Entry 7: My Second Teaching

April 17th, 2014

Last week, one of the students said she read 9 books the previous day. We were really surprised at first but we learned that the books are online stories with pictures, so they are really short. There is a website called Bug Club which they need to pay for at the beginning of the semester. It has lots of books in its memory and the students can read as many as they want. The students told us that they really like reading short stories. That’s why we decided to do a reading lesson with a short story this time.

This time, I had a lesson with 4G. They are more motivated than the other class. By the way, I had written the “Today’s Plan” on the board at the beginning of the first teaching, which was something I learned from my mentor teacher last semester. 4C wrote it for us on the board but they wrote “Game” in each and every line, so they complained that there aren’t any games for this time and gave us a really hard time. Let’s move on with the lesson. I began the lesson with a vocabulary activity; just pictures and words. I think the pictures are quite clear for me but they couldn’t grasp the meanings of the words immediately when they saw the pictures. However, that was okay because they tried to guess some of them and it was more fun and effective. After their guesses, I explained the meanings clearly and I formed sample sentences. For the word “edge”, I said “I hit my head on the edge of table this morning.” And one of them said “Is it true? Did you really hit your head?” I was trying to think what I should say, because I didn’t hit my head. One of our instructors said “Don’t give an example of something if you didn’t really experience it. For example; when you introduce simple past tense, don’t say “I watched a movie last night” if you didn’t. At first, I didn’t quite understand the reason behind it but now it sounds so reasonable. You are going to share some of experiences with your students and build a relationship. We won’t just enter the class, teach and leave. They will never know for sure which one of our stories is true and some others are made up for teaching purposes and they will lose their trust on you.  Let’s go back to the problem I had in class. So when I was thinking what to say, one of the students said “Don’t be silly. Of course, it is an example.” Then, I was relieved and was able to say it is just an example. Why was I so concerned about this? I don’t know but when she asked if it is true, I felt like I lied to my students and I was exposed. 

For the reading part, I think I was so unlucky. Since they know the story from another course, it didn’t attract their attention. I tried to draw their attention with an origami crow which I made for this teaching. It kinda worked actually. However, I was planning to give the first half of the story to make them guess what is going to happen in the second half. This activity was also necessary for the post activity, because they will be making use of these ideas when they were writing an alternate ending. Since they knew the story they couldn’t generate ideas and I had to skip to the comprehension questions. When they were doing the exercises, they asked a lot of questions about the some words’ meanings. I wasn’t expecting them to ask “far”, “reach”, give up” because they know more complex words. I think it is coincidental to know those words and it changes according to contexts. Also, they asked “be able to” but I admit that it is my mistake. I should have seen that coming. After checking the answers, we were supposed to move on the post-reading activity which is “writing an alternate ending to the story”. I had to cancel that because they didn’t come up with any solutions and I realized that they still had troubles in pronouncing the words which were given in the beginning of the lesson. I decided to make them play a game called “Disappearing words”. For those who don’t know this game, let me tell you about it shortly.

1. Firstly, you write the words on the board or you can stick them to the board as I did.
2. You need to pronounce them and make the students repeat them a couple of times.
3. Then, you expect them to pronounce the words by themselves without your help. You need to do it randomly, without following the pattern on the board.
4. Then, you erase or take one of the words each time and make them repeat randomly until there is nothing left on the board.

Remember to draw a line instead of every word you erased/took because the students can get confused since they don’t know which word you point to. It was quite fun to play. They were more motivated than I expected. Sometimes, I forgot the words but they didn’t. They were truly fascinated by the activity. I enjoyed the lesson very much. I didn’t even notice the time, we used 2-3 minutes from the break time and the children didn’t care they wanted to continue, which was very encouraging for me. 

One last thing for this weekend… After my teaching, our mentor continued her lesson with “means of transportation”. She asked them how they travel. She wrote transportation on the board and wanted students to give examples. Some students said “hot air balloon, rocket, and sledge”. I was very surprised by their answers, especially “sledge”. When the time passed, the student who said sledge” asked the meaning of it. Then, I understood that she saw it in the book and didn’t know the word before. Then I got more surprised because she knew how to pronounce it even though she didn’t know the word. METU College students will never cease to amaze me.

Entry 6: My First Teaching

April 10th, 2014

I made my first teaching today. It was very exciting but I was very confident this time. I didn’t get nervous. Last semester, the teachings felt like a play to me. We wrote it first and then we rehearsed it several times and finally we were on stage with real audience. I had a morning class before my school-visits last semester. Every Friday, I left the dormitory as a student and I came back as a teacher. I was the student in the mornings and I had students in the afternoons. It was so strange. Because of this; teachings were nothing more than presentations for me. However, I didn’t feel like so this time. It was like I left my own apartment and took my books from the teachers’ room and had a little conversation with my colleagues and then headed to the classroom where my beautiful, bright students were waiting for me. I am sure that this isn’t realistic at all but I felt good and confident. That is what really matters for me. 

I want to talk about the lesson in detail. It was a grammar lesson, for one thing. They were still studying on simple past tense, so me and my partner decided to do some exercises because we don’t need to teach it again. As a warm-up, we referred to last week’s exercises. There was a person called Sam and the exercises were about his last weekend. I thought it would be clever to refer to that, but our review was oral, so our mentor teacher warned us that oral grammar reviews don’t work, especially in young learners. Using the words “regular” and “irregular” confuses them so it wasn’t a good idea for that part.

Apart from that, I think the lesson was quite good. First, they did an info-gap like speaking activity. They asked questions to each other and shared them with class. Finally, they played board game. They can move only if they form correct sentences with the given verbs and time expressions. Also, for those who come to the same square, there were extra questions. They really enjoyed it. Also, I made colourful dices and tokens for the activity and they liked them, as well. However, the ones who lost the game got upset. For example; İdil said she didn’t like the game. When I asked why her friend said because she lost. I should have said "Nobody lost, everyone is the winner." to encourage them. I should have motivated them somehow. Games can be tricky in such cases. The students are so obsessed with winning that they forgot that this is a lesson. Games are great tools for teaching English, but we shouldn’t let the students be distracted by them.

Here are the materials I used in class. 

Entry 5: Simple Past Tense Activities

April 3rd, 2014

This week, students did some exercises about simple past tense. They have been studying it for the past few weeks. They need to do more exercises about the topic. Our mentor teacher took a lot of time for various activities just to make sure that students internalize the topics. There were 3-5 kinds of activities which are linked to each other. It was a good idea because they can make connections and learn easily. In the exercises, they need to fill in the blanks with past form of verbs. In the second activity, they were supposed to answer wh- questions forms of simple past tense with long answers. Third activity was about negative forms. About giving long answers, I think it is boring and unnecessary because it is not natural. Since all the activities are mechanic, I didn’t quite like the idea of teaching English in this way. Considering they are young learners and they need input as much as possible, I think that’s why they use these forms. When I was a student, I also have been through the same process. However, in secondary school, the activities are much more communicative. Since they standardized the lesson plans in METU College and these kinds of activities are applied to all of the classes, I think they included such mechanic activities on purpose because the students need to learn standard use of English first. After primary school, they won’t force students to use long forms, I hope. Also, they did info gap activity and they put the sentences into correct order to make a story. It was two-hour class and they finished all the activities in such a short time. It can because of the class size, but most importantly, it is because the students are motivated all the time. By the way, in the third activity, our mentor asked us whether we would like to continue the class. I got on the stage first and introduced myself. She said to the student that they can ask questions to me if they want. The first thing they asked was my age. I think it is quite common for students to ask such questions. The way they think is really innocent and lovely. When they were giving answers, I type them on the computer so that everyone can see. İdil said "Finally, there is someone who can type faster than you do." This made me laugh because they looked so surprised. In the other class, we also conducted some of the activities and it was really good to interact with them since we will do our first teaching next week. We always sit at the back of classroom and we don't usually see their faces. Neither do they. They were curious about us. Sometimes, we catch them look at us without being noticed; but, we notice because that's what we do; to observe.

Another point is that I still learn new things from my mentor teacher. I sometimes realize I have never thought about that specific word whether I use it correctly or not. For example, one of students said “My answer is true.” and she said “It is correct. We don’t use true in such situations…” Then, it struck me and I asked myself “Did I know this before?” This happens a lot to me when I am observing the class, which is very good for me. 

Finally, there are some extrovert students in the class, namely Mehmet, Lara and Elif.  They don’t participate much and it takes so much time for them to complete the assigned tasks. At the first weeks of my school-visits, our mentor teacher didn’t force them to speak. She kinda ignored their lack of participation. It bothered me a lot because our duty is to motivate them and engaging them into class. This week, she addressed them by their names and said "You didn’t say anything today." This also bothered me. I don’t know a way to incorporate them into class but neither ignoring them nor addressing them overtly is a good idea. Maybe, our mentor is also confused and she was trying different solutions, I don’t know for sure.

Entry 4: About Dictation Quiz

March 20th, 2014

This week, our mentor teacher began the lesson with a quiz. Dictation quiz.... I have never heard of it before. I was thinking what this dictation quiz is like when the students were getting prepared for the quiz. Unfortunately, I had no idea. I was trying to understand from the words, but I couldn't. Since it is a private school, I was expecting a new quiz type which is very effective. To my surprise, it was the most common quiz type I had when I was in primary school.  She distributed some blank papers and said the verbs and the students were supposed to write what they heard on the paper with the past forms. After they finished writing, they exchanged papers with their peers to check the answers. Since they connect the letters while writing, as a part of new education system, they couldn’t read their friends’ handwriting. This created a problem and they spent a lot of time completing checking the answers. All the students were asking their friends from one corner to another. “Hey, what is written here?” I think that’s not about the peer check, it is about their handwriting style. I don’t know why they insist on making students write in that way. They look so messy and it is really hard to read even if it is written neatly. If we go back to quiz, our mentor teacher asked “Who made 20 mistakes?” when they finished checking, and she continued with “Who made 19, 18 … mistakes?” I don’t know whether she did this on purpose but I think it isn’t motivating at all. It would be better if she began with asking “Who did zero/1 mistake?" Also, she said the ones who made mistakes when writing the correct form of verbs’ have to write them three times at the back of paper. I didn’t know that this method is still used in a private school.

After the quiz, they needed to form sentences with verbs. However, some of the verbs are intransitive so it was difficult to form sentences out of context (e.g. sleep, run). Besides, when it comes to the teacher’s wait time, she doesn’t wait enough for students to answer. Students volunteer to give an answer and they are enthusiastic to participate in the class but they need some time to do that. 

Finally, they played puzzle. The letters were jumbled and they need to write the words and its past forms correctly. I think this kind of activity is neither fun nor effective. It isn’t logical to use this kind of activity to teach spelling. They are already confused because some of the verbs take only –(e)d, but some of them change completely. Even I had some trouble finding the bare forms of verbs.

abker	break	broke
wsim	swim	swam
tae	eat	ate