esl ::: emily's so luscious

Practicum, Day Three

Genia called this morning to talk about class. I feel this is good progress. We discussed some activities to work on in class, and it just happened that she'd observed a colleague's class last night, which gave her some "great new ideas". One of them was to go online to Dave's ESL Cafe. Not exactly a new idea, but okay. Different, and not a textbook, so I'm game. I refrained from telling her that I've been researching ideas for using the internet and its resources in the classroom for almost a year now. Genia's colleague has been doing a unit on food and cooking. It's like my suggestions last week had to be reinforced by someone else, and then regurgitated as her own ideas for them to take hold. But since it allows me to implement what I'm working on for the class, I just smiled and nodded and told her she was brilliant. Hence, Genia encouraged me to take the class for the last hour of classtime.
Tonight I grabbed a handful of sales papers from the grocery store, enough for each student to have one. We talked about the names of different foods, sales and specials being offered, and where they do their grocery shopping. Then, looking at the sales paper, they wrote out a grocery list. Some of them were eager to read their list out loud, and others were hesitant. I'm beginning to see that some of them would be more outgoing in class if they had more confidence in their English skills, while others who never talk know more than they let on because they are so shy. I guess that would fall under "informal assessment". It was a good activity, and took the better part of an hour. Genia plans to take them to the grocery store for a field trip in a couple of weeks, and I showed her some useful pages in the picture dictionary that she can use for reference in the meantime. I don't want her to think I'm trying to take over, but I want the class to keep up with this new theme when I'm not there.
I feel like the grocery list activity fell a little flat tonight. I think a food magazine or colorful cookbook would have been better than the sales papers, which were a little overwhelming and text heavy. Instead of simply saying "beef", it was "cubed beef steak", and became complicated explaining that "beef" was the important word. I'm going to work on this and see what else I can come up with that might work better. The students didn't seem dissatisfied, nor did Genia, but I didn't see that it was much of a learning experience for them. If I rework it into a more communicative activity, I think they'll get more out of it.
Next week, I'm going to try out my "Recipe for Writing" lesson plan. Last week, Yolande said she'd like to learn to cook some American foods, and the other students are interested as well. I hope it goes well (it could very easily turn into absolute chaos), because Chandrika is observing me that night. I could wait for another night to try the recipe lesson, and do something more staid, but I think I'll take the risk. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.

posted by E.M @ 9:49 PM