid farewell in English formally and informally (goodbye, see-ya etc).
Activate
5 mins
S-S
Task 2 – Summarize what you have personally gained from this course, and how you plan to put into action what you have learned.
Although being native English speakers we have learned a great deal about the English language which had either been forgotten or never learned prior, yet most of all we have learned various teaching skills which we believe can be applied to all areas of expertise in the future and not just restricted to teaching English.
Ultimately we are planning to use our certificates to teach during our future motorcycle adventure across Middle and South America so that we can experience in-depth culture, as opposed to quickly passing through on the tourist production line. Ideally we will discover somewhere suitable and apply with any local language schools where we can settle in for an extended period of time before venturing further.
Overall we feel that the course was very well structured and covered any areas which are necessary to enter a classroom with the confidence to begin teaching right from the get-go.
