Working my way up!!

This time, I would like to reflect on my experience teaching a warm-up/preview on Sunday, March 30^th.

I planned to start out with a greeting, which I had been doing all along. However, I had not taken the time to familiarize my students with it and really paid attention whether they had greeted me in return or not. After the greeting, there would an ice-breaker followed by my warm-up/preview.

That day, I got to class earlier than usual to prepare physically and mentally. I wrote down “Good afternoon!” on the whiteboard as well as what I had planned on using to revolve the ice-breaker around: “One interesting thing that happened to me last week was…”

Once all six students arrived, I started with making a point of starting class that day and every class with greeting one another. I pointed out to what I had written on the whiteboard for a greeting and explained that this was appropriate as our class was 1-2PM. I modeled by uttering to the whole class: “Good afternoon!”

They sort of mumbled back the same. But to make my point that they should greet loud and clear, I uttered once more, louder than before: “Good afternoon!!” This time they replied back “Good afternoon!” in a manner which was loud and clear.I followed by saying: “How are you all  doing? Is everybody well?” which was met by a unanimous “yes!!”

Greeting took all in all 58 seconds. It was followed by the ice-breaker. This time, I brought their attention to the other sentence I had written prior to the start of the class, which was: “One interesting thing that happened to me last week was…”

I instructed them to take two minutes to discuss with the person sitting next to them (in pairs) and then share with the class what they had all come up with as a response to this open, referential question: “What was one interesting that happened to you last week?”

They looked confused immediately and there was no apparent discussion taking place. Were they not accustomed to such pair work activities in their school and hagwons?

I proceeded right away with a MIC technique. I gave several examples such as: “Did you try a new food item? Did you meet a new person last week?” to explain what they were asked to do. I was surprised to see that they still looked confused and they appeared as if they were having a hard time to come up with an answer.

This time, I broadened the question to include something interesting, surprising, good or bad...

After two minutes, I nominated a student to answer and then I asked this student to pick someone else to go next. Students took turns to alternatively nominate another student to speak, which I had noticed previously that they had enjoyed doing.

During the ice-breaker, based on their answers, I tried to introduce new vocabulary. For example, when one student brought up novels, we talked about the difference between fact and fiction, etc.

I made sure to allow extended wait-time throughout. Hence, when all said and done, the ice-breaker had taken up 10 minutes and 46 seconds. In all honesty, this was the first time I had done a formal ice-breaker with this class. I believe that, in time, we will be able to complete the ice-breaker within a shorter amount of time.

Next up was what I had been waiting for since the beginning of the class: warm-up/preview. This was the first time to use a preview for me; not just with class but ever…

After we discussed about warm-up/preview in the class, I realized that such activities had two main purposes:

1) Creating a positive environment for learning:

When planned and executed well, such activities would help to promote relaxation of students, make them comfortable and focus them on learning. Otherwise, they may be too distracted with all the other things in their heads whether it is lots of homework waiting for them at home or private institutions they have to go later that day or even personal issues. Therefore, I concluded that a fun warm-up/preview activity, which makes students relaxed and comfortable without demanding too much of them is a great place to start.

2) Activating students’ schemata:

A warm-up/preview activity could serve to help students access their background knowledge/experience on the topic at hand so that they would be ready to process teachers’ input much more effectively. In a nut shell, learning would be an active rather than a passive process.

Last class, I had given students homework whereby they had to come up with a country they wished to travel to, search for some specific information on this country by using Google and then answer four questions. 

Building on what they had to do for homework over the week, I showed them three pictures on France, which played the role of the country I wished to travel to. At the same time, I was attempting to recycle the main topic from last class (computers and internet) as well as vocabulary covered at the end of last class presented in an effort to help them with their homework. 

One of these was the picture of Eiffel Tower, the second one was Louvre Museum and the third picture was on cuisine of France, which depicted baguette, different kinds of cheeses and wine. I had selected these pictures as I was quite sure that they would be able to guess France without much difficulty. 

After looking at all three pictures, they each wrote down on a blank piece of paper which country they thought this was. Then, individually, they revealed what they had written down (I called on them one by one so that it would go a little faster). All had gotten it right. They had all written down France with the exception of one student who had written down Paris.

Initially this student had thought that he had gotten it wrong. However, I explained that the two attractions depicted in the pictures were specifically from Paris; whereas the third picture was about the cuisine of France in general. Realizing that his guess was not wrong, his eyes lit up with relief and happiness.

I followed up by passing them a handout I had put together, which was a basic country profile of France. It was about a page and a half in length. I had divided into six sections as there were six students in total. It served as our platform for the reading activity to follow.

Overall, my warm-up/preview was 3 minutes and 11 seconds in length. Although each and every student had had an opportunity to participate and create with L2, the activity was much shorter than I had expected it to be and hoped for. However, when I had looked at the big picture, I had just enough time in the end to go through alI I had intended to for that class. On the other hand, the ice-breaker could have been much shorter and hence I would have had more time for the warm-up/preview. This means that I will be working on managing my time spent on the ice-breaker and warm-up/preview moving forward.

Another thing I realized after the fact was that I could have taken my preview one step further and after establishing the fact that France was the country of interest, I could have asked students to tell me what types of things came to their minds with regards to France, could have written all these contributions down on the whiteboard and started a discussion before passing out the handout on France’s country profile. 

I have no regrets though, zip, nada… This is all part of my professional development as a language teacher in Korea. It serves as yet another challenge for me to work on. I will prepare and execute better warm-up/preview activities in the classes to come!!

I do have much more I wish to reflect on with regards to this class. I will be doing so in my next blog, which I plan to share with you all later this week. Please stay tuned. :)