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.