24th of August 2015 - Conversation and starting with a decoded text

Well the Monday lesson started about 15min late because the "Homework-books" finally arrived and they were distributed to the kids and they had to copy all their homework into the book. Plus, the  former teacher of the class came to visit. And she also wanted to hear the "viva la vida".

But then I started my English lesson. I told them that I wanted to have a conversation with them every morning before we start with the English. So I had the following lines on the blackboard:

GOOD MORNING EVERYBODY
GOOD MORNING MRS. KÜNDIG

HOW ARE YOU TODAY?

WE ARE FINE THANK YOU, HOW ARE YOU?

I'M WONDERFUL THANKS. ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO HAVING ENGLISH TODAY?

OH YES, WE CANNOT WAIT!

GREAT, THAN LET'S GET STARTED!

YAY!!!

Went through this conversation with the kids until they understood and then we talked it though in different emotions. Normally, angry, sad, tired, whispering and over-excited.

Then I handed out some ABC - lists and asked the kids to write down on the list every word they knew about food. There could be food, drinks, tools to eat and cook, tastes and more. I told them how to work with this ABC - list. They didn't have to wait at the A until they have found something and then go to the B. No, the aim was to wander up and down the list with their eyes and where ever they could think of an English word, they write it down.

I gave them 5 minutes to work with this list. Then I had them to compare their list with a classmate. Not the one next to them, because they have probably already seen each others lists. After another 3 minutes I stopped them and asked them to write down today's date on the list. We will get back to this list later, but for now they have activated their knowledge about food.

Now I asked them to take out the decoded text I want to work with in this unit: Shopping for a school camp I explained again how this should work. "I read the English text real slowly and you read along the German translation - Cross out every word you don't need help with, and so on"

Well, it didn't really work so well for all the student. At least 3 students I noticed to read the German waaaay behind where I was with my English version. It took them a long time to cross out the words. I'm thinking of giving this as a homework next time. Or having them read the text by themselves first because there are always so many words in those text that they already know. Like that, they could really concentrate on the words, they don't know yet while reading together. Well we only had time to read the text once. We'll go on with it next Monday.

Friday there will be no English since we go into the woods with the "Lung League" and on Monday I want to take a test with the kids to check their English level. I'll take another test at the end of the year to see their improvement.

So this was my first English - English lesson. Just once I almost said one word in German but I could swallow the ending :-)