Officially active again....with an activity illustration
I have started classes with my internship. Very different class sizes, with my T/Th class having about 15 students the first day and my M/W class having four. It may even out or change a bit.
The class went reasonably well, I thought. Not the greatest, but it was my first time teaching after 18 months and my first time teaching adults ever. The class has a pronunciation focus. The only major gaff/weird thing was a problem when I was having my students give me verbs, and one of my Central American students tried to say "serious". Since my brain was thinking of verbs I thought he said "seduce", and started to write it on the board before my brain caught up to what I was writing and what he had actually said. ^^;
Last week we began by studying the difference between the "i" vowel sound, like in "ship" and "will" and the "iy"/"ee" sound, as in "sheep" and "wheel". Today we're getting into slightly harder ones, and by students are getting the following story (which I wrote. Not particularly authentic, but it was hard to find an authentic text that was both of a level this class could understand and that had good examples of the target sound. So they get a story about Amy's farm:
AMY SMITH'S FARM
Amy Smith is going to feed apple peels to sheep.
Her grandfather died and gave his farm to her in his will.
Her bicycle has no wheels and she must walk over many hills to the farm.
Amy is wearing high heels. For breakfast she ate beans for energy.
Amy’s feet hurt. She wants some pills for her hurting feet.
To test and help with comprehension, the first thing I'm going to have the students do is look at illustrations for the story and put them in an order they think is appropriate. Amy's Farm not being a real story, I got to illustrate it myself. My poor students (although compared to some, this isn't half bad).
So there's that. Like I said before, the tone of this journal may change a bit from now on, as this post illustrates. I will include any funny/weird things that happen, but it's also going to be a journal with examples of activities and what I'm actually doing in class.
The class went reasonably well, I thought. Not the greatest, but it was my first time teaching after 18 months and my first time teaching adults ever. The class has a pronunciation focus. The only major gaff/weird thing was a problem when I was having my students give me verbs, and one of my Central American students tried to say "serious". Since my brain was thinking of verbs I thought he said "seduce", and started to write it on the board before my brain caught up to what I was writing and what he had actually said. ^^;
Last week we began by studying the difference between the "i" vowel sound, like in "ship" and "will" and the "iy"/"ee" sound, as in "sheep" and "wheel". Today we're getting into slightly harder ones, and by students are getting the following story (which I wrote. Not particularly authentic, but it was hard to find an authentic text that was both of a level this class could understand and that had good examples of the target sound. So they get a story about Amy's farm:
AMY SMITH'S FARM
Amy Smith is going to feed apple peels to sheep.
Her grandfather died and gave his farm to her in his will.
Her bicycle has no wheels and she must walk over many hills to the farm.
Amy is wearing high heels. For breakfast she ate beans for energy.
Amy’s feet hurt. She wants some pills for her hurting feet.
To test and help with comprehension, the first thing I'm going to have the students do is look at illustrations for the story and put them in an order they think is appropriate. Amy's Farm not being a real story, I got to illustrate it myself. My poor students (although compared to some, this isn't half bad).
So there's that. Like I said before, the tone of this journal may change a bit from now on, as this post illustrates. I will include any funny/weird things that happen, but it's also going to be a journal with examples of activities and what I'm actually doing in class.