esl ::: emily's so luscious

Practicum, Day Twelve

Tonight was another big class, and I had planned for either big or small. I'm glad that worked - so commensensical! The lesson was for money and shopping. I used the Picture Dictionary as a guide, which worked rather well, considering that the pictures themselves for the shopping part are not very good. The students who arrived early worked on the computer, but as more students got there, I just pulled them off the computer and combined the group as a whole. I wanted to try that before I'm observed again. I did remove the side-by-side CDs, so the ladies working on the computer did the money/shopping section of the picture dictionary. Except Carmen, who works so quickly that she finished it and moved on to a chapter of her own selection. I will have to have backup sections for her in future, or pre-determined activities from the side-by-side that will go with the lesson. With the class as a whole, I went over the money and shopping vocab, and word partnerships. I learned the Mexican gesture for "cheap"! I suspected that my students don't use banks, with the exception of Yolande. I found I was correct in this assumption. We discussed the different words for banking anyway. I wonder though, if I need to edit that out of my course objectives. [Feedback on this would be helpful, Chandrika, Aaron, Connie and whoever else reads this.] After the break, I wanted to divide the class into groups. This is something I've been trying to figure out how to do since I began, but I never could get a grasp on it. As I started, Pedro came to the rescue. He split the class into three groups, and it was perfect. He actually split them according to level, but not homogenously. Two high beginners were paired with the low beginners; one high beginner with two low-intermediates; and two low-intermediates with one high-intermediate and a Korean high beginner. The key was to put the intermediates with Lee, so they were compelled to speak English during the entire process - this challenged them and included Lee. Very clever of Pedro, who seemed to do it without thinking. It's something I'll think about for future group work.
In groups, I asked them to write out a grocery list, referring to the food sections of the picture dictionary. I told them that they had $100 to spend, and could not go over that amount. I didn't have amounts written, so they had to do that from memory. They had no trouble with that, but I'd like to do some more with amounts. I discovered that they are not sure of how to write amounts. Often, the price included a dollar sign before and a cent sign after - logical, b/c we say both. I will need to plan that into the next lesson - how to read, write, and say prices. Overall, the class went very well. They were much more focused than last lesson - maybe b/c the class was larger, but more likely b/c I kept the lesson quite simple instead of trying to do worksheets that didn't make any contextual sense.

posted by E.M @ 10:19 PM