4th of January 2016 - listening grade, question drill, working on texts

First of all:
A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYBODY!!!

LISTENING GRADE
At the beginning of lesson, I announced, that I'll have a class list ready where every child could write down the number they reach on their flagpole by the end of every lesson. I will count all those numbers together and that they will influence their speaking grade.

QUESTION DRILL (Preparation)
I felt sooo bad after the last English lesson, when I confused them a lot with my flow chart. Now I adapted the flow chart. So here is the question flow chart we work with until the winter break. I stopped counting how many times I have actually changed it over the holidays. The last change was made this morning around 4 o'clock ;-) I reduced the auxiliary words I expect them to know down to:

• be
• can + could
• must
• will + would 

I also left all the question words and the past tense away although I didn't delete the "was and were"...
Instead of writing "use the auxiliary verb" and "use the "to do"" I made that clearer by writing "SWAP auxiliary verb and subject" and "ADD do or does". Instead of the "did" I made a separate colon for the 3rd person singular and I added the negative question form.

This flow chart became the cover of the following booklet I printed as brochure and stapled it together. With this booklet, I'll go through all the different cases step by step... My time plan till the holidays is the following:

Mo 4. January	Q Drill – Auxiliary verbs 1
Fr 8. January	Q Drill – Auxiliary verbs 2
Mo 11. January	QD – Main verbs 2
Fr 15. January	QD – Main verbs 2
Mo 18. January	QD – Mixed 1
Fr 22. January	QD – Mixed 2
Mo 25. January	QD – Answers 1
Fr 29. January	QD – Answers 2
Mo 1. February	QD – Scrambled Sentences
Fr 5. February	QD – Negative Questions
Mo 8. February	Question Test

 
The first four weeks, I want to use some time on Monday to introduce the topic (like today), give them a few exercises to that topic for a homework till Friday and then play some game on Friday...

QUESTION DRILL (today's lesson)
I handed out strips of paper with the following statements on:

• WE ARE ON TIME
• THEY ARE 17 YEARS OLD
• SHE IS FROM ZURICH
• I CAN HELP YOU
• SHE WILL WIN THE FIGHT
• MY CAT WOULD EAT THIS

I copied the sentences three times on A3 and cut them into strips. Each child got one strip and I asked them to take out their scissors and cut off words in order to be able to make questions out of it. While walking through the class, I realised that at least half the students made a cut between all the words but some of them realised, that they only needed to cut off the first two words and swap them.

Even though I saw that some kids had it wrong I stopped them and started... Since they all wanted to raise their flag I didn't have trouble getting volunteers to tell me their answer. So the first two I had to guide a little, to get what I wanted: "The statement was 'we are on time' and the question is 'are we on time?'" - "What did you do" - "I swapped the 'are' and the 'we'" - All the students had to give me this answer and all of them could raise their flag. Funnily, those who got it wrong before we started realised pretty fast, what they had gotten wrong and changed it before I called on them.

I think they really got it this time and they had fun doing this. What a relief after the last lesson's disaster. So I gave them the exercises 1-4 on pages 2-3 in their question booklet for a homework. I'll think of a game to play with them on Friday so they can show what they have learnt.

ANIMAL PRESENTATION
It took me a little longer to get through the questions than I thought but I think it was well worth it. So they had about 20 minutes left to work on their texts. Since they were all in different stages, I asked those who said, that they had finished their German texts to get together in pairs and read the texts to their classmate who should take the time AND check if he or she had covered all the required information. All the others could work on their texts. It took non of the kids who thought that they had finished longer than two minuted to read their German texts and I made clear to them, that I wanted them to speak for at least four minutes in English and didn't accept a two minutes speech and two minutes of goofing off and just showing pictures. Of course they won't talk as fast in English as in German but they will need at least a three minute long German text.

I planned to ask them to finish their German texts by Friday but felt bad because they didn't get too much time today. So I told them, that they would get about 30minutes on Thursday to work on their texts but that they needed to be finished by Friday. So their homework was to get their texts far enough to be able to finish them on Thursday. This homework includes to read it at least once to their parent, siblings, pets or whoever - taking the time.

FURTHER PLANS WITH THIS PRESENTATION
I thought a lot about how to translate those texts in English and I want to avoid frustration and wasting too much time because really my main aim is that they can hold a presentation about their animal and that we have 17 different animals with different sizes, speeds etc. to compare in class initialising the grammar section of this unit. Plus I want them to have their recordings for at least two weeks before having their presentation.
So I thought about what I would do if I had to translate a text into a different language that I had a German version of. I would put it into https://translate.google.ch/?hl=de knowing that those translations are not really reliable and work from there with changing and correcting. So this is what I'll do with them on Friday after the question game.This way I'll have all of them at the same stage by Friday and kids with longer texts are not punished with more translating work. I'm planing to decode the texts for them so they know exactly which of their German sentences turned out to what kind of English sentences...

So my plans till the winter break are (very briefly) about the following: I know it's getting a little crowded with all those presentations but they won't take more than 5 minutes each. But 20 minutes plus Active Reading + Questions is pretty much but I'll change that when I see that it's not working.
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For some reason I cannot write underneath the table chart I inserted, but this it where it should be... It's at the end of the blog...
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I want them to have the recorded text for at least 2 weeks before they have their presentation so I'll have a pretty tough week from Monday to Friday and I hope I can get all those things done. But somehow it always works ;-)


The last day of school, I'll let the class do another Oxford YLPT like I did at the beginning of the year to be able to see if they have improved their English skills. I'll go on with my English teaching the way I started it, but I'll have to get my Bachelor Thesis finished. So I'll stop writing such a detailed blog after winter break and start putting it all together.

Th 7. January	Finishing German text
Fr 8. January	Google Translation
Mo 11. January	Working on English text – Handing them in.
Fr 15. January	Creating Factsheet about Animal – Unit 2 - Giving back the texts incl. decoding, incl. MP3 recording...
Mo 18. January	Unit 2
Fr 22. January	Unit 2
Mo 25. January	Unit 2
Fr 29. January	Unit 2 Test
Mo 1. February	4 Presentations / Active Reading Unit 3
Th 4. February	4 Presentations
Fr 5. February	4 Presentations / Active Reading Unit 3
Mo 8. February	Question Test
Th 11. February	4 Presentations
Fr 12. February	Young Learners Placement Test 2