Week 8 Post

This week was Grade 1 and Grade 3. There are two weeks until the mid-term exams. Briefly with Grade 3, this is the last week that I will have them in class, so I decided to help them prepare for their exams. For review, I usually do a bomb game. The students like it because behind every question is a surprise amount of points. To make this activity dialogic, I made 18 of the 24 questions require the choosing team to ask another team a question reflecting a particular grammar point. So this is students asking students.

With Grade 1, this will be my last teaching lesson with them. The topic was the question "Can he dance" and the response "Yes, he can" or "No, he can't."  For increased talking time, I had a speaking activity, and a speaking game at the end of class.  Because this type of questioning is monologic, I expanded it a little to make it more dialogic. After the first question, I had the students ask "Why?" For the game, it was the same activity that I did last week with Grade 2. A student drew a picture on the board, and the other students need to guess the answer. To add a twist, I would then ask the team the question, and then they would need to answer. To introduce this activity, I tried not to speak at all until the students guessed the correct answer.

I did try a reading activity with my after school class. From the MT last week, I realized that I could do this type of activity better. I have a book entitled "Totally True." The book has picture drawings based on the story. I first passed out the pictures, and had the students write a caption for the story. I then had the students read their captions to the class. Then  I gave the story to the students, and had them read it to themselves. And then I would ask the students comprehension questions about the story. I like this type of activity. The amount of student talk time is much greater than my old method.