Today was my first day in class, but it actually started on
Tuesday, so they had already met once without me. It’s an introductory (the
lowest level offered at the school) reading class. There are 10 students, and
all are male. One is Kuwaiti, one is from the UAE, and the rest are from Saudi
Arabia. They range in age from about 17 to 60.
Agatha* is my mentor. She is from Hungry, but you’d never guess that English isn’t her first language. She has many years of experience teaching in several different contexts. When we met yesterday, she promised me that she would be entertaining in the classroom, and she didn’t disappoint. She moves around a LOT and both her voice and her body language are extremely expressive. It would be pretty difficult to ignore her. I think I tend to be pretty stationary when I teach – mostly because I cling to my notes like a security blanket – so I hope watching Agatha will help me loosen up a bit.
She started out the class with a vocabulary review activity (the words were introduced on Tuesday). She gave each student a couple of cards, each with one word on it, and asked them to describe it, act it out, or give a synonym. As I type, I realize how boring this sounds, but it wasn’t. Like I said, Agatha is entertaining.
After a couple more short activities, we jumped into Unit 1 in the textbook. We’re using “Easy True Stories: A Picture-based Beginning Reader” by Sandra Heyer. I can’t speak to the content yet, but the cover is truly hideous. It’s mostly brown with some clashing blues and a bit of purple thrown in for good measure. It’s also distractingly busy and has a font reminiscent of the old west. They say you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, which is good, because this one isn't going to incite a love of reading in anyone any time soon. Thank goodness I’m just borrowing a copy, because I definitely don't want it to sully my bookcase permanently.
The Unit 1 pre-reading activity is a series of line-drawn scenes from “The Color TV”, a gripping tale of crime and deception. The book instructs, “Look at the pictures. Listen to your teacher tell the story,” but Agatha had the students describe what they saw in the different scenes. She incorporated some more vocabulary review and a little grammar lesson into this activity, focusing the students’ attention on present and present continuous tenses.
Update: There are only eight students in the class now. Yousef* stopped attending for unknown (to me) reasons and Faisal* transferred to a Basic
I class (the next level up).
Agatha* is my mentor. She is from Hungry, but you’d never guess that English isn’t her first language. She has many years of experience teaching in several different contexts. When we met yesterday, she promised me that she would be entertaining in the classroom, and she didn’t disappoint. She moves around a LOT and both her voice and her body language are extremely expressive. It would be pretty difficult to ignore her. I think I tend to be pretty stationary when I teach – mostly because I cling to my notes like a security blanket – so I hope watching Agatha will help me loosen up a bit.
She started out the class with a vocabulary review activity (the words were introduced on Tuesday). She gave each student a couple of cards, each with one word on it, and asked them to describe it, act it out, or give a synonym. As I type, I realize how boring this sounds, but it wasn’t. Like I said, Agatha is entertaining.
After a couple more short activities, we jumped into Unit 1 in the textbook. We’re using “Easy True Stories: A Picture-based Beginning Reader” by Sandra Heyer. I can’t speak to the content yet, but the cover is truly hideous. It’s mostly brown with some clashing blues and a bit of purple thrown in for good measure. It’s also distractingly busy and has a font reminiscent of the old west. They say you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, which is good, because this one isn't going to incite a love of reading in anyone any time soon. Thank goodness I’m just borrowing a copy, because I definitely don't want it to sully my bookcase permanently.
The Unit 1 pre-reading activity is a series of line-drawn scenes from “The Color TV”, a gripping tale of crime and deception. The book instructs, “Look at the pictures. Listen to your teacher tell the story,” but Agatha had the students describe what they saw in the different scenes. She incorporated some more vocabulary review and a little grammar lesson into this activity, focusing the students’ attention on present and present continuous tenses.
In the “easy true story”, Jim sees a robbery take place.
Since giving a detailed physical description is often a key part of eyewitness
testimony, Agatha had the students practice this vital life skill. She gave
them each a magazine clipping and asked them to take turns describing the
person pictured. As a warm-up she asked the class as a whole to describe me
while she wrote key vocabulary and sentence structures on the board. Omar* went
first. “He is beautiful,” he said... I’ll sleep easy tonight knowing that the police
aren’t likely to find me with that description!
*Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
Beautiful you!
ReplyDeleteNever a dull moment in your class....
Mia