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.
Wednesday, 7 October 2015
1st of October 2015 - 2nd TPR music lesson
Well today the class had a Maths test and it took them two whole lessons to get through it.
So we just had a quick music session... We sang though our songs and finished the movements to "viva la vida". It's so much fun and I really think the kids are enjoying it a lot! And it's cool to see how well they know those words and how well they act them out.
We sang it along the CD player with -10% speed and it's quite fast but they could handle it. Then we sang it again in the regular speed and this was kind of hectic (for me too I have to admit ;-))
Especially the "pillars of sand" are fantastic. For pillars they came up with making the pillars out of their lower arms in front of them, so elbows around breast height and fists at eye level and for the sand they kind of move their fingers like they were typing on a keyboard. and going down - like you would show someone that it rains or snows. And it's funny how this started changing the sound of the song too. Now they sing pillars really powerful and the sand real soft. It's amazing. I hope I can get some parents to agree filming them and putting it on the Internet...
So we just had a quick music session... We sang though our songs and finished the movements to "viva la vida". It's so much fun and I really think the kids are enjoying it a lot! And it's cool to see how well they know those words and how well they act them out.
We sang it along the CD player with -10% speed and it's quite fast but they could handle it. Then we sang it again in the regular speed and this was kind of hectic (for me too I have to admit ;-))
Especially the "pillars of sand" are fantastic. For pillars they came up with making the pillars out of their lower arms in front of them, so elbows around breast height and fists at eye level and for the sand they kind of move their fingers like they were typing on a keyboard. and going down - like you would show someone that it rains or snows. And it's funny how this started changing the sound of the song too. Now they sing pillars really powerful and the sand real soft. It's amazing. I hope I can get some parents to agree filming them and putting it on the Internet...
Tuesday, 29 September 2015
28th of September 2015 - Finishing the Rainbow Serpent and starting with shopping for a school camp
As usually we started this lesson with our good morning conversation and I held the conversation with about 9 kids because in the lesson before, my teaching partner let the paper circulate around the class asking them to tick their names if they were ready. And they were! All of them did great. I recorded them because there's no way I could have remembered how each one of them did.
We sang our new song to the main teacher and then I introduced today's topic to the class.
I told them, that if they had really listened passively to the "shopping for a school camp" text, they would be able to read the text with me. I handed out the following documents:
Shopping for a school camp - clozes
As soon as they got it they started filling in the gaps so I had to stop them because that was not what I wanted them to do. I asked them to read the text out loud along with me and I started straight away. I read the text and almost all of them could follow me without having the nouns in their text. So they really did listen to it passively. YAY!
I told them, that as soon as I would leave the room to record the last group that they should work in pairs and read the text to each other. The one reading should have the cloze in his/her hand and the other one should read the complete text and count the times he/she had to help the other. The main teacher told me that she'd put them into pairs.
So it was time now to finish our Rainbow Serpent project. The boy who was ill on Friday read part of his story to the class and just like all the others, he did great! We left the class room and recorded the last story in the separate room. Here's the recording:
Story 6 - A new flower comes to the mountain
Isn't it great!!
Coming back to the room, two of them read the text to each other and I had one of them read to me. He read it so fluently like you'd never think that he was reading from a cloze. Just once he read "people" instead of "children" but that made perfect sense.
After reading, they had to tell me how many mistakes they made and most of them had 0 to 1. About 4 had 2-4 and two of them had a lot more but admitted that they didn't really listen to it more than may be twice... But maybe that's exactly that they need... So they'll get another chance on Friday and after that, we'll have a two weeks break anyway. But I'm really looking forward working with this text, now they really seem to have initialised it so well :-)
So now that I had all the recordings I finished my evaluation table and created a serial letter in Word in form of a CD cover. It took me a while to figure out how I could format numbers in the Word document so I didn't get those 98.0153156813216846513% but just before becoming mad I found a instruction in the Internet...
So this is how it looks:
CD Cover with Reading Results
Now on Thursday they'll all get their personal CD Cover and can fold it just like I did on those pictures:
We sang our new song to the main teacher and then I introduced today's topic to the class.
I told them, that if they had really listened passively to the "shopping for a school camp" text, they would be able to read the text with me. I handed out the following documents:
Shopping for a school camp - clozes
As soon as they got it they started filling in the gaps so I had to stop them because that was not what I wanted them to do. I asked them to read the text out loud along with me and I started straight away. I read the text and almost all of them could follow me without having the nouns in their text. So they really did listen to it passively. YAY!
I told them, that as soon as I would leave the room to record the last group that they should work in pairs and read the text to each other. The one reading should have the cloze in his/her hand and the other one should read the complete text and count the times he/she had to help the other. The main teacher told me that she'd put them into pairs.
So it was time now to finish our Rainbow Serpent project. The boy who was ill on Friday read part of his story to the class and just like all the others, he did great! We left the class room and recorded the last story in the separate room. Here's the recording:
Story 6 - A new flower comes to the mountain
Isn't it great!!
Coming back to the room, two of them read the text to each other and I had one of them read to me. He read it so fluently like you'd never think that he was reading from a cloze. Just once he read "people" instead of "children" but that made perfect sense.
After reading, they had to tell me how many mistakes they made and most of them had 0 to 1. About 4 had 2-4 and two of them had a lot more but admitted that they didn't really listen to it more than may be twice... But maybe that's exactly that they need... So they'll get another chance on Friday and after that, we'll have a two weeks break anyway. But I'm really looking forward working with this text, now they really seem to have initialised it so well :-)
So now that I had all the recordings I finished my evaluation table and created a serial letter in Word in form of a CD cover. It took me a while to figure out how I could format numbers in the Word document so I didn't get those 98.0153156813216846513% but just before becoming mad I found a instruction in the Internet...
So this is how it looks:
CD Cover with Reading Results
Now on Thursday they'll all get their personal CD Cover and can fold it just like I did on those pictures:
Saturday, 26 September 2015
Evaluation of the reading test
Oh well... Where should I start...
After yesterday's reading test, I went home with lots of material and I didn't really have a clue, how I was supposed to give them a grade. In my eyes they all did wonderful, but that won't do me any good for they report cards so I had to come up with some kind of key...
First, I scanned the stories as texts so I was able copy them into a word document and count the words each student read because I wanted to make it fair for those who had longer texts to read.
I thought I was so smart because now I started to highlight words they read wrong and then I just calculated the correct words out of all the words and had a percentage of how much they've read correctly. Sounds great, doesn't it? Well this became harder and harder to judge the more texts I listened to.
I started to realise that this whole thing was a lot more complex. And here is what I came up with:
I made three criteria: Pronunciation, Accuracy and Fluency
Pronunciation
Soon I stopped doing this on the computer but printed it out and just wrote the letters P, A or F in the text when ever there was a mistake. So here's the result:
Evaluation Reading Test
Since they did not always have the same amount of text in the first and in the second round, it looks a little confusing but this way, I can show everybody who wants to know how I came up with the grades.
And here are the calculations... I hope this one boy will be back on Monday so I can record him and his group too. Then I'll make a Audio CD out of all the students reading with their grades on it. So they have the book and the CD to take home to their parents.
After yesterday's reading test, I went home with lots of material and I didn't really have a clue, how I was supposed to give them a grade. In my eyes they all did wonderful, but that won't do me any good for they report cards so I had to come up with some kind of key...
First, I scanned the stories as texts so I was able copy them into a word document and count the words each student read because I wanted to make it fair for those who had longer texts to read.
I thought I was so smart because now I started to highlight words they read wrong and then I just calculated the correct words out of all the words and had a percentage of how much they've read correctly. Sounds great, doesn't it? Well this became harder and harder to judge the more texts I listened to.
- What do I do with kids who pronounced the words correctly but had to pause every other sentence?
- What do I do with kids who read words that were not in the text but skipped words that were there?
- And what do I do with those who pronounced the words correctly but due to their lack of practising couldn't read it fluently?
I started to realise that this whole thing was a lot more complex. And here is what I came up with:
I made three criteria: Pronunciation, Accuracy and Fluency
Pronunciation
- if someone pronounced the "came" as "come" or the "new" as "now".
- And I did NOT care if they said "wery" instead of "very" or if the "th" sound didn't come out correctly. Neither did I expect them to say "earth" 100% correctly (because that a real tough word), as long as I understood that they meant "earth", it was fine with me. Just one girl said "Youth" and that was a little too far away in my opinion.
- So if one child's text was 271 words long and it made 5 errors, it got 266/271 or 98.15%
- leaving out a word or mixing up words or just reading "he" instead of "she".
- So if one child's text was 271 words long and it made 5 errors, it got 266/271 or 98.15%
- was if they read the whole sentence fluently.
- So if one child's text was 15 sentences long and it stumbled in two sentences it got 13/15 or 86.67%
Soon I stopped doing this on the computer but printed it out and just wrote the letters P, A or F in the text when ever there was a mistake. So here's the result:
Evaluation Reading Test
Since they did not always have the same amount of text in the first and in the second round, it looks a little confusing but this way, I can show everybody who wants to know how I came up with the grades.
And here are the calculations... I hope this one boy will be back on Monday so I can record him and his group too. Then I'll make a Audio CD out of all the students reading with their grades on it. So they have the book and the CD to take home to their parents.
25th of September 2015 - THE TEST: reading in front of the class
Today I made a double lesson English to get through the reading tests.
We started with our conversation and another boy said that he was ready. He did it great too. There was just one short hesitation. I reminded the rest of the class that the aim was, that every one of them had this conversation with me by the end of the first quarter which was only one week to go.
I explained them, that if they still needed to practise, they could ask one of their class mates to read the "Mrs. Kündig part" and that they could try to give the answers without looking at the text. Because it's always there above the blackboard.
Today I asked them, what song they wanted to sing and the first answer I got was "what are you waiting for" and that's the song we sang.
Then the time had come for the "reading test".
Before the school started, I happened to see the boy that was struggling so much with standing in front of the class and I asked him how he felt about the reading today. He told me that he was very nervous. I said that I realised that he did so well with me in this room but as there were "hundreds" of ears around that he hardly read a word out loud. I told him, that there would be two chances for each child. One in front of the class and one with me in the room, reading to the dictating machine but I didn't want to torture him by making him stand in front of the class and that he could tell me if he didn't want to do it but he assured me that he would try and I told him how proud I was!
I handed out this Worksheet I found on the "penguin readers" homepage. It's a worksheet with questions about the six stories in the book. So while groups 3-6 read through the questions to stories 1+2 the groups 1+2 came to the front and we organised the order in which they were going to read.
Before they started reading I asked the class what they'd be doing while they listen to the story to make sure everyone was reading along and highlighting the unknown words.
Then group 1 started. The boy I talked to before school was the second reader of this group and I have to admit I was kind of nervous too. But as he started reading, he did this so beautifully I was close to tears! I'm not putting the videos in this blog but the recordings I made later in a separate room. So you'll get the chance to hear them all.
That's how we went all the way through all the texts. So we stopped after two texts and I let them answer the questions and had the next two groups to come to me to decide which of them would read which part of the text. There were four kids reading the Caterpillar story and they looked at me a little disappointed as I divided the text into four sections so I let each child read half the text. This meant that the class heard the text twice but they did not mind. And even those children who have already read the stories wanted to read again :-)
While they read I tried to highlight those words they didn't pronounce correctly and the other teacher filmed them.
After each story we discussed the vocabulary and after the second "what's a ___?" question I repeated all the longer questions with the class and asked them to use them as well and they did.
So after the last group was through reading I asked the class to work on this worksheet and took the first group into the other room. There I told them, which words they hadn't pronounced correctly and let them read. Here are all these FANTASTIC results:
Story 1 - The Rainbow Serpent brings animals onto the earth
Again I would like to point out the second reader. He's freed of learning targets in Math, German, French, English and "People and Environment". Can you notice a difference between him and the others? Well his text was a little shorter and maybe not too difficult but I think he did fantastic!
Story 2 - The kangaroo makes a friend
In this story the second reader is actually really good in English but after class, he admitted that he hadn't really practised with the audio book. Can you hear the difference here?
Before getting ready with the next group, I realised that the bell would ring in about a minute but the two girls still wanted to read their story so I quickly went back to the classroom and told the others to get ready for the break and ended the lesson as usual and this time I didn't have ask my questions twice. It's still not as convincing as I want it to be but a lot better than last time.
So I went back to the room and waited for the loud break-noise to go by and let the girls read their story.
Story 3 - The frog finds a voice
The second reader of this story is such a shy girl. She hardly ever speaks. But she did such a good job. At the end of the story you can tell how nervous she became.
In the afternoon, after getting through the "Klassenrat" (where the class sits in a circle and discusses issues) quickly I had the chance to record two more groups while the others wrote on a German project.
Story 4 - Man listens to the Platypus
The first reader has a "recognised language problem". Can you tell? Well I can't!
Story 5 - The caterpillars answer a difficult question
The sixth group will read on Monday. One of them was ill.
I'll write a separate post about how I sit here, trying to grade these readings...
We started with our conversation and another boy said that he was ready. He did it great too. There was just one short hesitation. I reminded the rest of the class that the aim was, that every one of them had this conversation with me by the end of the first quarter which was only one week to go.
I explained them, that if they still needed to practise, they could ask one of their class mates to read the "Mrs. Kündig part" and that they could try to give the answers without looking at the text. Because it's always there above the blackboard.
Today I asked them, what song they wanted to sing and the first answer I got was "what are you waiting for" and that's the song we sang.
Then the time had come for the "reading test".
Before the school started, I happened to see the boy that was struggling so much with standing in front of the class and I asked him how he felt about the reading today. He told me that he was very nervous. I said that I realised that he did so well with me in this room but as there were "hundreds" of ears around that he hardly read a word out loud. I told him, that there would be two chances for each child. One in front of the class and one with me in the room, reading to the dictating machine but I didn't want to torture him by making him stand in front of the class and that he could tell me if he didn't want to do it but he assured me that he would try and I told him how proud I was!
I handed out this Worksheet I found on the "penguin readers" homepage. It's a worksheet with questions about the six stories in the book. So while groups 3-6 read through the questions to stories 1+2 the groups 1+2 came to the front and we organised the order in which they were going to read.
Before they started reading I asked the class what they'd be doing while they listen to the story to make sure everyone was reading along and highlighting the unknown words.
Then group 1 started. The boy I talked to before school was the second reader of this group and I have to admit I was kind of nervous too. But as he started reading, he did this so beautifully I was close to tears! I'm not putting the videos in this blog but the recordings I made later in a separate room. So you'll get the chance to hear them all.
That's how we went all the way through all the texts. So we stopped after two texts and I let them answer the questions and had the next two groups to come to me to decide which of them would read which part of the text. There were four kids reading the Caterpillar story and they looked at me a little disappointed as I divided the text into four sections so I let each child read half the text. This meant that the class heard the text twice but they did not mind. And even those children who have already read the stories wanted to read again :-)
While they read I tried to highlight those words they didn't pronounce correctly and the other teacher filmed them.
After each story we discussed the vocabulary and after the second "what's a ___?" question I repeated all the longer questions with the class and asked them to use them as well and they did.
So after the last group was through reading I asked the class to work on this worksheet and took the first group into the other room. There I told them, which words they hadn't pronounced correctly and let them read. Here are all these FANTASTIC results:
Story 1 - The Rainbow Serpent brings animals onto the earth
Again I would like to point out the second reader. He's freed of learning targets in Math, German, French, English and "People and Environment". Can you notice a difference between him and the others? Well his text was a little shorter and maybe not too difficult but I think he did fantastic!
Story 2 - The kangaroo makes a friend
In this story the second reader is actually really good in English but after class, he admitted that he hadn't really practised with the audio book. Can you hear the difference here?
Before getting ready with the next group, I realised that the bell would ring in about a minute but the two girls still wanted to read their story so I quickly went back to the classroom and told the others to get ready for the break and ended the lesson as usual and this time I didn't have ask my questions twice. It's still not as convincing as I want it to be but a lot better than last time.
So I went back to the room and waited for the loud break-noise to go by and let the girls read their story.
Story 3 - The frog finds a voice
The second reader of this story is such a shy girl. She hardly ever speaks. But she did such a good job. At the end of the story you can tell how nervous she became.
In the afternoon, after getting through the "Klassenrat" (where the class sits in a circle and discusses issues) quickly I had the chance to record two more groups while the others wrote on a German project.
Story 4 - Man listens to the Platypus
The first reader has a "recognised language problem". Can you tell? Well I can't!
Story 5 - The caterpillars answer a difficult question
The sixth group will read on Monday. One of them was ill.
I'll write a separate post about how I sit here, trying to grade these readings...
Thursday, 24 September 2015
24th of September 2015 - a (TPR) music lesson
In today's music lesson, I introduced a new song.
Nickelback - What are you waiting for?
The kids have gotten used to my way of going through a song so I'll make this entry quiet short:
But after singing it once we changed the song and went back to "viva la vida". But this time I asked them to highlight some English words and chunks. Which one I had them highlight you'll see the following document: "viva la vida" - with highlighted words
Now I put them together in pairs and gave each pair two lines to find some movements to act out the meaning of the words. And I gave them the first two lines as an example. That way it worked out even to where it says "that was when I ruled the world".
So for "ruled" I stood up straight and held an invisible pole in my hand.
For "the world" I just drew a circle in the air like it was the earth.
I gave them a couple of minutes to find out how they would act out their words or chunks and practise them so they could teach the others. Then we stood in a circle and went through the song. We all said the lines and all pairs showed the others what they came up with and we did the movements all together. After we've been through all groups I set the speed of the song on -20% and we sang and acted out the words together.
I first worried, that those kids in sixth grade would start acting silly but they actually had fun and did those movements with lots enthusiasm AND the sang to it by heart which I thought was amazing because it really hasn't got too easy lyrics.
So we'll do the second half next time and then we'll always act out those words when we sing this song. I hope I can get at least some parents to agree on letting me put some videos in the Internet so I could show how well they did.
I asked them for a homework to write three songs they really liked on a piece of paper and give it to me by next Thursday because I want to look at these songs over the break. I also reminded them that they all had their readings tomorrow AND not to forget the passive listening because next week, we'll start with the "shopping for a school camp" and they all nodded as if it were taking it for granted... I have to be honest. I thought, that most of them would look at me like..... "Oooooooooooooooooooohhh my ... I forgot about that..." but they didn't look like that at all. So I'm really curious how well they'll have initialised the text by next week :-)
Nickelback - What are you waiting for?
The kids have gotten used to my way of going through a song so I'll make this entry quiet short:
- I read the first verse to them very slowly and let them highlight the unknown words in German.
- I read the verse line for line and we talked about the meaning of the text.
- We sang it verse by verse until we were all the way through.
But after singing it once we changed the song and went back to "viva la vida". But this time I asked them to highlight some English words and chunks. Which one I had them highlight you'll see the following document: "viva la vida" - with highlighted words
Now I put them together in pairs and gave each pair two lines to find some movements to act out the meaning of the words. And I gave them the first two lines as an example. That way it worked out even to where it says "that was when I ruled the world".
So for "ruled" I stood up straight and held an invisible pole in my hand.
For "the world" I just drew a circle in the air like it was the earth.
I gave them a couple of minutes to find out how they would act out their words or chunks and practise them so they could teach the others. Then we stood in a circle and went through the song. We all said the lines and all pairs showed the others what they came up with and we did the movements all together. After we've been through all groups I set the speed of the song on -20% and we sang and acted out the words together.
I first worried, that those kids in sixth grade would start acting silly but they actually had fun and did those movements with lots enthusiasm AND the sang to it by heart which I thought was amazing because it really hasn't got too easy lyrics.
So we'll do the second half next time and then we'll always act out those words when we sing this song. I hope I can get at least some parents to agree on letting me put some videos in the Internet so I could show how well they did.
I asked them for a homework to write three songs they really liked on a piece of paper and give it to me by next Thursday because I want to look at these songs over the break. I also reminded them that they all had their readings tomorrow AND not to forget the passive listening because next week, we'll start with the "shopping for a school camp" and they all nodded as if it were taking it for granted... I have to be honest. I thought, that most of them would look at me like..... "Oooooooooooooooooooohhh my ... I forgot about that..." but they didn't look like that at all. So I'm really curious how well they'll have initialised the text by next week :-)
Tuesday, 22 September 2015
21st of September 2015 - two wonderful stories on visitors day
It was the last lesson in the morning and the kids had their parents around all day. Unfortunately many parents had left for whatever reason... Maybe they had to go home and cook...? But there were still about 9 people watching the lesson.
This lesson started about the same way the last lesson started: I greeted them with the good morning conversation and all could see the text above the blackboard. Then I put the blackboard up as far as I could to cover the text and held the conversation with this one boy that told me he was ready and he did great. There was one short hesitation before one of the answers but all the rest he said very fluently. I gave him two thumbs up and a huge smile and without having to say anything the class gave him a big applause. Then I explained to the parents (in English of course ;-)) that I had a list where the kids could tick their names when they felt ready to have this conversation with me and that even though he knew that parents would be watching this brave boy told me he was ready to do it today.
Then we sang out two songs. I'm really looking forward to Thursday when we'll learn one or two new songs. This will give us some more variety...
Then I gave the kids another 15 minutes to practise their texts and let it open to them if they wanted to use an MP3-player or just read it through without it. They could also work in pairs or by themselves but actually all of them came to get a MP3 player and read along the audio book.
After those 15 minutes the class gathered in the classroom. One kid was sick last Friday so he didn't know anything about the questions I had put up above the blackboard. I asked if anyone could explain it to him and choose one boy out of those who raised their hand. As usually he started talking in German (as the whole class does all the time) and I asked him to try it in English. He hesitated but then he tried. I could understand what he meant even if it wasn't grammatically correct so I told him that he did good. As I realised that some of the class mate were giggling I asked them not to and told them why it was worth a lot more to say something in English even if it's not correct than just to say it in German...
I made an example with the girl next to him. I said: Imagine you were you and on the street you met a women. She's a tourist from Spain and says to you: "Disculpa, puedes decir me donde esta la iglesia?" (I have no idea if I wrote this correctly but that's not the point...) She looked at me with big eyes because she didn't understand a word... Then I asked her how she would react if this woman said: "WO SEIN KIRCHE?" (WHERE CHURCH?) Then she said that she would show her the right directions. Then I told the class that that was exactly why I wanted them to try it in English, even if it's not 100% correct because if they are in an English speaking country on a holiday I want them to be able to communicate. And just as this girl understood me by speaking incorrect German, those people will understand them when they try it in the foreign language...
I explained again to the whole class and the parents, that I wanted them to read along while the kids who read it out loud and to highlight the words they didn't understand. After having heard the whole story, they could ask questions to clarify vocabulary with the help above the blackboard. Because these guys were the "Pros" since the really knew every single word... (Oh they liked that word "Pro")
And here comes the highlight!
These four guys read the two stories so beautifully! They read it very fluently and except for one "came" that was pronounced as "come" and for some "askEd" and "whachEd" where they stressed the "E" they read it perfectly AND with a very proper English accent. The main teacher filmed it but what I will do on Friday is that I'll take each of those six groups to a different room and just record their reading. Then each one of them will get a CD to take home with all six stories read by the whole class.
They all got a big applause from fascinated visitors.
The clarification of the vocabulary was held in English but I allowed the readers to translate those words in German. Next time I'll have them try to explain in different words but they have had enough pressure standing in front of this big audience for today.
Voluntary homework was to practise reading these text until Friday because then, I want the others to read their texts as well.
So to end the lesson and asked my question about the what the boys say and there was a silence... I really don't know it they felt ashamed to say something like this in front of the parents so we had to do it twice. I wonder how they will do on Friday...
After the lesson many parents came and told me that they thought it was a great lesson and a grand-father told me that he had actually learnt a lot in this lesson.
One mother pointed out how much her son liked this way of language learning a lot and that he feels very comfortable having the help of these audio books of recorded texts and I have to say that exactly this boy is struggling a lot in school. And last Friday the class had a French lesson where he didn't have to participate so I took him to a separate room to practise his English text. I was amazed how well he did. But then in the next lesson he was supposed to practice it with the main teacher in the classroom and hardly said a word. I think that he's scared saying something when other kids are around and I really thinking about taking him to this different room and having him read his part of the text to me only and to the dictating machine. And when he hears on the CD that he's doing just as good as the others, then maybe this will help him get more self confidence.
This lesson started about the same way the last lesson started: I greeted them with the good morning conversation and all could see the text above the blackboard. Then I put the blackboard up as far as I could to cover the text and held the conversation with this one boy that told me he was ready and he did great. There was one short hesitation before one of the answers but all the rest he said very fluently. I gave him two thumbs up and a huge smile and without having to say anything the class gave him a big applause. Then I explained to the parents (in English of course ;-)) that I had a list where the kids could tick their names when they felt ready to have this conversation with me and that even though he knew that parents would be watching this brave boy told me he was ready to do it today.
Then we sang out two songs. I'm really looking forward to Thursday when we'll learn one or two new songs. This will give us some more variety...
Then I gave the kids another 15 minutes to practise their texts and let it open to them if they wanted to use an MP3-player or just read it through without it. They could also work in pairs or by themselves but actually all of them came to get a MP3 player and read along the audio book.
After those 15 minutes the class gathered in the classroom. One kid was sick last Friday so he didn't know anything about the questions I had put up above the blackboard. I asked if anyone could explain it to him and choose one boy out of those who raised their hand. As usually he started talking in German (as the whole class does all the time) and I asked him to try it in English. He hesitated but then he tried. I could understand what he meant even if it wasn't grammatically correct so I told him that he did good. As I realised that some of the class mate were giggling I asked them not to and told them why it was worth a lot more to say something in English even if it's not correct than just to say it in German...
I made an example with the girl next to him. I said: Imagine you were you and on the street you met a women. She's a tourist from Spain and says to you: "Disculpa, puedes decir me donde esta la iglesia?" (I have no idea if I wrote this correctly but that's not the point...) She looked at me with big eyes because she didn't understand a word... Then I asked her how she would react if this woman said: "WO SEIN KIRCHE?" (WHERE CHURCH?) Then she said that she would show her the right directions. Then I told the class that that was exactly why I wanted them to try it in English, even if it's not 100% correct because if they are in an English speaking country on a holiday I want them to be able to communicate. And just as this girl understood me by speaking incorrect German, those people will understand them when they try it in the foreign language...
I explained again to the whole class and the parents, that I wanted them to read along while the kids who read it out loud and to highlight the words they didn't understand. After having heard the whole story, they could ask questions to clarify vocabulary with the help above the blackboard. Because these guys were the "Pros" since the really knew every single word... (Oh they liked that word "Pro")
And here comes the highlight!
These four guys read the two stories so beautifully! They read it very fluently and except for one "came" that was pronounced as "come" and for some "askEd" and "whachEd" where they stressed the "E" they read it perfectly AND with a very proper English accent. The main teacher filmed it but what I will do on Friday is that I'll take each of those six groups to a different room and just record their reading. Then each one of them will get a CD to take home with all six stories read by the whole class.
They all got a big applause from fascinated visitors.
The clarification of the vocabulary was held in English but I allowed the readers to translate those words in German. Next time I'll have them try to explain in different words but they have had enough pressure standing in front of this big audience for today.
Voluntary homework was to practise reading these text until Friday because then, I want the others to read their texts as well.
So to end the lesson and asked my question about the what the boys say and there was a silence... I really don't know it they felt ashamed to say something like this in front of the parents so we had to do it twice. I wonder how they will do on Friday...
After the lesson many parents came and told me that they thought it was a great lesson and a grand-father told me that he had actually learnt a lot in this lesson.
One mother pointed out how much her son liked this way of language learning a lot and that he feels very comfortable having the help of these audio books of recorded texts and I have to say that exactly this boy is struggling a lot in school. And last Friday the class had a French lesson where he didn't have to participate so I took him to a separate room to practise his English text. I was amazed how well he did. But then in the next lesson he was supposed to practice it with the main teacher in the classroom and hardly said a word. I think that he's scared saying something when other kids are around and I really thinking about taking him to this different room and having him read his part of the text to me only and to the dictating machine. And when he hears on the CD that he's doing just as good as the others, then maybe this will help him get more self confidence.
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