"Patience is a virtue."

I overall thought that my second microteaching went better than the first one. That being said, after watching my video, I had much to reflect on.

First off, during microteaching, I found it very hard to imagine and treat my native-speaker classmates as my students. This past Saturday, I caught myself briefly thinking about how bored my classmates might have been when I had asked them to figure out whether the critic had liked the movie or not and worse when I made them nominate and further ask each other the same question. In addition, somehow, I seem to feel as if I am racing against myself to get to the better parts of my lesson plan. For instance, last Saturday, I had hoped to have the opportunity to go through my first worksheet at the least, which was supposed to be a matching activity they would have worked on in pairs.  

On the bright side, I thought that I managed to use simpler, more authentic language compared to before. In addition, I found myself making better use of CIs (TSST, pair work, comprehension check, etc.) and MICs (WB, repetition, giving examples, etc.). I did comprehension checks before they started performing a task twice. However, although I had planned to ask one classmate (“student”) to report back what he was supposed to be doing, after I had provided directions, as comprehension check at the very beginning, I completely forgot about it in the heat of the moment. This was when they had all come to a conclusion that this particular critic hadn’t liked the movie and they were supposed to find proof from the text to support this conclusion.

After watching the video, I thought that I had spent too much time looking at my papers trying to organize my thoughts (especially after the fact that I had forgotten to do a comprehension check). This could have been contributed by several factors. Three of these factors stand out in my mind. Firstly, we are being graded for our microteachings and this creates some pressure. Moreover, this second time around, I was really trying to make sure that all would go down as I had planned it would in my head. Hence, I had put in too much conscious effort rehearsing for it beforehand and during microteaching. Yet another factor, I believe, was that I did not want to disappoint Tom and this was a chance to show him the “new and improved me” live… Instead of spending that much time looking at my papers, I would have loved to see myself instead engaging more with the class while they were looking for proof and feeling words in the text. Luckily, there will be a next time.

Clearly, it would be ideal if Tom or someone Tom appointed observed us with our students in our classrooms. However, this would be very hard to achieve not only due to time constraints with regards to class syllabus and how much time Tom or this appointed individual would need to put into this to make it possible but also due to the fact that many schools and hagwons perhaps would not allow an outside professional to be a guest in their classrooms as a result of own school policies, possible effects this could have on students’ learning and classroom interactions, etc. There are surely some limitations with the microteachings we do in the class. However, in my opinion, potential benefits outweigh these limitations. Once I reach that level of comfort and the ability to “look and be” beyond in front of my hardest critics, perhaps there will be nothing I will not be able to do.

I wish that I could make all bad habits go away and good habits “poof” and acquired. However, in real life, this is not how things work. When I used to work as a clinical dietitian in the hospitals as recent as three years ago, I counseled many outpatients for weight loss. I used to tell them to be patient, set small, realistic goals and that like everything else weight loss would also take time and effort on their end. Now, I can really put myself in their shoes. This is how I feel with regards to my teaching. I am sometimes unrealistic just like them and I wish to see results very quickly. I guess it is time to realize that this will be a never-ending journey of professional development, fueled mainly from within, paved with many obstacles, hiccups, sacrifices, and certainly BIG rewards…

Overall, I have to say that certainly I have much to improve. However, I should (and we all need to) give myself credit that I have come a long way since March 1^st. It is a privilege to be a part of this class with such a great group of classmates who help to bring the best out of me.  I find myself recently asking myself this question: “What if I had never taken this course?” I believe that the fact that I am able to look at myself reflectively and know to an extent what needs to be done is an improvement in itself. Fighting!!

Iron Man to my rescue..

 I had spent much time planning as I had really wanted to come up with a fun activity for them (just as fun as last week’s Bingo). I had made up my mind to talk about movie vocabulary and feeling words. Then, I eventually decided to use a movie poster for my preview. I wanted to, however, pick a movie which was popular for Korean boys that age to get them interested. I got my husband’s opinion and did some research. Iron Man was my answer!

Throughout the class, I tried to use simpler words to speak and pose authentic questions. Although I am able to use simpler words without much conscious effort now, there remains much work to be done as far as my authentic language use. Every Saturday, I am trying to pay more attention to how Tom talks to us. I wish it would come so easily for me as well. I need to keep on FIGHTING!!

As I had mentioned in my last blog, I did ask my students if they would be ok with listening to music while working on activities at times. I suggested easy listening music and played a little bit of Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” after describing to them what easy listening music was. They all said they liked the song and they were ok with playing music. However, later on, when they were working on an activity, although I had the opportunity to play some music in the background, I completely forgot about it. I made a big reminder note to myself for this coming Sunday… :)

After showing them Iron Man 3 poster as the preview, I asked them to brainstorm and write down all movie-related words they could think of in pairs. One group had 18 and the other 17 words (two students were missing last Sunday). We were all quite surprised that it was such a close race in the end.

Afterwards, I distributed a handout where they had to match movie vocabulary with definitions on the right (e.g.: character, scene, sequel, genre, chick flick, etc.). As I wanted them to work in pairs, I gave them only one set of worksheet per pair (Tom’s previous suggestion). It really did go much better this way. They needed some guidance and help along the way. I went over regularly to assist them (and hence forgot to play any music).  I gave them cues and described some words for them to guess to help them along (for example: what do we call the type of movie which tells the story of someone’s life?). They did not know how to complete a matching activity either. So, I worked the first question out with them and just said “do the rest in pairs!” We had talked about this in class when Liz had taught the Harmer activity with the car and car vocabulary…  I heard quite a few “ahh”s immediately after and subsequently they did not have any problems completing the worksheet.

Next we looked through a list of positive and negative adjectives (15 each) to describe movies such as hilarious, brilliant and gripping for positive; dull, disgusting and unimpressive for negative. I asked them individually to circle the ones they were not familiar with. Then I asked them to compare their “unknown adjectives” in pairs and try to explain to each other. I had not initially planned to ask them to compare with each other and somehow suddenly on the spot decided to go with it. It was a good exercise. I realized that although one student had not circled “charming’” (meaning that he knew what it meant), he could not explain to his partner. So, he ended up circling this adjective as well.

When I asked the two groups to tell me all the positive and negative adjectives they had circled and I wrote all down on the whiteboard, I noticed that they had almost all the same adjectives circled. Moreover, they had to read their adjectives to me to put on the whiteboard. Therefore, although they had not encountered these words (they were not present in their lexicon) they had to try to pronounce them building on the phonemes they could recognize. These included words such as genre, fascinating, uplifting, etc. For example, in the case of “genre,” they were able to realize that it contained similar phonemes as the word “gender” and they tried to steal strategies to pronounce this word. This impressed me very much. :)

To help to explain the meaning of all these adjectives, I had prepared yet another handout where I had given them an example to a sentence using each of these adjectives. They practiced taking turns to read these sentences and we clarified the meaning of the adjectives. This is also where my gestures and proper intonation came in very handy as additional MIC techniques. Next week to recycle TLC, I will bring in three other movie posters whereby they will use the vocabulary we had studied last week to tell me what type of movie they think is being portrayed in these posters. I will give them an example (modeling) to get them going. They will get to work in pairs/groups and share with the rest of class what they have prepared afterwards. 

Technology in Teaching

I have to admit that technology and I have not been the best of friends. But… This is quickly changing... As Tom has warned me, ten years from now, I don't want to be the only person standing and saying: "I hate technology." This being said, as language teachers, there could be times when it would in our best interest to have a backup plan (e.g.: if we are working in less fortunate countries such as Nepal, Sri Lanka, Laos, Indonesia, etc.).

I found three neat tech tools, 100% free, which we could use while keeping the age of our students as well our goals (what do we wish to achieve with a tech tool?) in mind.  Unfortunately, some tech tools I stumbled across seemed free at first glance until I took a closer look...

First tool I would like to bring to everyone’s attention is PrimaryWall. This is a web-based sticky note tool to be used in schools with the ultimate goal of allowing teachers and students to work together in real-time. 

Why would we need to use such a tool? Well… It is a great way of sharing ideas, collaborating with other students, posting information while working in pairs/groups. How many of you carry sticky notes in your backpacks, have them on your office desk or at home? Moreover, PrimaryWall is fun, fast and easy to use. It is operated by a UK-based company called Primary Technology©. Hence, one is bound to come across the word “pupils” instead of “students” while navigating the website. Further information is available at: http://primarywall.com/whats-primarywall/

I would like to give an example to how this tool could be used. In this example, I have used it as a means of checking comprehension of my students with regards to the lesson topic presented. 

We covered movie vocabulary and adjectives to describe movies yesterday. They were provided with a worksheet where they had to match some related vocabulary with the definitions provided. I had also given them another handout containing a list of select adjectives, which could be used to describe movies in a positive as well as in a negative way. As you would see in the screenshot below, I asked students to create a sentence each with six of the words we studied. They would then create a sticky note signed by their name. In my example, you could see that Ben responded to my request posting his sticky note. However, one of the words was left out. I created another sticky note to let him know and he responded back that he would post later that day after school. I chose a different color when I replied back to him so that it would be easier for him to notice. 

I could also use this tool to ask students to post questions they may have from a lesson (whereby I could answer on the wall or in the classroom) or I could post some questions for the students (whereby they could take note of as main points to extract or as questions to think about before the next class). 

I am always racing against time. I always wish I had more time to do more with them. I want to have more time to review what we had studied the week before (recycling TLC), check their comprehension, be able to ask them to create with what I have presented, etc. I believe that tools such as PrimaryWall could allow me to do just this. In a way, it serves as an alternative to chat rooms. However, it provides a more fun, informal environment for me to interact with my students. Through this interaction, I would also have an opportunity to "force" them to create in L2 outside the classroom.

Second tool I found worth mentioning is NoteStar, which has been designed to assist with research paper preparation. Teachers and students sign up separately at this website:  http://notestar.4teachers.org/ Voila!! Lots of useful features at teachers’ and students’ fingertips!! 

NoteStar can help students create topics and sub-topics (there is a Think Tank tool to help with this), assign topics/sub-topics to other members of the group, take and organize notes, and keep track of source information (once you have found material you would like to use for your paper and subsequently cite, all you have to do is click on the NoteCard button to allow this source to be automatically captured). Teachers, on the other hand, can use this tool to create/edit/view class rosters, create projects/groups as well as track their progress, send and receive messages from students, and check out the sources cited by the students (credibility, etc.).

Casa Notes is the third tech tool I would like to highlight in this post. This tool allows teachers to create and customize notes easily and quickly, which then can be sent home to students’ parents or handed to students in class. Let’s face it!! We are not all born with the “art genes” J. The best part of this tool is that notes can be created in English or Spanish (sí mi amigo!!!). This would probably be very useful for those planning to go back to the US one day.

There are different templates available based on the note type desired. One is able to pick a color scheme, customize parts of the content or add a graphic. The following note types are available to choose from: field trip permission, student progress report, homework, “Well done!”, student contract, outstanding performance, student citizen award, “Thank you!”, “On target!”, parent-teacher conferences, medication and self-medication. Below please find a sample “Well done!” note in English and Spanish. More information can be obtained at: http://casanotes.4teachers.org/#

In Pursuit of Authenticity..

Last class, we co-taught an activity from Harmer. Since then I have been thinking about how to make my teaching more authentic. We specifically talked about providing authentic reading activities as well as posing authentic questions. I tried to apply what I have learnt in my class and tried to ask authentic questions such as “Everybody’s clear?,” “Here comes the second number!!” etc. One thing remains very clear. I need to continue to put more time and thought into my lesson planning to work towards establish authenticity…

Last Sunday, as an ice-breaker, I started a short discussion about summer vacation and asked students to tell me what they have planned/what they wished to do during upcoming summer vacation. I am aware that as Korean school systems are highly competitive, parents often push their children in extreme ways which cause them to get very stressed.  Summer vacations are no exceptions either. Having knowledge of this beforehand, I prepared a simple handout providing some suggestions for fun yet educational things they could do with their friends and/or family. Some suggestions included going camping with family, visiting local art/science centers or museums with friends or family, going to a play or concert as well as picking up a new hobby. I also provided information on a nearby woodworking studio where they could take classes at a reasonable price to learn how to make simple things. They were all quite surprised to see that there was such a studio located so near. Personally, I feel that, as their teacher, I should care about their mental well-being and that I could make a positive contribution no matter how small in this regard. I suppose this thought for an ice-breaker was fueled by our reading about Stephen Krashen’s theory on SLA and one of his key hypotheses, which he refers to as the Affective Filter Hypothesis. Simply put, this hypothesis argues that emotional states, attitudes, motivation, and needs all play a big role in SLA and can inhibit (by acting as an “affective filter”, sort of like an “imaginary barrier”) or encourage a students’ learning of the target language.

As far as the lesson topic, we talked about big numbers. I had discovered a few weeks back that they had problems with reading big numbers. To go about doing so, I had planned two activities. First was bingo in an attempt to get my points across in a fun, interactive way. Students had to pick and write down nine numbers from a list of 25 I had provided. Then I called numbers randomly and read once or twice (upon their request) until someone called bingo. Subsequently, whoever called bingo had to read back all his nine numbers for my confirmation. However, my underlying aim with this was to get that particular student to practice reading numbers. They enjoyed bingo so much that they asked to play once more. I had absolutely no problem with this. I do want to allow them to self-select as much as possible a la Responsive-Collaborative Discourse in hopes of maximizing student-student interaction as well as students’ L2 use. We went ahead and played bingo one more time. Therefore, I decided to do the second activity I had prepared for them this coming Sunday instead and, this way, it will also serve to recycle TLC.

One interesting thing while playing bingo was that my reticent student was the dark horse. Rest of the students was surprised when he had called out “bingo!” first time we had played the game. They were more surprised to see me reward him (the winner) with a small bag of cookies. The race was on!! I could “see” their competitive side emerge even more. To “exploit” this golden opportunity to get this reticent student to talk, I asked him to come up and call numbers with me. I gradually stepped back and he was calling the numbers all by himself with the exception of stepping in a few times to model how to stress the second syllable when pronouncing numbers such as “sixteen” and “sixty” so the rest of the students could tell clearly what number was called. Afterwards, I summarized the lesson topic in the following way: 1) order of large numbers is thousand, million, billion, trillion {they did know up to billion; I stopped after trillion as it is highly unlikely that they will encounter larger numbers), 2} use commas to separate thousands, millions, etc., 3) use “and” before the last number.  Lastly, we practiced reading 123,042, 83214 and 1,256,721 to finish off. Another thing I realized during bingo was that most of the time they are not using complete sentences when they ask me a question or answer me (“one more time”, “cross?” were a few I noticed when I watched the video). I need to remind them again to use complete sentences when asking questions or answering me.

We have just read about extensive/listening in Chapter 18, Harmer. I really loved the idea of playing music in the background while students are working on activities. I already know that majority of them like listening to music (I had asked them a few weeks back to write down three things they like). This coming Sunday, I am planning to ask them if they would be ok with listening to music while working on activities. I will be suggesting easy listening music such as Michael Bublé, Frank Sinatra, Laura Fygi and alike. This would make the class more relaxed and fun. Furthermore, music should contribute to the development of their listening skills, improve their concentration and even motivate them further. If they are ok with my suggestion, perhaps down the road I could try using different types of music as well as incorporating music to beyond activity time.

2-in-1..

I would like to start my blog by putting my thoughts about my microteaching on paper.

I felt that it went better than I had expected. However, my classmates could not exactly portray my students’ proficiency levels. They were very participating and long-answering, which in reality my students are not. Their participation is increasing. However, they are not able to produce long or complex utterances at this time.

As I had already taught this preview in class and in fact I was re-teaching to my classmates, it was nice to have a second chance. I was able to correct some problems I had experienced. For example, I had practiced greeting in pairs instead of choral repetition, which had originally taken place. in addition, when I first taught the preview in class, although I had asked students to nominate others to follow, I had not asked them to pose the question, which after the fact I had realized and changed for re-teaching last Saturday.

After watching the video, I realized that I took a real long time with the greeting. The reason why I had to explain why there was a need to greet at the beginning of class and why “Good afternoon” was an appropriate greeting was that until teaching my preview I had not officially practiced this in my class and hence, on that day, I had made a point to explain to students thoroughly why this change suddenly after four weeks. For re-teaching then, I kept this part intact, which made me feel afterwards that perhaps my classmates thought I was a little strange.

Lastly, I would have loved to see myself smile more. I will be watching out for this very closely.

Now, I would like to talk about my class yesterday…

Upon realizing that greeting in pairs would depict a more real-life situation, we started with that followed by an ice-breaker. I had planned to talk about K-pop Star as it is nearing to an end and is a very popular show among Koreans. I did not know and did not anticipate, however, that my students had no time to watch this show (or any TV for that matter) lately. I had printed out pictures of the top 3 contestants, whom they did know. Luckily, they had watched this show at least once and they knew what it was about, the judges, etc. I kept it short and sweet, and moved on to assign their homework. However, I was able to bring up the difference between who one thinks will win versus who one wishes to see win a competition.

With the homework I assigned, I will be able to recycle the Target Language Content from last week’s class (preview) as it will enable them to keep working with the newly-learnt vocabulary as well as obtain information online by using Google. I was initially planning to have them individually work on it. However, I changed it to a group activity instead and they will be completing it in a group of three. I am realizing that they need more pair and group work activities to develop skills, which will be important for them later in the professional world. Given that they do not know how to work in pairs and groups, I believe that they do not get to do much of these at school or private institutes. Group work offers additional benefits to students compared to working individually including having an opportunity to discuss and explain concepts/words/phrases to one another, which would help to refine their understanding as well as helping to break assignments/tasks into steps, which would help to complete more complex tasks than they could on their own. Moreover, I changed the due date for this assignment to April 20^th as they will be having exams all week this week and I did not want to add more stress to this very stressful week already. They will be preparing a country profile for Korea similar to that for France, which we went through in class. I instructed them to include basic information on Korea’s climate, cuisine including staple foods, currency, official language, sub-division of land (provinces, etc.), surface area, population, capital city and other major cities, neighboring countries and surrounding bodies of water. They can include other information above and beyond these categories. On April 20^th, the two groups will be sharing what they have prepared in class. I will ask both groups questions as well as allow students from the other group to ask the presenting group questions for comprehension check. I emailed them France’s country profile to keep as a reference and I will be available to answer any questions they may have via email or text messaging.

Next I did a warm-up for the lesson topic to activate their schemata in preparation for learning new information. The topic was imperatives. It was self-selected by the students (I had suggested three topics to them via email to choose from). For my warm-up, I asked two students to volunteer to come up to the front. After much encouragement, one of my high-level students half raised his hand. I took that as a yes... He then persuaded (or shall we say forced??) to bring the student who was sitting next to him along. I gave them two to three imperatives each to follow (e.g.: sit down on the floor, touch your chin, take off your glasses, etc.). Then I invited the other students to give them some imperatives as well. They took this opportunity to even ask one student to dance lightly. They had a ball with it. Little did they know that I would be next asking them to come up to the front. This time, after me, the other two students gave some imperatives and it was revenge time (two of my students could not attend the class yesterday hence there was a total of four students). The student who had been asked to dance asked back to this student to sing a song. Boy, we had a good time!!     

After the warm-up, to get them to work with the concept, I passed out two worksheets that I had put together. After working through the worksheets in pairs, we went over them altogether where I offered corrective feedback as necessary and suggested alternative ways to answer, where appropriate. Afterwards, I summarized the uses of imperatives with one or two quick examples (to give a direct order, to give instructions, etc.). I mentioned how we could be more polite while still giving orders by using the magic word “please”. In fact, one of my high-level students had guessed it before I had told them, which made me very happy. Lastly, we talked about positive and negative forms of imperatives. During these activities, I was surprised to see them use certain words, which I had no idea that they knew. For example, in one of the worksheets, they were provided with some signs (like public signs) and they had to write down what wording would go with each sign. There was one which meant to indicate that pets were not allowed. It was a picture of a dog on the sign and yet they knew the words “pet” and “allow”. I had expected their answers to be something like no dogs, don’t bring dogs, etc.  

While they were working on the worksheets, for the first time, two students asked me questions. This was one of the highlights of the class. One student asked what bin meant and another student (one of my quiet students) asked me to tell him the meaning of cheat as well as the correct spelling for “quiet”.

I wish to end my blog by mentioning something rather surprising. I found out yesterday that they did not really know what it meant to work on a worksheet in pairs. Even after I had clearly matched each with another student, I realized that they started writing answers on their own worksheet from the get-go and there was absolutely no discussion happening. So, I intervened smoothly and explained to them that they should work on the worksheet together and, if they wished, they could just write the answers together on the same piece of paper. Although they improved afterwards, I have to keep guiding them to really work in pairs in the true sense. I guess we never really know what we may end up teaching in our language classrooms…

More pouring right out of me...

Here comes the sequel for my blog from late last night…

I had so much to reflect on this time that I jotted my ideas down pretty much anywhere as it came to me (my mobile phone, class notebook, posted notes at work {yes, I am often reflecting on how I taught that week, about assignments due, etc. at the office}).

After the preview activity, I passed out a handout, which was a basic country profile of France pre-divided into six sections (as there are six of them). I nominated the first student to read the first section. Afterwards, they took turns alternatively to nominate others to go next… We went over any unfamiliar words section by section and I tried to make sure that all had understood the overall meaning. I wrote any discussed words or others which I had introduced building on these words on the whiteboard (for example: when we were talking about the cuisine of France, I brought up the phrase “staple food”, etc.)

If students did not verbally express any difficulty with regards to the section read, I tried to anticipate which words could have been unfamiliar, posed them questions about these words and about the meaning of a sentence/section for comprehension check. I tried to point out to them how they could use clues from the context to assign meaning to words at times (we tried this with the word “vast” which had appeared in this sentence: “France is one of the world’s great wine-producing countries, and a country with a vast range of wines”).

I realized through this activity that most of them had problems reading numbers in English. Therefore, I decided to address this problem in an upcoming class. When I was trying to explain the difference between how numbers are read in Korean versus English, I used L1 to make my point clear. I only uttered the word “manwon” (meaning 10,000 in Korean) a few times and “sip” (10 in Korean), “baeg” (100 in Korean) and “cheon” (1000 in Korean) each once during this process. They were all nodding to mean “I got it!” but I will see it for myself when I revisit this topic down the line.

  

I was not at all surprised that they had problems reading numbers. I was in fact kind of expecting it. Honestly, I have not yet met any Korean who did not have problems with this. I know from myself that I had and still have many problems when I trying to read numbers or when I am dealing with money in Korean...

Next we proceeded with going over their homework (they were supposed to choose a country they wished to travel to and answer 4 questions {name of the country, which continent the country is in, population of the country and main language spoken in this country} by looking up information using Google). I nominated students one by one to tell me what they had written down. To finish off this activity we listed the names of all seven continents…

Moreover, in an attempt to use Responsive-Collaborative Discourse once again, I emailed students and suggested three potential topics for an upcoming class to choose one from. By allowing them to have a voice in the topic selection, I hope that they will be more interested, participate more and ready to learn more than ever something new… Unlike the first time (I had asked them to get together and suggest one topic to me), I gave them a bit more structure this time by suggesting three topics with examples to make them understand what each entailed to make it easier for them to pick one. They are all supposed to email me back to indicate their preference by tomorrow (this Wednesday). Let’s cross our fingers…  

I had sent this email out on Friday with a text message which followed asking them to check their emails. By the time we had a class on Sunday (two days ago), one of the students had already replied to me. He had also made an effort to ensure there were no grammatical errors. There was a salutation and an ending to his email as well. I was very happy and yet surprised as he is one of the lower-level students in my class. As a positive reinforcement, I gave him a cookie at the end of the class that Sunday. He and the rest of the students were quite surprised by my action. I hope and believe that this could be a drive for them to try harder to participate. I am planning to use such positive stimulus regularly to reward different behaviors (whoever replies first to me in class/over email, whoever answers correctly to a question, whoever participates the most in class, etc.). I will not be using it every class or extremely often though as I would not want it to result in a “praise overload” or reduce the power of the reinforcement. Even if their utterances are not 100% grammatically correct, with more opportunities to create with L2, they will be increasing their chances of improving their English proficiency. As one of my classmates put it when I asked her opinion last Saturday: “quantity quantity then you will get quality.”

At the end of the class I asked them each to write down three things they liked on a piece of paper. This was a suggestion yet from another classmate last Saturday. I plan to use these as discussion topics down the line. By picking topics they are interested in, I hope that I will be able to get them to participate more and be able to produce longer utterances.

When I watched my video recording over for the first time, I was pleasantly surprised to discover a few things. Overall I had less self-answers and I had asked more referential questions. Moreover, I seemed to be nominating students equally (when I compare myself especially to my first two classes with them), and finally when two students were talking to each other in L1 during pair work, I had approached and interrupted them gently in English (thank you Tom for this valuable tip), which had made them switch to using English. All in all, quite a few ups and surely downs to tackle as well…

I am looking forward to Sunday already…