Second English Lesson - Too Abstract

My confidence was boosted by my first lesson that went well because my students were much better than I had prepared. Prior to my lesson I decided on a new goal for teaching this course: "Try something new every lesson." I think I will stick with this goal, but probably not a drastic as I was for this second lesson.

The topic for my second lesson was on friendships and forgiveness. I decided on having them draw pictures on that topic and then discuss as a class. I had them sit in a circle around a few folding tables. I just wanted to do something very different from the week before.

Instead of having 5 students, I had about 13 and the abilities were very different. This week the majority of my students were definitely "beginning" students and I wasn't prepared to modify the task to fit lower ability students. My launch of the task was horrible. They all looked at me confused. One student commented that friendship and forgiveness are very abstract, so it is hard to draw a picture of them. I agreed with them. So I changed the task to draw a picture of one of their friends. We then went around the circle and talked about their friends. They were pretty embarrassed at their art abilities. The drawing task ended up being a hindrance instead of aid.

At the end of each student's explanation of their friend, I summarized and had the class repeat. I don't like repeat activities because I want to push them more to creating their own sentences. But  I also want them to talk more than listen.

I'll be less abstract and be more prepared to adapt my lessons for lower ability students.

Teaching English to ELLs

I am going to start breaking away from my math education blog posts. I am working on a masters degree from the University of North Dakota on teaching English Language Learners. I hope that this program will help me to be a better math teacher, but I am also learning about how to teach English.

I live in Japan and my church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) offers free English Conversation Classes (Eikaiwa). I have taught these classes off and on since 2004. I have decided to return for me to practice teaching English and to serve the amazing people in my community.

I am teaching the beginning class and my first week I prepared a very pair conversation oriented lesson. The topic was families. For my records here is the flow of the lesson:

1) I asked the question: "Why do you want to learn English?"
This is the first question I always ask a new (to me) student. It is important that I know why my students are studying English. The common responses are:

• To watch American movies without subtitles.
• To talk to foreigners at work or family
• To use in international travel

2) I presented a family tree that I created with family relationship vocabulary. My students were all familiar with this vocabulary.

3) They were sitting in pairs, so I had them talk with their partner about their mothers. I then ask each partner to tell me about their partner's mother. I also asked about their oldest child.

4) We concluded with having partners discuss why families are important.

The lesson went very well! I walked away feeling like I wasn't teaching a beginning class, I was teaching an intermediate class. Which was my downfall for my second lesson.