esl ::: emily's so luscious

Practicum, Day Eleven ::: ProfObs2

I'm afraid my teaching takes the term "flexible" to a brand new level of madness. I planned a flexible lesson for possible groups, based on the numbers we've been having, and Malinda's participation. We had four students. They all came at different times. That's okay, but we needed to get started early so I could get some teaching done while Chandrika was there. Starting out on the computer is convenient with the staggered arrivals, but I have got to get them off the Side-by-Side! I just can't seem to juggle it, and it's not tied in to the regular class material. I tried to do the lesson I'd planned, but somehow the time gets away from me, and it turns to crazy. I let them spend too much time on the computer, b/c they seemed to be enjoying it, and I want them to do those activities. Then they took forever getting back from their break, though I'm sure I said five minutes. I did the warm-up discussion that I'd totally skipped earlier ... and that was useful, to find out what they'd studied before, and it got them thinking about the language. I think that worked out pretty well. I skipped around in my lesson plan, and did the worksheet before the vocab review, which was fine, since they'd been over that vocabulary before. Somehow, though, the worksheet didn't contain them at all. By that, I mean we talked about all kindsa stuff instead of the questions on the worksheet. Now, as far as I'm concerned, that's fine, on account of they're producing language, they're practicing conversation, and they're learning without even realizing it. We talked about last names, Gloria Estefan, J-Lo, basketball, weather in Mexico, butterflies, holidays, parties ... and some of it was related to the lesson, and some of it wasn't. I didn't manage to get them writing down sentences in English, which was something I'd really wanted to do. Maybe that's not as important as getting them to speak English while talking about something they're interested in, but the lack of structure concerns me. Shouldn't I be able to do both? I don't know if I lack confidence in my lesson-plan, or if I was too laid-back about it, but it didn't happen. After Chandrika left, we briefly reviewed the vocabulary, which again went off in a tangent about money and pronunciation. We were having conversation in English, about English, and I was able to answer questions for them, so I didn't stress too much about it. I can do fun, communicative, conversational, but without structure, I'm afraid any learning becomes accidental. How do I bring structure to this process, make it work, and stick to it?

posted by E.M @ 10:44 PM