14th of December 2015 - Focus on formulating questions

To anticipate this... Today was not my day...

All weekend long I tried to figure out, how I could give those kids a simple guidance on how to formulate questions, since what I had done so far was definitely not enough. I'll write about those test shortly.

So I came up with this flow chart. Actually I just wanted a simple chart like: "Auxiliary verb - yes or no?" But then so many thoughts came to my mind like:

• If the "to have" is uses as an main verb it still gets the "to do"...
• If the "to be" is used as a main verb there is only one verb in the question... 

So I kind of packed all those exceptions in this flow chart which turned out to be a mistake...

So here's the lesson...
I handed out the flow charts (I laminated one for each kid) and realised pretty quickly, that it was too complicated. While we went through it, I started realising, that the kids had no idea how they could ever use the "have" as auxiliary verb because they didn't know the present perfect yet... So I should not have put this whole step with the "have" in the flow chart at all... The step with the "be without verb-ing" was not really formulated too well... And they will get to know the past tense in Unit 3 so they don't know this neither... I should have clarified all this before making this exercise... I prepared lots of statements and I wanted them to use their flow chart to find the right way to formulate the questions.

So here is the worksheet...  There are 30 statements totally mixed... We went through the first ones together but I felt that I had lost most of them completely. I actually had in mind to do some questions with them going through the flow chart step by step and then put them in groups so that the stronger ones could work with the weaker ones and explain them why to go which direction but out of my 17 students only 1 got it. The rest was lost...

So I told them to forget about the flow chart and started going through the list very quickly like a drill... I said "You are working - which is the verb?" - I didn't even want them to raise their hands, I just wanted quick replies. The answer was "are" - "Auxiliary verb, yes or no?" - "Yes" - "So what word will we start our question with?" - The first time I went through this drill, the answers were given very cautiously and just this one guy was really following me... "ARE you..." So I wrote "Are you..." on the OHP (I had a transparency which I was working with)
Then second sentence: "Eddy plays basketball. - which is the verb?" - "plays" - "Auxiliary verb, yes or no?" - "no" - "So how will we start our question?" - "Does Eddy play..." - (Well their answer was Does Eddy plays... So that's the next one I'll have to work on..."

Around question 5 many of them finally cheered up and did this drill with me... As we came to question 8 really most of them were there and many of them made comments like... Oh... it's so easy??? - Yes it is!!! I felt terrible for making something as easy as that so complicated for them... But I was relieved that this whole nightmare turned out to become something good.

There are so many things I should have done differently but I'm glad that I have realised this now... I will do this after the break and I'm sure they'll understand. First of all I changed the flow chart. I took out all the useless things they don't need to worry about yet. I just put some auxiliary verbs on the list and I deleted the "have", may, might and shall and I gave them some examples. I left the past tense on it because, this will be an issue in the next unit but I will tell them not to worry about it yet.

Then I will do more drills, but with the same case... So lots and lots of questions, they just have to add the "to do" and then lots and lots with auxiliary verbs and then lots with 3rd person singular to get rid of that second "s" in the sentence. I'll do this after the holidays to start a lesson before we work on out animals. Each time with a different case. And once they got them all, I can start mixing the cases...

And when we come to unit 3 and discuss the past then I'll do the question again with the past even if it's not the aim of the unit.

So this was definitely not my best lesson but I learnt a lot and it made me realise what I'll have to do.