This week review

     This week I taught Grade 1 and Grade 3.  I'll start with Grade 3. This week was the second of the 2 week cycle. Last week, I previewed the presentation that the students would give this week.  So this week, the entire class was dedicated to the student presentations. This class was entirely dialogic.  To measure the student's English ability, I would ask an open referential question about the invention that they had created.  They had to create an answer on the spot. I was also heartened when one class, students took it upon themselves to ask the other students in English other questions about their inventions.

     This week in Grade 1, I was teaching out of the textbook. We were covering the present perfect and prepositions. I must confess that I probably tried to cover too much material during the class. What I covered was probably enough for 2 separate classes.  So, next week, I'm going to narrow my focus. Among the highlights this week: My warm-up was very different than my previous one. I devised a game where the students watch a video clip, and then they have to guess how the clip ends. This was a dialogic game. I mostly got one word answers, but some students tried to answer with a question.  I also wanted to focus on my error correction. I never once gave the explicit correction to a student error. If I heard an incorrect answer, I would say it aloud to the class, and wait for some other student to say the correct answer. This is student self-correction.  And my final activity combined the spatial learner and the bodily/kinesthetic learning style. I set up a secret code around the room directing student to look a certain direction for the answer. This was preposition practice. After the game was introduced, the students could move around the room to solve the puzzle.  Overall, the game was very successful.