I’m a planner. Seriously. I find things like spreadsheets and calendaring and color-coding to be freakishly satisfying. Plans help me to get my thoughts organized, and allow me to feel prepared and confident standing up in front of a group of wily students. But…
Things change.
I had a writing activity planned for Thursday, but other things took longer than expected and I knew we couldn’t finish it in the eight remaining minutes of class. So I did something else.
Also, sometimes your plans to plan fall through.
Agatha and I usually take a few minutes after class to discuss what we’d like to cover in the next class and divide up who’s planning/leading what. We didn’t get to this on Thursday, then campus was closed on Friday because of a massive snow storm, then Agatha got sick over the weekend and didn’t come into work yesterday. There was no time to plan today’s class until about an hour before it this morning, so that’s what we did. We prepared bits and pieces asynchronously, then figured out how to make them flow together in the ten minutes before class started… Then Agatha remembered that a colleague would be observing during the second half of the class, so we completely rearranged things again three minutes before class. Then things took longer than expected, so we rearranged things on the spot throughout the class.
Lesson learned: Planning is nice, but not planning or not following the plan can be okay too.
Showing posts with label Agatha. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Agatha. Show all posts
2.05.2012
Assessment
The school where I’m teaching generally uses an outcomes-based assessment method. In order to advance at the end of the term, students need to have learned the skills and content that the current level is designed to teach. It’s Agatha’s* (and, to some degree, my) responsibility to assess whether or not the students display these outcomes, but it’s not always easy. For one thing, our textbook doesn’t include any assessment materials, so anything we use has to be found elsewhere or created by one of us.
Sometimes Agatha assigns homework that can be collected and graded, but many of the students don’t turn it in. They also tend to work with their friends, so it’s difficult to get a true read of how each student is doing.
Tests are another way of assessing, but they take up already-limited instruction time. In three weeks of class, Agatha has only given two “formal” in-class assessments. There was a vocabulary test a couple of weeks ago, and Thursday’s class started with a reading test. They were given 15 minutes to complete it, but only two of the students finished. The rest begged for more time. I think it really shook their confidence. Tariq*, in particular, was having a lot of trouble. Several of the students were “using the dictionary” on their cell phones until Agatha asked them not to, but Tariq couldn’t let it go and had to be asked several more times. Once he gave up on the phone, he resorted to looking at Mustafa’s* test for help. Agatha asked him to please just try on his own, to which he replied, “I can’t thinking. I feel… I feel…dumb.”
Agatha also has a great way of assessing the students without their knowing that it’s happening. She created a simple grid of the student’s names and some of the outcomes we’re looking for. This could easily be adapted for other contexts. While one of us is teaching, the other is listening. Any time we hear a student hit or miss one of these outcomes, we add a check or an X to the grid. Though it’s definitely not the only kind of assessment we should be doing, I love this method because:
Sometimes Agatha assigns homework that can be collected and graded, but many of the students don’t turn it in. They also tend to work with their friends, so it’s difficult to get a true read of how each student is doing.
Tests are another way of assessing, but they take up already-limited instruction time. In three weeks of class, Agatha has only given two “formal” in-class assessments. There was a vocabulary test a couple of weeks ago, and Thursday’s class started with a reading test. They were given 15 minutes to complete it, but only two of the students finished. The rest begged for more time. I think it really shook their confidence. Tariq*, in particular, was having a lot of trouble. Several of the students were “using the dictionary” on their cell phones until Agatha asked them not to, but Tariq couldn’t let it go and had to be asked several more times. Once he gave up on the phone, he resorted to looking at Mustafa’s* test for help. Agatha asked him to please just try on his own, to which he replied, “I can’t thinking. I feel… I feel…dumb.”
Agatha also has a great way of assessing the students without their knowing that it’s happening. She created a simple grid of the student’s names and some of the outcomes we’re looking for. This could easily be adapted for other contexts. While one of us is teaching, the other is listening. Any time we hear a student hit or miss one of these outcomes, we add a check or an X to the grid. Though it’s definitely not the only kind of assessment we should be doing, I love this method because:
- It doesn’t take away from instruction time
- It isn’t as stressful for the students
- It’s relatively easy, especially with both of us in the classroom
- Because we do it during every class, we have a good sense of where the students are, what we still need to work on, and how much they are improving.
*Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
1.27.2012
When you get bored, hide your money.
Yesterday’s story was a real yawner. Seriously, just about all of us yawned at least once. It wasn’t that it was especially boring (though admittedly, it wasn’t particularly interesting either), or that we were all unusually tired (though I actually was). The real reason for the yawning outbreak was that the story was about the contagiousness of yawns (and it seems to be true, because I just yawned while typing that). I printed out pictures of yawing people and animals that I found on the internet. Before reading the story, I challenged each of the students to look at his picture for 30 seconds without yawning. I think about half of them were able to do it. I thought this would be a fun, kinesthetic way for them to get the main idea of the story. They definitely got it, but it didn’t really turn out to be as fun as I’d hoped. They got bored (which may or may not have prompted some more yawning) and then they got a little restless.
Speaking of restlessness, these men can get rowdy. Generally, I enjoy their enthusiasm. Who wouldn’t love a student who wants to answer a question so badly that he just about falls out of his seat? But sometimes the speaking out of turn/over someone else/all at once, side conversations, teasing, giggling, etc. can get a little out of hand.
Agatha* uses an interesting class management tool: Monopoly money. When the students come into class, she gives them each two “dollars.” If they’re late, she immediately takes one back. They can earn extra “money” with really outstanding answers/participation. They can lose money for being disruptive, speaking in Arabic, and coming back from the break late. If she asks for volunteers/answers and nobody is jumping at the opportunity, she encourages participation by offering a dollar. At the end of class, they turn back in all their dollars. In exchange they get… nothing.
Before I saw this system in action, I had my doubts about how well it would work. I mean, these are adults! Will they really be motivated by fake money – fake money that doesn’t even buy them anything? Surely not, I thought. Well, I thought wrong. They LOVE it. Whenever they’re given a dollar, they try to wheedle Agatha into giving them more (usually four – I’m not sure why that’s the magic number). They police their friends, calling them out for speaking Arabic or arriving late. They try (very fervently) to answer her questions, even when they don’t have a clue. They just seem to have fun with it. Case in point: Agatha taught the first half of class yesterday, so I was sitting among the students. Sharif* was sitting next to me. When he got up to leave for the break, he looked at me, then he looked at his stash of dollars, then he snatched them up, ran across the room, “hid” them under the overhead projector, winked at me, then walked out.
Speaking of restlessness, these men can get rowdy. Generally, I enjoy their enthusiasm. Who wouldn’t love a student who wants to answer a question so badly that he just about falls out of his seat? But sometimes the speaking out of turn/over someone else/all at once, side conversations, teasing, giggling, etc. can get a little out of hand.
Agatha* uses an interesting class management tool: Monopoly money. When the students come into class, she gives them each two “dollars.” If they’re late, she immediately takes one back. They can earn extra “money” with really outstanding answers/participation. They can lose money for being disruptive, speaking in Arabic, and coming back from the break late. If she asks for volunteers/answers and nobody is jumping at the opportunity, she encourages participation by offering a dollar. At the end of class, they turn back in all their dollars. In exchange they get… nothing.
via thecampuscompanion.com
Before I saw this system in action, I had my doubts about how well it would work. I mean, these are adults! Will they really be motivated by fake money – fake money that doesn’t even buy them anything? Surely not, I thought. Well, I thought wrong. They LOVE it. Whenever they’re given a dollar, they try to wheedle Agatha into giving them more (usually four – I’m not sure why that’s the magic number). They police their friends, calling them out for speaking Arabic or arriving late. They try (very fervently) to answer her questions, even when they don’t have a clue. They just seem to have fun with it. Case in point: Agatha taught the first half of class yesterday, so I was sitting among the students. Sharif* was sitting next to me. When he got up to leave for the break, he looked at me, then he looked at his stash of dollars, then he snatched them up, ran across the room, “hid” them under the overhead projector, winked at me, then walked out.
*Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
1.19.2012
"He is beautiful."
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.
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