- We sang one of our songs and the "vida la vida" with the gestures.
- I read the "shopping for a school camp" again but only when they needed me. So for example I said: "Betty, Tom and..." and then they went on with "Oliver are going camping with their class... and so on" In the whole text I needed to help about 6 times and they just spoke the rest of it all by themselves.
- I asked them to explain me something about many and much and just let them talk so I got:
- countable / uncountable
- plural forms / singular forms
- and many things out of the text that these expressions were used with like "how many tomatoes", "how much spaghetti" and many more.
I created a worksheet but I don't think it's all that good afterwards. I wanted to give them the idea of an English question with the "how much is there" in it, so I gave them one example, and then less and less help the further they got. But it looks a little complicated...
I explained it and told them to write those things they found outside, inside these gaps. Well they did this with very little trouble and by the end, everyone of them could formulate a correct question including the answer. But I realised that there were so many more questions and just with this one "is/are there" formulation, they still didn't initialise how to formulate questions (with the help of "to do") so I'll try to have an exercise ready for next lesson.
Then I did something rather unexpected. In German I'm reading a wonderful book called "Wunder" to the class and we discuss about those characters a lot. I have the same book in English as well so the night before I created a listening comprehension test for them for the next chapter.
First I handed out the questions and clarified the vocabulary to make sure they know what they have to listen for. Then I read these three pages to them: Page1, Page2, Page3
I formulated possible answers always with words that appeared in the text somewhere close and I guess I read it a bit fast and since it was their first try I graded them pretty gently. All 6 correct = 6 / 5 correct = 5.5 / 4 correct = 5 / 3 correct = 4.5 / 2 correct = 4... I will try to do this more often to get them used to listening very carefully.
Well the next lesson, when I gave back the test, I went through the questions with them again and one by one and then I read and asked them to say stop whenever they heard the correct answer so we could discuss it. As I read, I always stressed those words that were in the wrong answers so they could hear why they couldn't be correct. Now after hearing it for the second time it seamed a lot clearer for them and I remembered the Oxford YLPT where they heard all the texts twice. So maybe I'll read it to them twice next time. We found all the answers together and at the end I read the chapter in German to them. I think that there were some light bulb moments for them after finally understanding every word ;-)
You let them read the questions about the excerpt before you let them listen - so If one question is about the meaning of "sympathetic", then could they answer that without actually listening? You can also first let them listen, and then let them read to find the correct answers so you mix modes a bit. But it serves a different purpose, just an idea!! It's great to work with books like that and extracts! It really gets them used to more complex text. Were the questions also in the order of the story?
ReplyDeleteFor the how much/many, I am wondering how to make their learning sustainable so they really really get the structures of the questions correct. For example, in three weeks you do not want to hear "How many leaves has it under the tree" but "How many leaves are there..." so now you have a worksheet and a great activity. But perhaps maybe a) they can teach this to a group of 2nd graders; you start every lesson with a quick "pop quiz" with this c) you have them take every text they are reading and make a quesiton with that structure from it. I think this is a point that secondary teachers criticize about primary (accuracy) so although the kids understand so much, how can we help their "free production" become more correct?
Hey Laura, well the thing about the "sympathetic" is:
Delete1. They don't know the word (most of them didn't even know the word "ugly"?!) and
2. Jamie asked what his mother had meant with "sympathetic" and she said: "You know exactly what I mean" so she didn't say. They couldn't have known this without understanding the text.
I think for right now I will clarify the questions before I read the text so they know what they have to listen for especially since the text is not about specific vocabulary they know... But after a while I want to make it a little more difficult for them. And yes, the questions were in the correct order - this time... I will do this a couple of times like this and then I want to mix them too ;-)
Oh yes this whole issue about the questions is something I want to work on constantly. My example about the "how many leaves has it..." was just to show how wrong their BEST answer was. All the others were even worse but I made them put it in this worksheet so they get it right...
In today's post you will read, that I worked with questions again but not only with how much and how many... First they have to understand, when to use the "to do" because they NEVER do! And then they can apply that to the question words like How?, Where?, What? and so on... So this will be an issue for quite a while ;-)