Unfortunately, I ran into technical
problems last Sunday. Hence, I am not able to upload a video with this
reflective blog (could it be the unlucky 13 effect?).
Overall, I had a good class where I noticed
an increase in my students’ participation overall…
We started out with an ice-breaker where
I asked them to write down four things they do daily, their daily habits. I
gave them a handout to help out, which contained some suggestions (not in
complete sentences) to get their creative juices flowing. This ice-breaker not
only helped to smoothly transition us into prepositions, which I had intended
to cover as the main topic, but it also created an opportunity to go over the
differences between wake up/get up and go to bed/fall asleep. I also made a
point to highlight the fact that 12pm can also be referred to as “noon” and
12am as “midnight.”
We talked about prepositions “on”, “in”
and “at”. To help them to grasp when we use which one of these prepositions, I
made use of the “Prepositions of Time Pyramid” Adam had recommended to us on G+
a while back {please see below and visit: http://englishtips.davidharbinson.com/at-on-in-for-time/
for further information}. This was followed by two activities. First one was a mechanical, controlled, fill-in-the-blanks type
activity; whereas the second activity was a more contextualized one I had found
online.
I would like to tell you all more about
this second activity as it was very well received by my students. I asked them
to work in pairs. Each pair was presented with the identical copies of an image
of a room containing a conference table with chairs around it, three windows,
and a shelf on the left side. This meant that the image had plenty of “empty
spaces.” I gave them a total of five sentences (due to time constraints); such
as “there is a vase on the table”, “there is a frame on the wall between the first
two windows from the left,” etc. After hearing a sentence, they had to draw the
objects described in the places stated in the sentence. The pair with the
highest number of correct items was rewarded with a small box of cookies. Through
this activity, they gained new vocabulary (ceiling and vase) and got to
practice prepositions whereas I got to witness their artistic sides. We all had
fun with it…
Next, we worked on pronunciation. This
was my first time to integrate teaching pronunciation into my lessons. Two days
before class, I had emailed and asked them to bring a list of words they had
problems pronouncing. Their list included words such as “enthusiastic,” “souvenir,”
”available” and “opportunity” among others. We practiced breaking words down to
syllables, pronouncing individual syllables first before putting them together.
I asked them to repeat chorally and individually after me until their pronunciation
was at the accepted accurate level. Being a French word in origin, “souvenir”
was the hardest one of all. Moving forward, I encouraged them to keep a log of
words/phrases throughout the week and bring this list with them to class every
Sunday to go through and practice pronunciation.
Lastly, I introduced “Ed and Ted
Pronunciation Help” activity, which Laura had recommended in her Meth reading
post last week. Although after the fact I felt that I could have explained it a
lot better, they had got my message. We practiced using several verbs such as “played”,
“wanted”, “watched”, etc. Pronunciation will be integrated into the class again
this coming Sunday. I am planning to review “Ed and Ted” activity and practice
some more with several other verbs before going through their list of
words/phrases. Overall, I thought teaching pronunciation was more fun than I
had expected.
"Prepositions
of Time Pyramid” by Dr. Keith Folse:
At is the smallest part of the pyramid at the top and represents the
smallest unit of time typically used (the hour). On is the second smallest part of the pyramid and is placed in the
middle. It represents the second smallest unit of time used (the day). The
bottom of the pyramid is the largest and we have in here. This part represents the largest units of time used (months,
seasons, years, decades, centuries).
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