(Friday) 13th of November - not superstitious but...

OK... Today was definitely not my day... I'm not superstitious AT ALL but I really didn't have a good day. Nothing really came out the way I planned it. I'm not sure if the kids even realised but I did...

I will make this post as short as possible because it definitely wasn't my best lesson. 

ACTIVE READING
First, I read the third part of  the "Arctic Tern" text to them and they got it pretty fast, since they have already listened to the whole text passively for at least two hours. 

QUESTIONS
Before the lesson, I put something on the wall that I thought would help them get the questions right BUT there is way too much on those papers... So this will definitely not stay at the wall!!!

And still, I gathered the class in front of the blackboard and went through those papers with them. I read possible questions to them and had them repeat them after me.

Then they went back to their desks and I told them, that I had a word in my mind and they had to find out what it was by asking questions I could answer with yes or now - so all sorts of questions without question words. First I thought of a kangaroo and then of a leaf. Actually I wanted to put them in groups of three and wanted them to do the same with the vocabulary of Unit 1 but I didn't get to cut them the card...

LISTENING COMPREHENSION
To end the lesson, I read another chapter of the "Wonder" to them. I put them in pairs to discuss what they had understood and we pretty much got the whole story together. It seems that they are really getting used to picking up the important information of a book, they don't know all the vocabulary. So I'll get another listening comprehension test ready for them soon.

Actually, this was it already... Seems like I didn't get to anything today...

PREPERATION FOR NEXT LESSON (VOCABULARY CARDS)
After the lesson I stayed behind and cut all the word cards that I had prepared. I made my own vocabulary list for this lesson because there is so much of "useless" vocabulary in the back of the Activity Book but rather useful vocabulary is missing. So I put the whole vocabulary, I want them to know, into the Quizlet and printed it out as small cards. But I found out that this will definitely be the one and only time I do this for the class. What I'll do next time is just to cut off the borders and down the middle column and let them cut those few lines themselves. But for this unit it's done.

9th of November 2015 - Our new speaking aim...

First thing in the morning, long time before the English lesson started, I asked the kids what flag they would like to have for their new flag pole. They could chose any English speaking country so I made many suggestions. 6 kids chose the USA, two chose Canada, 2 New Zealand, 1 Australia, 1 South Africa, 1 Ireland, 1 Great Britain, 1 Scotland, 1 England and 1 even chose Wales  (I didn't even know how this flag looks but I thought that if I offer Scotland, which I just HAD TO offer, than I had to offer Wales and England as well, to be "politically correct")

So this is how those flags look now:

They all have a flagpole now with a range of numbers from -7 to 7 and the aim is to get the flag (which is glued to a peg) up as high as possible by speaking English and every time they say something in German, the flag goes down. I have to admit, that I have to get used to this first because it's not so easy to keep up with it and it made me realise how fast I get those few to answer me that always raise their hand. My personal aim with this flag is to see, who has not answered yet and to encourage them to do so...

Well the rest of this lesson is easily told.

FORMULATING QUESTIONS
We are still working on those question forms and I created a work sheet for them which we looked at together. I will mix the forms next time and I will hang a sheet of paper on the wall with all the auxiliary verbs because they need them for the negative forms as well... But right after having gone through those questions I was asked "Mrs. Kündig, do we must ... ?" from three different kids, so it's definitely not in their heads yet...

ACTIVE READING PART II
I read to them the second part of the "Arctic Tern" and as the kids where finished, they could go to and DIY...

More DIY Posts
For today, I decoded two songs they had on their wish list and had them ready on MP3 players. I also had all the Penguin Readers scanned in and a name list ready where they could write down, if they wanted me to print a book for them. And I had "Gossi the dragon" incl. MP3 players ready for the kids to look at.

It's a story by Karin Holenstein that has been decoded in German already and comes with the audio book as well. And I showed the class how to use the Ocean Treasures on my Lap Top.

READING A CHAPTER OUT OF THE WONDER
Again I read a chapter out of our book to the class. But this time without any questions. I just want them to get used to more complex texts and I asked them at the end, what they had understood and they understood quiet a lot. One of the next times I'll let them take notes and ask them to write a short resume about what they have understood :-)

Incredible how fast a single lesson of English flies by after having had 3 double lessons...

Teach yourself Posten - Karin Holenstein

I would like to share this YouTube Video from Karin Holenstein, which gave me the idea how to do my DIY posts around the classroom. She has been working with the Birkenbihl method for many years now and if you click in the top left corner of this video, you'll find many other videos about the way she teaches foreign languages in Primary school.

6th of November 2015 - MANY different things...

THE AIM OF SPEAKING ENGLISH IN CLASS
For today I wanted to think of a way of getting them to speak English instead of German in class because they are still so used to replying in German whenever I ask them something in English. So I asked them at the beginning of the lesson, if they liked their "speaking grade" so far and all of them said yes because they all did so well in the two Speaking tasks they had so far. I told them, that I would add an ongoing speaking task now which will also give them a grade. So if it's just a regular lesson I put my Australian flag on the front table and this means that we are in Australia and that we are not allowed to speak any other language than English. I divided their attendance or name table in two columns, one for negative and one for positive. So each time I hear something in German I would draw a line on the negative side and since I just did not want them to be quiet all the time I would draw a line on the positive side for every English answer or question. It was only allowed to use German words for vocabulary clarification like "How can I say _____ in English". Well they got the point and after I had drawn about 5 lines on the negative side they really started sticking to the English but there was no way I could draw all these positive lines anymore so I told them that today was like the final rehearsal and we would start this on Monday but with a different method. Well what I would really love is a little flag pole with a flag and if you press on the + the flag goes up and if you press on the - the flag goes down. That would help me pick the ones that haven't yet said a lot. Because I always see how far up they are... But I'm not sure if I can organise something like this till Monday. Maybe just a wooden stick and a peg with a flag stuck to. Well, I thought about coins but that way I won't be able to see how far they are... But it was amazing that they really stuck to English from then on. I should have done this "years ago".

FORMULATING QUESTIONS
I had three blackboards ready and handed out some paper to take notes. I made a statement like "it is snowing" and asked them to formulate a question. After several wrong tries and lots of hints we found out that the question was "Is it snowing?" - "You speak English" was turned into "Speak you English..." but they agreed that it sounded strange so we found out that it's "Do you speak English". I wrote all the questions with the "to do" on the right hand backboard and all the questions with an auxiliary verb on the left one. Then I asked them what the difference was but they just saw that one side started with "to do" and the other one didn't... So I wanted to start with the whole explanation about the sentence having an auxiliary verb or not but I saw it in their faces that they needed something different to "ventilate" their brains because this whole thing about finding the right questions was pretty difficult for them.  And the bell was about to ring so I'll leave this for next Monday's lesson... I'll create a worksheet for them. An easier one this time ;-)


DIY (do it yourself)
For this lesson I prepared some DIY "posts" (I don't know if this is the right English word...)

• READING BOOKS: I brought all the Level 1 and Level 2 Penguin Readers with me. I have 2 "level 1" books and 9 "level 2" books. I have a few level 3 books at home but I want them to try the level 2 first because they have the A2 level which the class is supposed to have after primary school (if they are good, and of course I want them to be good :-))

Level 1 books

Level 2 books

• WRITING LETTERS OR DIALOGUES: I had lots of writing paper ready so they could write letters in English to someone or if they wanted to work in pairs they could write down a dialogue... So just writing in stead of speaking. 

• LISTENING TO SONGS: I will have decoded songs ready for them to listen to and learn the lyrics but I just didn't get to do this yet. I will start with about two or three songs to chose from but they will become more and more.

• READING "OCEAN TREASURES" ON THE LAP TOP: I put a Birkenbihl language course on my lap top they can use. But this one I'll have to explain first.

• WATCHING ENGLISH DVDS - I will get some DVDs they can watch in English with English subtitles so they can read along while they hear the words so they'll have the same effect... 

This is all about giving them the opportunity to do something they like IN ENGLISH and giving me the time I need with the slower ones while doing the active reading until they really understand and the opportunity to work with with a smaller group while the others do something else.

ACTIVE READING - THE ARCTIC TERN
So, in 2-3 weeks we'll be finished with our Unit 1 and so I'd like to get the kids ready for Unit 2. But this time I'll do it differently. The first text we read has 3 pages and I split it into 3 parts and do the active reading just as part of three lessons and not like last time as I read the whole text over and over again which took me over a whole lesson.
So I wrote the following procedure at the blackboard: (I wrote the key words and explained what I meant.)

• Read quietly and highlight the unknown words in German.
• (While I read it over and over again)
• 1. time - read the German part while I read the English part.
• 2. time - read the English part except for the highlighted German words (so all words you don't understand yet.)
• next times - Read more and more in English and just the words you don't understand German
• When you think you understood it all - Turn over your paper and just listen one more time.
• > Understood it all? - if YES get up quietly and DIY, if NOT then read along a few more times until you really understood it all, then turn over your paper again...
• and so on...

This was so much better than last time. I think the length of the text was just about right, and those DIY posts are worth a lot!!! Many of the kids didn't have half as long as the slower ones and now the slower ones don't have to worry about the other getting bored because they know that they are doing something fun. Well the DIY posts were just the books this time but there will be many more. I started scanning all these books so the ones who are interested can chose one and I'll print them their own version and put them the audio book on a MP3 Player.

2nd of November 2015 - first listening comprehension

Well these two lessons were a complete mix of many different things. Most of them I have already written lots about and so I will just mention them...

• 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. 

Then I asked them to get out their notebooks they took outside last Monday and wanted to hear some questions. The best question I got was something like "How many leaves has it under the tree."

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 ;-)  

30th of October 2015 - finally back!!! (much and many)

Oh I was so happy to finally be back. This was the first English lesson after the holiday (and my sickness) and it was an amazing lesson! The double lesson was about "how much" and "how many" and when to use which.

Since I don't like the expression "countable" and "uncountable" at all (because are stars really countable?) I wanted the kids to make up the rule themselves and that's how the lesson was:

First we welcomed our guest, the president of the "Schulpflege" - so basically my boss, with our good morning conversation just with the difference that this time the kids told him good morning and asked him how he was today and all that with no preparation. They just definitely had initialised "my part" by hearing it so often that they could easily adapt it to this new situation.

Then I asked them NOT to take out their stuff yet and just told them to speak along this text they had listened to passively just as much as they could... I read the text out loud and pretty much the whole class was speaking along pretty much the whole text and this after quite a long time without listening to it.

Then I went to the blackboard and wrote "how many" on one part of the blackboard and "how much" on an other. I told them that they have heard and read these two expressions several times in this text and asked if they could recall sentences which had these word in.

(They still had no text in front of them!!!) Well half the class raised their hand immediately but I waited a few more seconds until ALL of them had thought of a phrase: So I asked a weaker girl and she answered "How much spaghetti do we need for 20 people?" (WOW!) So I made her a compliment and wrote spaghetti on the "how much"- blackboard. - Another boy said: "how many tomatoes we put in the sauce" and the next said "how many grams or kilos was that?" and so on and so on. I didn't have to add ANYTHING! They found the onions, salt and pepper, Parmesan cheese. So this was my blackboard:

"how many"
 tomatoes, onions, grams, kilos, packs

"how much"
spaghetti, cheese (which I accidentally spelled chees - and one guy told me that there an "e" missing :-)), salt, pepper


So I asked them, if they could think of a rule to know, when to use which. What most of them saw right away was that the "many" words were in the plural form and the "much" words in the singular. Fantastic, I haven't even thought about this myself. They formulated this aspect in different ways (always ends with a "s" etc) but they couldn't think of counting the objects yet. I gave them more examples like skin, fingers, sand and books but it still didn't click. So I asked a concrete question:

If I asked you: "How many books are there in the shelf" what would you do to find out? I let them think about this for a moment and then they told me, that they would go to the shelf and COUNT the books. And if I ask you "How many tomatoes are there on this desk" - they would count them. So I asked this question with all countable nouns we talked about. Then I asked,  what they would do if I asked how much air there is in this room or how much water in the lake or how much sand the beach. They looked a little puzzled but agreed that the could not really count water nor air nor sand.

So I wrote the words "countable" on the "many"-side and "uncountable" on the "much"-side.

One girl said, that she could count the sand grains (one boy added "or pillars of sand like in the song") and this perfectly lead us to the question, how to make UNCOUNTABLE things countable using the examples of the text. I asked how Betty, Tom and Oliver knew how much spaghetti they had to buy if spaghetti was uncountable? Or how much spices or how much salt and pepper... They all knew it by heart: 4 packs of spaghetti, one glass jar of spices, one pack of salt and pepper...

I gave them some more examples like the ones in the "Young World Pupil's Book" but some of them are a bit confusing. I mean I can count the sun. There is one! But how much sun will cause cancer? So I added some myself like sunshine. For meat I added steaks. And I asked about the stars... About half the class though that stars were uncountable and they are so right but in our case stars are countable. I tried to explain them that if they could start counting like "one star, two stars and MANY more" we say it's countable. Same thing for the Autumn leaves in the forest, we'll never be able to count them all but we can still say "one leaf, two leaves and MANY more"

I handed out an ABC list with with two colons. One for "many" and one for "much" and I asked them read through page 4 of there decoded text and make a preparation for their "part of speech test" (Wortartentest) this afternoon because guess what: If a word is a noun in German, what part of speech is it in English? It a noun too. I chose the last page since there are about as many uncountable nouns as countable nouns and it's not too long. So they highlighted all the nouns and wrote them on the right side of their list. In the meantime I went to "my boss" and the first question he asked me was how they knew this whole "shopping for a school camp" text by heart. I showed him the decoded text and said that we had clarified all the vocabulary and the kids had passively listened to it at home while doing something different. He was very impressed :-)


So the bell was about to ring and I wanted to the kids to compare their solution to their neighbour's and if they had different results they should ask me. One question was the dinner which can be countable or uncountable but with a change of meaning. "I cook dinner 3 times a week" or "I usually don't each much dinner"...

So the bell rang and I let them take a brake and had a conversation with my boss. He seams to have liked this lesson and said he was going to send me an e-mail.

After the break I handed out the "Young World Activity Books" for the first time this year and I asked them to do Exercise 12 on page 7 and the ones who were finished could start with 13. They did so well. From having the text initialised so deeply they could easily fill in the caps and the whole shopping list without listening to the text again.

After having been sitting for such a long time I thought it was time to get them moving so I took them outside with the aim to work in pairs and find at least six things on the school yard which they could ask a question about - at least two countable and at least two uncountable. They had to write down the questions and the answers in their note books.

I realised that they had no idea how to formulate questions like "How many stones are there under the tree" or "How much rubbish is there in the bin" but I just let them try... In the next lesson on Monday I will put some more chunks on the wall and they will be writing those sentences again in a correct form. But they really came up with some real good thing. And just about at the end of the lesson they had all found six or (mostly) more things that they could formulate questions with.

Critical reflection of the Rainbow Serpent Reading Project

Well, where should I start...

I think I got a little carried away by this project. At the beginning, I just needed a gap filler for about two weeks, while the class was passively listening to the "shopping for a school camp" text. I just looked through my posts again and here's a very short resume:

Monday, 7th of September
Introducing the project / clarifying the aim of the project / letting them pick their text.

Friday, 11th of September
Understanding the story / clarifying unknown vocabulary / start listening to the audio book

(no homework over the weekend)

Monday, 14th of September 
Reading along the audio book / silently > as an echo > at the same time

(Tuesday - Thursday = camp = no homework)

Friday, 18th of September
Practise and preparation time / practising in many different ways

(no homework over the weekend)

Monday, 21st of September (visitors day)
last practise / first reading out loud

(first time I could give them homework - which was to practise, since on Friday all of them had to read out loud)

Friday, 25th of September
Reading in front of the class and in the other room to record it.

Monday, 28th of September
The one who was sick read to the class and together with his mates to the dictating machine.
(while starting with shopping for a school camp)

Friday, 2dn of October
Giving back the grades (CD Cover) and going through the questionnaire.



MY CRITICAL THOUGHTS

So all in all it took us four weeks to finish the project even though we just spent two weeks (or a little more) with preparing the text (clarifying vocabulary and practising reading it out loud). The rest of the time was used for their presentations, the recordings, folding their CD cover and answering a questionnaire...

Well the question is, if all this wasted too much time or if it showed the kids appreciation for their effort and accomplishment? It's hard too say but by the looks at their faces, as they folded their CD cover with themselves being one of the "artists" they really enjoyed it. I wonder if any of them listened to their readings again at home or if they showed it to their parents... I'll definitely ask.

If I could have found a way of reducing the time they read in front of the class, that might have been good. But since there were up to four kids reading the same text they seamed to be disappointed as I just wanted to give them a couple of lines so most texts were presented more than once which made it boring for the listeners... Due to the fact that the kids who read their texts at the visitors day wanted to read their texts again it was probably too much time that we spent reading them out loud in front of the class. And still I believe that it was good for their self-esteem to make such good performances in front of the others. So from that point of view, it was well worth the time.

By looking through the aims of the project again I realised something... I didn't really stick to the checklist I wrote and I definitely should have! Only four of the kids read it to me before the read it in front of the whole class!!! I wrote, that they could tell me whenever they thought they were ready and they could read it to me. Then I would tell them the part they were going to read in front of the class and then they could go home and practise this particular part again!!! SHAME!!! I had such a fantastic idea when I wrote these aims and then I completely ignored this step!

I have realised, why I made something like a short cut... There was this visitor day and I was told, that it would be good if the parents didn't only see the kids sitting in their desks and working for themselves, so I thought that would be a great opportunity to start with the reading presentation. But actually  I think that was a mistake... Just by sticking to the plan, I could have saved a lot of time... Because if they had all read to me first, they could have practised their particular part and we could have heard all six stories only once in class... But still, it would have taken a long time to have all of them reading the whole story to me and I would have had to find an additional task for the ones that were ready longtime before the others...

And there is one more thing that I realised... This one worksheet I handed out for the class to do while I was in the other room with each group to record their readings was never even looked at again. For me it was just something to keep them busy but I should have gone through the answers with them because I know some of them really worked through it thoroughly. To avoid having to leave the class working alone until all stories were recorded, I could have showed them how to do the recordings themselves and so each group could have gone to the separate room by themselves to record their readings? That might have been a better idea...

Well and then there is the grading... I got just one grade out of this whole project... And it's a speaking grade. It's a bit confusing because it's a reading project but here, reading out loud is considered as speaking and reading means reading comprehension. So I should have given the project a different title... AND I could have made a reading comprehension grade on this too... AND a writing... AND a listening... First I thought of letting them write a couple of sentences about their story, or giving them a couple of questions about their texts or the texts they have just heard from their class mates. That way I would have gotten grades for more sections of the report card but I decided not to since the aim was clearly: Reading a story to the class... I'll have to think of wider aims on the next project or I'm never going to fill these report cards. 

MY CONCLUSION

Well after all these thoughts I'll try to come to a conclusion:
Making a project like this (especially for the first time) is probably full of making compromises. I don't know if it would have been "better" in a different way... But here are a couple of points that I do judge as positive and negative:

Negative:

• The level was too low for some of the kids. In the questionnaire one boy mentioned that he got bored by reading the same text over and over again. So in the future, for a heterogeneous class I need heterogeneous texts, especially if it takes us 4 weeks until we get though with them.
• If I give the kids a clear schedule like in those aims - I have to stick to it and not change it because I wanted their parents to have a more exciting visitor's day. 
• I should have showed them, how I will grade their performance and I should have thought it through thoroughly. This would have made it clearer for the kids and it would have saved me lots of time.
• Next time I plan a project, I'll have to think about grading the kids so I can set the aims in a way I cover more than just one skill. If ever possible I should try to cover "reading", "writing", "listening" and "speaking" in order not to spend 4 weeks on a project and just getting one skill graded.
• And here are the points, the kids liked the least about the project:
• Rather boring stories (5) - Well this is the first point of my critics too.
• Reading in front of the class (4) - OK, I can remember how I felt in school when I had to stand in front of the class. I really hated it... So I can understand those guys who didn't really enjoy this even if all of them did great!
• Nothing (4) - oh that's charming ;-)))
• Always reading the same text (1) - well yes! That the thing about heterogeneous texts. I totally understand this critic.
• The audio book was read too slowly (1) - Same thing!
• Uncomfortable earphones (1) - You bet. I have to do something about this. The MP3 players did their jobs but they are really not luxurious at all. 

Positive:

Well that's the thing about me... I'm not too good in making compliments to myself. I always think I could have done better, but I'll try to write down what I think was pretty good.

• Well the outcome of the whole project was definitely great! They all did a fantastic job. Hearing all these kids reading English out loud so fluently and with such proper pronunciation made me incredibly proud. Especially since they have not been known for being strong in English at all. 
• My thesis, that learning a language is something very auditory cannot be too wrong. I don't think that reading these stories without the help of the audio book would have caused such great results.
• I do think, that the kids had fun. At least most of the time. I see that some could have done with one or two lessons fewer or with more demanding stories but except for that I thought there was a very productive, motivated and jolly mood in the class while working on this project. 
• I think it was good, that the kids could choose their story (even if there were only six simple ones) and that they could work on it individually.
• And here are the points, the kids liked the most about this project:
• The MP3-listening in class (9) - This I realised. It was new for them but they really enjoyed reading along the audio book. Even as they had the choice to read it without the MP3-Players, none of them wanted to miss the opportunity to listen to the texts.
• That they have gotten a CD (2) - This is good to read because it cost me plenty of time :-)
• That it was something different (1) - Oh this definitely was different than just the "Young World"
• Understanding all the words and knowing how to pronounce them (1) - This was nice to read especially since it came from the one guy that wrote that he didn't really like the project because it became boring. He did enjoy knowing the whole text and being able to pronounce all the words. 
• Not having to study vocabulary (1) - mmmmhh... Well I'm sure they liked this even if I think I could have gotten a whole lot more out of this project, just like I wrote a little above.