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 :-)