2nd of October - CD Cover and questionnaire

To today was the last day of this quarter and the whole day was a bit weird. I got a text message in the night, that my teaching partner was feeling sick and staying home, so the day did not exactly go the way I planned it, but this is what I got done:

First, I held my good morning conversation with the whole class. Then I asked them all to say it in the "I" form instead of the "we" form. (I knew that there were some kids that were really scared of having this conversation so I wanted to give them the chance to get some more practise). Then I read the names of the 6 people that had to have this conversation with me today and asked them to stand up. Then I asked the others to walk around in class and acting like "Mrs. Kündig" by greeting them with "Good morning, ..." so they could reply. I still had the blackboard all the way down and told the 6 to face the back, while the others could read my part. So I gave them another 5 minutes to practise. I was funny to see how many of them had actually initialised the whole speech. Even the part, they never said before. So when I had the conversation with those 6, they all did very well. I recorded it again and now I'll listen to all the recordings and make the grades.

Then I handed out this piece of paper, that was going to be the CD cover. Soon they realised, that it had their grade on it and most of them were really happy. Here are the graded they got: 5x 6, 5x 5.75,  5x 5.5, 1x 5.25 and 1x 4. The one with the 4 (who could have done so much better) wasn't happy at all, but I wanted to talk to him after school so I didn't bother. I showed them how to fold and glue the paper so they'd get a CD cover and handed out the CD's with their readings on. I told them, not to get confused, but that this grade was going to influence their speaking grade and not their reading grade.

So next thing I did was handing out a questionnaire about the "Rainbow Serpent - Project" and went through the questions with them. I realised I should have added one more category such as "it was ok" for questions 1 & 3 so some of the "I liked it." were probably just a "it was ok"...

So here's the questionnaire I used and I will evaluate it and write about the results in my reflection: Questionnaire

Then we went on with singing our songs. I meant to play the "viva la vida" on my guitar, but I'm not good enough to watch them do the movements and play at the same time so I turned on the radio again. It's fun :-)

And then I did the craziest thing... There is this song "Old Man Emu" by John Williamson... A rather old fashioned absolutely "nuts" song from Australia... I decoded the text for my husband and stepson before so I had it ready on my computer and printed it out before the lesson started... You have to listen to the song to know what I'm talking about: Old Man Emu. And read the lyrics: Lyrics of Old Man Emu
You can imagine how they looked at me. I told them, that we don't have to sing it if they really didn't want to, but I wanted to know how many of them would actually give it a try and surprisingly all of them raised their hand. Ok... So here comes the next song I'll practise on the guitar ;-)))

Oh yes, about the songs they gave me... I googled some of them and was shocked about the texts!!! There are so many songs that sound great but if you listening to the lyrics gave me a shiver down my spine... I mean come on!!! Good thing I asked them to give me three songs each so hopefully I find one song from each child I can sing with a primary class...

So, at the end of the lesson I asked the one guy that had a 4 to stay behind and asked him if he was happy with his grade. He told me NO. And I told him, that I knew that he could have done soooo much better if he had taken the time to practise, like all the others did. I told him, that if he was willing to practise over the holiday, I'd give him a second chance after the break and that I'd let him read to me again and take the average so if he'd make a 6, he could get a 5. He was sure that he wanted to take this opportunity and try to improve his grade and I'm curious how he will do after the break.