28th of September 2015 - Finishing the Rainbow Serpent and starting with shopping for a school camp

As usually we started this lesson with our good morning conversation and I held the conversation with about 9 kids because in the lesson before, my teaching partner let the paper circulate around the class asking them to tick their names if they were ready. And they were! All of them did great. I recorded them because there's no way I could have remembered how each one of them did.

We sang our new song to the main teacher and then I introduced today's topic to the class.


I told them, that if they had really listened passively to the "shopping for a school camp" text, they would be able to read the text with me. I handed out the following documents:
Shopping for a school camp - clozes

As soon as they got it they started filling in the gaps so I had to stop them because that was not what I wanted them to do. I asked them to read the text out loud along with me and I started straight away. I read the text and almost all of them could follow me without having the nouns in their text. So they really did listen to it passively. YAY!

I told them, that as soon as I would leave the room to record the last group that they should work in pairs and read the text to each other. The one reading should have the cloze in his/her hand and the other one should read the complete text and count the times he/she had to help the other. The main teacher told me that she'd put them into pairs.

So it was time now to finish our Rainbow Serpent project. The boy who was ill on Friday read part of his story to the class and just like all the others, he did great! We left the class room and recorded the last story in the separate room. Here's the recording:
Story 6 - A new flower comes to the mountain

Isn't it great!!

Coming back to the room, two of them read the text to each other and I had one of them read to me. He read it so fluently like you'd never think that he was reading from a cloze. Just once he read "people" instead of "children" but that made perfect sense.

After reading, they had to tell me how many mistakes they made and most of them had 0 to 1. About 4 had 2-4 and two of them had a lot more but admitted that they didn't really listen to it more than may be twice... But maybe that's exactly that they need... So they'll get another chance on Friday and after that, we'll have a two weeks break anyway. But I'm really looking forward working with this text, now they really seem to have initialised it so well :-)

So now that I had all the recordings I finished my evaluation table and created a serial letter in Word in form of a CD cover. It took me a while to figure out how I could format numbers in the Word document so I didn't get those 98.0153156813216846513% but just before becoming mad I found a instruction in the Internet...

So this is how it looks:
CD Cover with Reading Results

Now on Thursday they'll all get their personal CD Cover and can fold it just like I did on those pictures:

Evaluation of the reading test

Oh well... Where should I start...

After yesterday's reading test, I went home with lots of material and I didn't really have a clue, how I was supposed to give them a grade. In my eyes they all did wonderful, but that won't do me any good for they report cards so I had to come up with some kind of key...

First, I scanned the stories as texts so I was able copy them into a word document and count the words each student read because I wanted to make it fair for those who had longer texts to read.

I thought I was so smart because now I started to highlight words they read wrong and then I just calculated the correct words out of all the words and had a percentage of how much they've read correctly. Sounds great, doesn't it? Well this became harder and harder to judge the more texts I listened to.

• What do I do with kids who pronounced the words correctly but had to pause every other sentence? 
• What do I do with kids who read words that were not in the text but skipped words that were there? 
• And what do I do with those who pronounced the words correctly but due to their lack of practising couldn't read it fluently?

I started to realise that this whole thing was a lot more complex. And here is what I came up with:
I made three criteria: Pronunciation, Accuracy and Fluency

Pronunciation

• if someone pronounced the "came" as "come" or the "new" as "now".
• And I did NOT care if they said "wery" instead of "very" or if the "th" sound didn't come out correctly. Neither did I expect them to say "earth" 100% correctly (because that a real tough word), as long as I understood that they meant "earth", it was fine with me. Just one girl said "Youth" and that was a little too far away in my opinion.
• So if one child's text was 271 words long and it made 5 errors, it got 266/271 or 98.15%

Accuracy

• leaving out a word or mixing up words or just reading "he" instead of "she".
• So if one child's text was 271 words long and it made 5 errors, it got 266/271 or 98.15%

Fluency

• was if they read the whole sentence fluently. 
• So if one child's text was 15 sentences long and it stumbled in two sentences it got 13/15 or 86.67%

So I started over listening to those readings... But after the third text I realised that if the kids or the parents wanted to know where those mistakes happened, I needed to be able to show them and so I started highlighting the words in the text in different colours.

Soon I stopped doing this on the computer but printed it out and just wrote the letters P, A or F in the text when ever there was a mistake. So here's the result:

Evaluation Reading Test

Since they did not always have the same amount of text in the first and in the second round, it looks a little confusing but this way, I can show everybody who wants to know how I came up with the grades.

And here are the calculations... I hope this one boy will be back on Monday so I can record him and his group too. Then I'll make a Audio CD out of all the students reading with their grades on it. So they have the book and the CD to take home to their parents.

25th of September 2015 - THE TEST: reading in front of the class

Today I made a double lesson English to get through the reading tests.

We started with our conversation and another boy said that he was ready. He did it great too. There was just one short hesitation. I reminded the rest of the class that the aim was, that every one of them had this conversation with me by the end of the first quarter which was only one week to go.
I explained them, that if they still needed to practise, they could ask one of their class mates to read the "Mrs. Kündig part" and that they could try to give the answers without looking at the text. Because it's always there above the blackboard.

Today I asked them, what song they wanted to sing and the first answer I got was "what are you waiting for" and that's the song we sang.

Then the time had come for the "reading test".

Before the school started, I happened to see the boy that was struggling so much with standing in front of the class and I asked him how he felt about the reading today. He told me that he was very nervous. I said that I realised that he did so well with me in this room but as there were "hundreds" of ears around that he hardly read a word out loud. I told him, that there would be two chances for each child. One in front of the class and one with me in the room, reading to the dictating machine but I didn't want to torture him by making him stand in front of the class and that he could tell me if he didn't want to do it but he assured me that he would try and I told him how proud I was!

I handed out this Worksheet  I found on the "penguin readers" homepage. It's a worksheet with questions about the six stories in the book. So while groups 3-6 read through the questions to stories 1+2 the groups 1+2 came to the front and we organised the order in which they were going to read.

Before they started reading I asked the class what they'd be doing while they listen to the story to make sure everyone was reading along and highlighting the unknown words.

Then group 1 started. The boy I talked to before school was the second reader of this group and I have to admit I was kind of nervous too. But as he started reading, he did this so beautifully I was close to tears! I'm not putting the videos in this blog but the recordings I made later in a separate room. So you'll get the chance to hear them all.

That's how we went all the way through all the texts. So we stopped after two texts and I let them answer the questions and had the next two groups to come to me to decide which of them would read which part of the text. There were four kids reading the Caterpillar story and they looked at me a little disappointed as I divided the text into four sections so I let each child read half the text. This meant that the class heard the text twice but they did not mind. And even those children who have already read the stories wanted to read again :-)

While they read I tried to highlight those words they didn't pronounce correctly and the other teacher filmed them.

After each story we discussed the vocabulary and after the second "what's a ___?" question I repeated all the longer questions with the class and asked them to use them as well and they did.

So after the last group was through reading I asked the class to work on this worksheet and took the first group into the other room. There I told them, which words they hadn't pronounced correctly and let them read. Here are all these FANTASTIC results:

Story 1 - The Rainbow Serpent brings animals onto the earth
Again I would like to point out the second reader. He's freed of learning targets in Math, German, French, English and "People and Environment". Can you notice a difference between him and the others? Well his text was a little shorter and maybe not too difficult but I think he did fantastic!

Story 2 - The kangaroo makes a friend
In this story the second reader is actually really good in English but after class, he admitted that he hadn't really practised with the audio book. Can you hear the difference here?

Before getting ready with the next group, I realised that the bell would ring in about a minute but the two girls still wanted to read their story so I quickly went back to the classroom and told the others to get ready for the break and ended the lesson as usual and this time I didn't have ask my questions twice. It's still not as convincing as I want it to be but a lot better than last time. 

So I went back to the room and waited for the loud break-noise to go by and let the girls read their story.

Story 3 - The frog finds a voice
The second reader of this story is such a shy girl. She hardly ever speaks. But she did such a good job. At the end of the story you can tell how nervous she became.

In the afternoon, after getting through the "Klassenrat" (where the class sits in a circle and discusses issues) quickly I had the chance to record two more groups while the others wrote on a German project.

Story 4 - Man listens to the Platypus
The first reader has a "recognised language problem". Can you tell? Well I can't!

Story 5 - The caterpillars answer a difficult question

The sixth group will read on Monday. One of them was ill.
I'll write a separate post about how I sit here, trying to grade these readings...

24th of September 2015 - a (TPR) music lesson

In today's music lesson, I introduced a new song.
Nickelback - What are you waiting for?

The kids have gotten used to my way of going through a song so I'll make this entry quiet short:

1. I read the first verse to them very slowly and let them highlight the unknown words in German.
2. I read the verse line for line and we talked about the meaning of the text. 
3. We sang it verse by verse until we were all the way through.

We put two German lessons between the two music lessons and so in the last lesson, we looked at the second half of the "hold back the river" song and sang it along with the radio because I couldn't find chords that I was able to play ;-))) But the kids were not to keen on singing it because the text always repeats itself but it's the main teachers favourite song, that's why we're singing it just to be able to sing it to her...

But after singing it once we changed the song and went back to "viva la vida". But this time I asked them to highlight some English words and chunks. Which one I had them highlight you'll see the following document: "viva la vida" - with highlighted words

Now I put them together in pairs and gave each pair two lines to find some movements to act out the meaning of the words. And I gave them the first two lines as an example. That way it worked out even to where it says "that was when I ruled the world".

So for "ruled" I stood up straight and held an invisible pole in my hand.
For "the world" I just drew a circle in the air like it was the earth.

I gave them a couple of minutes to find out how they would act out their words or chunks and practise them so they could teach the others. Then we stood in a circle and went through the song. We all said the lines and all pairs showed the others what they came up with and we did the movements all together. After we've been through all groups I set the speed of the song on -20% and we sang and acted out the words together.

I first worried, that those kids in sixth grade would start acting silly but they actually had fun and did those movements with lots enthusiasm AND the sang to it by heart which I thought was amazing because it really hasn't got too easy lyrics.

So we'll do the second half next time and then we'll always act out those words when we sing this song.  I hope I can get at least some parents to agree on letting me put some videos in the Internet so I could show how well they did.

I asked them for a homework to write three songs they really liked on a piece of paper and give it to me by next Thursday because I want to look at these songs over the break. I also reminded them that they all had their readings tomorrow AND not to forget the passive listening because next week, we'll start with the "shopping for a school camp" and they all nodded as if it were taking it for granted... I have to be honest. I thought, that most of them would look at me like..... "Oooooooooooooooooooohhh my ... I forgot about that..." but they didn't look like that at all. So I'm really curious how well they'll have initialised the text by next week :-)

21st of September 2015 - two wonderful stories on visitors day

It was the last lesson in the morning and the kids had their parents around all day. Unfortunately many parents had left for whatever reason... Maybe they had to go home and cook...? But there were still about 9 people watching the lesson.

This lesson started about the same way the last lesson started: I greeted them with the good morning conversation and all could see the text above the blackboard. Then I put the blackboard up as far as I could to cover the text and held the conversation with this one boy that told me he was ready and he did great. There was one short hesitation before one of the answers but all the rest he said very fluently. I gave him two thumbs up and a huge smile and without having to say anything the class gave him a big applause. Then I explained to the parents (in English of course ;-)) that I had a list where the kids could tick their names when they felt ready to have this conversation with me and that even though he knew that parents would be watching this brave boy told me he was ready to do it today.

Then we sang out two songs. I'm really looking forward to Thursday when we'll learn one or two new songs. This will give us some more variety...

Then I gave the kids another 15 minutes to practise their texts and let it open to them if they wanted to use an MP3-player or just read it through without it. They could also work in pairs or by themselves but actually all of them came to get a MP3 player and read along the audio book.

After those 15 minutes the class gathered in the classroom. One kid was sick last Friday so he didn't know anything about the questions I had put up above the blackboard. I asked if anyone could explain it to him and choose one boy out of those who raised their hand. As usually he started talking in German (as the whole class does all the time) and I asked him to try it in English. He hesitated but then he tried. I could understand what he meant even if it wasn't grammatically correct so I told him that he did good. As I realised that some of the class mate were giggling I asked them not to and told them why it was worth a lot more to say something in English even if it's not correct than just to say it in German...

I made an example with the girl next to him. I said: Imagine you were you and on the street you met a women. She's a tourist from Spain and says to you: "Disculpa, puedes decir me donde esta la iglesia?" (I have no idea if I wrote this correctly but that's not the point...) She looked at me with big eyes because she didn't understand a word... Then I asked her how she would react if this woman said: "WO SEIN KIRCHE?" (WHERE CHURCH?) Then she said that she would show her the right directions. Then I told the class that that was exactly why I wanted them to try it in English, even if it's not 100% correct because if they are in an English speaking country on a holiday I want them to be able to communicate. And just as this girl understood me by speaking incorrect German, those people will understand them when they try it in the foreign language...

I explained again to the whole class and the parents, that I wanted them to read along while the kids who read it out loud and to highlight the words they didn't understand. After having heard the whole story, they could ask questions to clarify vocabulary with the help above the blackboard. Because these guys were the "Pros" since the really knew every single word... (Oh they liked that word "Pro")

And here comes the highlight! 
These four guys read the two stories so beautifully! They read it very fluently and except for one "came" that was pronounced as "come" and for some "askEd" and "whachEd"  where they stressed the "E" they read it perfectly AND with a very proper English accent. The main teacher filmed it but what I will do on Friday is that I'll take each of those six groups to a different room and just record their reading. Then each one of them will get a CD to take home with all six stories read by the whole class.

They all got a big applause from fascinated visitors.

The clarification of the vocabulary was held in English but I allowed the readers to translate those words in German. Next time I'll have them try to explain in different words but they have had enough pressure standing in front of this big audience for today.

Voluntary homework was to practise reading these text until Friday because then, I want the others to read their texts as well.

So to end the lesson and asked my question about the what the boys say and there was a silence... I really don't know it they felt ashamed to say something like this in front of the parents so we had to do it twice. I wonder how they will do on Friday...

After the lesson many parents came and told me that they thought it was a great lesson and a grand-father told me that he had actually learnt a lot in this lesson.

One mother pointed out how much her son liked this way of language learning a lot and that he feels very comfortable having the help of these audio books of recorded texts and I have to say that exactly this boy is struggling a lot in school. And last Friday the class had a French lesson where he didn't have to participate so I took him to a separate room to practise his English text. I was amazed how well he did. But then in the next lesson he was supposed to practice it with the main teacher in the classroom and hardly said a word. I think that he's scared saying something when other kids are around and I really thinking about taking him to this different room and having him read his part of the text to me only and to the dictating machine. And when he hears on the CD that he's doing just as good as the others, then maybe this will help him get more self confidence.

18th of September 2015 - final rehearsal for the braves

Preparation

Before this lesson I finally put up the "good morning - conversation" on the wall above the blackboard. 

... and some chunks to get the kids to speak more English, even if they don't know a word...

Just to complete this: The boys and girls speech has already been up there for about a week.

I had the list ready for the kids to tick their names, once they are ready for the conversation and MP3 players with the texts of the Rainbow Serpent stories. But I adjusted those audio files by putting them all together so that now one story is one file. There were always 3-6 files a story before. I also adjusted the speed. I added a +5% speed and a +10% speed to each story so the kids could choose the speed they felt comfortable with. I also got the good earphones from the media room to avoid hurting ears :-)

The lesson

So here comes the lesson: We held the good morning conversation and I reminded them, to start ticking their names on my list. I showed them, that the conversation will be covered by the blackboard then of course. (At the end of the lesson, on boy had a tick at his name)

Then we sang our two songs: "Viva la vida" and "the nights" to warm up.

Reading the “Rainbow Serpent – text”

I told the class that the aim was, that some of them would read their story to the class on Monday. (Well Monday lots of parents will be visiting so I didn't want to force anybody. I said I'd be looking for volunteers) So this lesson was for them to practise.  

This was their to-do list (I just had key words on the blackboard.)

• Read your own text by yourself first (with one of the faster versions if you wish). Read it out loud with the audio book. As an echo (if you need it) or as a choral speech if you are ready!
• Put your name PEG on my Australia Flag when you’re ready to read it to me and I’ll come and get you.
• While you’re waiting for me to come and get you work in pairs and read the text together (with the audio book). Each one reads one sentence to the next "."   ":"   "?" or "!" then you change roles. So you read every other sentence. After having gotten through the whole text switch roles. You will have read each sentence after being though the text the second time. 
• Read it as a choral speech without the audio.
• Read it for yourself
• ...
• You’ll get as far as you get… This is your preparation time!

I wanted to give them different ways of practising and even though I knew that they'd never have enough time to do all these different ways, I wanted them to have a choice and to know that there are different ways of practising.

Two kids actually put their peg on my flag and they read it to me. WOW! Their pronunciation is fantastic and in the whole text there were not more than maybe 2 words that they did not pronounce correctly. All the others were practising diligently.

About 10min before the lesson ended I announced what we will be doing on Monday. After the regular good morning and our songs and a few minutes of practise time, two groups would be reading the their story in front of the class. There was another group that volunteered to read. (I handed out these books I made for the class. It's just the 6 stories without all the activities.)

All the others would read along and highlight those words they don't understand and then after having heard the whole text they could ask the "pros" for clarification because they should know the whole vocabulary. AND these conversations should take place in English! And I introduced the ways of asking for clarification that I had above the blackboard.

So the lesson was about to end and I asked "what do the boys say to the girls?" and so on... But some of the class were giggling and here I wanted to make a clear point. I told them, why I did not tolerate ANY of them EVER made fun of these two sentences. I told them, that there are so many girls out there, looking at computer manipulated beauties thinking that that's the way they should look... and that there are so many boys out there looking at pictures of superheros thinking, that they're not good enough. Every girl likes to hear that she's beautiful and every boy likes to feel like a hero and if we give each other this feeling that we all long for just by saying it twice a week at the end of an English lesson than this might make a difference! They all looked at me with big eyes. So I asked my two questions again and they stood there really proud and there was no giggling at all.

14th of September 2015 - reading along

This English lesson is easily told:

We held our good morning conversation and I told the class today's aim:

• They should read along the audio book.
• When they start feeling comfortable, they should start reading SOME WORDS like an echo...
• ... until they can read the WHOLE TEXT. 

I gave them an example by letting one of the audio books play over the stereo. I played three sentences first without saying a word. Then I started the text over again and I deliberately read the words AFTER hearing them just like an echo. With this "level 1" text, this is quite easy because there is enough time between the words so they could say one word and still hear the next one.

I handed out the MP3 players and was surprised how most of them already knew how to operate it. So in this lesson you could hear them humming their English texts in two rooms (I sent some of the class into the IF-room). I told them not to read it too loudly in order not to disturb their class mates. Some put on their earmuffs and had their earphones underneath them.

It was fascinating to walk through the class and listen to them reading. The pronunciation was really good. By the end of the lesson, some tried to read the text without the help of the audio book.

There were only a few that still didn't feel like reading out loud yet but they will get more time. The only problem is, that the class goes on a short camp Tuesday till Thursday so I couldn't ask them to read it at home because they already have enough homework till Friday. And from Friday till Monday I cannot give them homework neither. But I think, that I will tell them to read it voluntarily because it would be sooo good for them.

We didn't get to end the lesson properly because they had to take their camp luggage to the bus... So at the beginning of the next lesson, I asked them how they felt. Most had fun but some told me, that their ears were hurting. Some asked, if they could bring their own earphones next time and of course I said yes. I know that the ones from those 30.-- CHF MP3-players are not good at all...

11th of September 2015 - Understanding the story

This English lesson was about understanding the chosen story. And the ones who were finished could start reading the text along with the audio book. To enable this, I searched the Internet for some affordable mp3 players I could have in the classroom. So let's welcome these new family members...

I have to say, they are NOT GOOD. Terribly complicated to handle... I'm not sure I would buy them again but now I got them in the classroom and they will do their job.

So again at the beginning of the lesson I did the good morning conversation with the class. Then I told them what today's aim was and showed them how I wanted them to do it by demonstrating it on the OHP. I copied one page of the "Rainbow Serpent" onto a transparency and read through the beginning of the text loudly highlighting words I thought they might not understand. I was kind of talking to myself just if I was one of them.

So the steps they were supposed to take were:

• Read the text and highlight every word they don't understand
• Search for those classmates who had the same text
• Talk with them about the words they don't understand. Maybe another one from the group understands the word. 
• Then for all the unknown words left I prepared dictionaries for them to search. 
• Once they really understood the whole text, they could come to me and get a MP3 player I set up with their text so they could read along.

Most of them understood pretty much all of the text since it's really, really easy. So not too much later, they came to grab a MP3-player. I had put folders in the player with each story so they could just repeat the folder and hear only their own story. Since I only have 10 players, some kids had to share one but since there were always more than one in a group, that wasn't a problem. One didn't have battery and one just didn't work so I gave my mobile phone to one kid and let another one listen to the text on my computer.

They really did a great job. They listened and read very concentrated and I really think that they had fun doing it. Two even came after the lesson and told me that we should do the readings like this in German as well.

From now on I'll set up my old phone, my tablet and my old iPod with these audio books so I have as many in school as possible... Maybe I can let them go to the computer room as well. I'll have to check if it's available.

But I do think that this lesson was a success. They were all working individually in their own speed and I really think they had fun :-)

10th of September 2015 - passive listening in class

Oh I almost forgot to add something...

This morning I had the audio text of "Shopping for a school camp" play over the stereo. I turned it on before the class arrived at the classroom. I set the volume so that I could just hear it from anywhere in the room.

Then the class came in and got ready for school. They chatted and some took out their book to read. After the bell rang for the second time a welcomed them and told them what we were going to do today. Then I gave them some information on the test they were about to take. They had to put everything aside and get ready.

Then, before handing out the tests I congratulated them for having spent about 15 minutes on learning English this morning and they had no idea what I was talking about. None of them had realised, that I had the text playing over the stereo so they all went very quiet because they wanted to hear it. And they did. Each one of them had to admit that they heard it.

"This is exactly what passive listening is all about - it doesn't take any time and it shouldn't bother you at all. You can just let it play while doing something totally different."

I think they were quite amazed...

So for the test I turned it off but for the rest of the day, even the while singing and reading a book to them I had it play and asked them at the end of the lesson, if it bothered them. None of them said yes.

10th of September 2015 - Information letter for the parents

Since I woke up a two o'clock that night and couldn't go back to sleep I finally wrote a letter to the parent. I promised them to give them more information on the Birkenbihl approach because I had to keep it a short as possible at the parent-teacher conference. Most of the parents were keen on knowing more...

AND I wanted the parents to be part of the team because the passive listening will mostly take place at home. PLUS I wanted to have a list of all students knowing how to get these Audio files on their players that's why I added a checklist they could fill in.

Since I do not want to make a big deal about where I work, I put a box over the header of the letter.
So here is the letter: Letter for parents

10th of September 2015 - the next music lesson

So on Thursday morning the kids took a test about a Religion and Culture topic we worked on over the last 2 weeks and the rest of the double lesson we worked on a new song.

So again I decoded the song text and introduced it to the class but this time we went through the text a lot faster than with the "viva la vida" text. I read it once and had the class repeat after me. This we did for each verse and then we sang it a few times very slowly. Then we looked at the translation to see, if they understood what it meant in German. The first verse you really have to interpret what it could mean and I want to do this next week, when we have two whole lessons to work on it. I just wanted the kids to have fun singing this time. And they did. But we looked at the second verse since that one is quiet easy to understand. After we got through the whole song we sang it a couple of times and the kids thought it was fun!

So here's the song: Avicii - The nights

Then we tried to sing it along with the original but it's so deep... (with my guitar I can play it in a higher tune) and it's still way too fast. But I still wanted them to know what the aim was ;-)

We still had another 15 minutes left and I didn't want them to get tired of this new song and so I handed out the lyrics of the next song: James Bay - Hold back the river
With this song, we just looked at the first verse and the chorus and talked about the translation and what the singer wants to say with it. Then we sang it along with the CD once and the lesson was finished.

I just want to add an experience I had with these two songs. I really started realising, that you cannot take the lyrics you find in the Internet for granted.

In the Avicii text for example it said the following.. "think of me as forever your faith???" What's this supposed to mean? And you really can hear that it's the wild heart not the wild lift that will live for younger days...

                             
Your wild life will live for younger days
Think of me as forever your faith

And the James Bay text was even worse... Well he definitely doesn't sing "but think that I should have been"... But I have to admit, I don't really understand him neither and so I decided to go for "those days that I should have been" because at least it makes sense and it sounds like "those" and "day" but "those day" is not correct English?!? If anyone reading this blog understands him, than please let me know ;-)

Tried to square not being there
But think that I should have been

But the beginning of the next verse is quite funny... It does sound right... But does it make sense? So I went for "once upon a different life"

Once upon a dear friend, life 

I realised how important it is to read the lyrics along with the song first because those lyrics in the Internet are not always right...

7th of September 2015 - Rainbow Serpent

Here comes my next English lesson:

GOOD MORNING CONVERSATION

I started off with the "good morning" conversation but this time, I had the word magnets on the blackboard so that everyone could read it. I had two additional word magnets on the blackboard saying "I AM" and "I CANNOT". After speaking though the conversation with the whole class, I addressed my "good morning" to one of the kids I knew would not have a problem with speaking in front of the whole class. So I said

GOOD MORNING "TOM" (fake name)
GOOD MORNING MRS. KÜNDIG
HOW ARE YOU TODAY?
WE ARE (I AM) FINE THANK YOU, HOW ARE YOU?
I'M WONDERFUL THANKS. ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO HAVING ENGLISH TODAY?
OH YES, WE (I) CANNOT WAIT!
GREAT, THAN LET'S GET STARTED!
YAY!!!

This kind of surprised him but he realised quickly what I expected from him and he talked it though correctly with the "I AM" and the "I CANNOT". We discussed in class the difference in their answer if I addressed the whole class (we) or just one student (I). 

I told them, that I would have this conversation with each one of them by the autumn break. And that I would grade it too. I put a class list on my desk where they can tick their name whenever they feel ready to do it all by themselves. It won't matter if they feel ready by this Friday or by Friday before the holiday. If they feel that they still have to hear this conversation a couple of times than that's fine.

SHORT STORY - RAINBOW SERPENT

Since they are passively listening the "shopping for a school camp" now, I needed something to fill the next two weeks. Well, before I got the test results I already prepared this lesson and thought it all through but after seeing the results, I felt that I had chosen the wrong level of difficulty with a PENGUIN ACTIVE READING - LEVEL 1. That's A1 level... I almost abandoned my idea because I had just seen the A2s and the B1s. Later, after going into the results and realising that there were 9 out of 17 that had a A1-A2 level and that four of them really had a A1 level in "language use" I decided to go for it anyway.

I bought about 25 penguin reader books in different levels. One of them is the following:

It has 6 short stories in it and some activities too. The stories are all about "the early days of the earth" and about how the Aborigines explain the nature. So why are animals on this earth? Why has the Kangaroo a bag for its joey? What family does the platypus belong to? And what happens after death? I have the Audio CD to this book too and the kids already have it on their MP3-players, iPods or computers. So my aim is for them to choose one story, find out vocabulary they don't understand, listen to it reading along quietly and after several rounds start reading/speaking along. I want them to present part of their story to the class and prepare this presentation carefully.

But we started out with a discussion. I handed out these drawings and ask them, what they saw and where these animals came from. Well with the kangaroo it was not too difficult to find out that these are all Australian animals. They could ask questions (and again I realised, that they are not used to speak English at all - so next thing I'll do is put some chunks on the walls so they will get used to asking for clarifications in English too)... I explained characteristics of those animals they didn't know. 

 Then we went on with the task. I handed out the following document: "AIM: I can read a story to the class"  and we went through the text to make sure they understood. I told the B1's that I really expected them to take one of the 3 pages story and that the rest could choose. Well some of the stories had two pages and some three. I made four copies of each text and laid them on the window sill. The two texts with the least length I had a decoded version ready for those students who were better off really concentrating on the pronunciation and the reading instead of spending too much time looking for vocabulary translations. But for the B1s I was sure that those few word they didn't know were easy to find. So we walked along to window sill and I introduced to stories real briefly with one or two sentenses. Here are those 6 stories all in one document. I enlarged it to A4 size so the kids would have enough room between the lines to note translated vocabulary. 
And here are the decoded texts of "The Rainbow Serpent Brings Animals onto the Earth" and "Man listens to the Platypus"  

So every kid chose their text and I wrote down who was reading which text. They had another 5 minutes left to start reading the text before the lesson was finished. 

THE ENDING

Ever since we have started with our English lessons I wanted to introduce the way I wanted to end a lesson from now on. It's not my own idea but I "stole" it from one of the best Australian primary teacher that I had the luck to do my Assistant Teachership Prac with. In her class she always ended a day like this:

"What do the boys say to the girls?"
The boys all said: "Girls, you're beautiful just the way you are!"
"And what do the girls say to the boys?"
The girls all say: "Boys, you're the MEN!"


So that's how we ended our lesson too :-)

4th of September 2015 - Young Learners Placement Test

So on Friday my class took the Oxford Young Learners Placement Test. This placement test tests the student's abilities in "language use" and "listening" and marks it with a A0 to B1 CEFR (Common European Framework Reference). Oxford emphasises that the test results are NOT official Oxford certificates and that it's only an indication. And if you take the test yourself, you'll know why. It's really short and it's rather meant to be child-friendly and motivating than demanding and difficult. But that was just perfect for my class!

Since I wanted to know, what this test was about, I added Nick (my stepson) to the class list and had him take the test at home. I wasn't surprised that he got a B1 in both "language use" and "listening" because his English is really good. While we were in Australia he really could communicate independently to natives or other English speaking tourists. According to the curriculum of most German speaking cantons in Switzerland, the aim in receptive skills such as listening and reading by the end of primary school is A2.1 (basic) to A2.2. (advanced). The same for oral production skills such as speaking and communicating. The expected written productive skills are A1.2 (basic) to A2.1 (advanced).

So on Friday I told the class that they will be doing an exercise on the computer and that they should try their best but not worry, if they didn't understand it all. I prepared all the computers in the media room for them so they could just come in, log in and start with the test. Well they have had another test that morning and you could tell that it was tiring for them. Especially the listening part, because they had to listen to the voice twice before the "next" button appeared.

So there's not to much else to say about the lesson itself but I have to admit that the results really surprised me. To keep this anonymous, I cut off the names...

Well first I just saw, that 10 out of 17 had a B1 level and almost all of the others a A2 which meant that they have already reached the level they should have after sixth grade. But how could this be, if they cannot speak at all? I don't mean to be rude but so far I have not heard one correct sentence from them. Then I saw that I could split the results and see how they did in "language use" and "listening" and now it started to make a little more sense. So really all except for two reached a B1 there. So this is good to know: They can understand spoken English!!! And in "language use" they are between B1 and A1. It's amazing to see that one child is so much better in this category than he is in listening. So there is so much potential in this class and my focus will definitely be on speaking and producing English because that's what they struggle with the most.

These placement tests are not meant to be taken again at the end of a term, but I think I still want to know where they stand after this year with the new method. It's a pity though that I don't have any tests on their speaking ability to see how they will improve there.