22 October
2013
Tuesday, I
got up, got dressed, had breakfast, and walked down to School #5, where I was
to teach a double lesson. The lesson was on a section of The Hound of the Baskervilles, as every unit or two there is a
section from a classic book. The section I was teaching was the section from
when Dr. Watson learned about the danger to Sir Henry Baskerville to when he
finds a hiding place and a mysterious watcher. I had them sum-up what happened
in the previous episodes and tell me who the important character ware, before
went over the current episode. First, though, we went over key vocab that they
wouldn’t know. I gave them the Russian word (which I had one of my students
read), and asked them to describe the word in English. The textbook had broken The Hound of the Baskervilles into 7 sections,
and there was a cartoon episode for each section. The episodes were about 5
minutes long, and were accompanied by a comic strip. My students had to answer
questions about the text, and infer the identity of the “Midnight Watcher”
(spoiler alert, it’s Sherlock Holmes). The first lesson of the double lesson
was practice – I reviewed the rules of pronouns and then they did exercises
about those rules. The class ended, and we all had a 15min break. I took the time
to relax a bit before my next class. My counterpart told me that I did a
perfect job with the first lesson.
My second
lesson was a harder lesson, as I was trying to get them to apply what they
know. My Application was a discussion of the episode, and the novel in general.
I asked them who the midnight watcher was, and why. I asked them if they
thought the Hound was real, and why. I asked them if Sir Henry thought the
Hound was real, and why. I also asked then why one of Sir Henry’s boots (yes,
one) was stolen. One group gave spoiler
the correct answer – the wanted to give the Hound his scent. Somebody else read
ahead to confirm his belief about the Hound being real. When I finished up, I
asked my counterpart to assign home task, and they got to working on that, as
they had about 5 minutes left. Filling 85 of 90 minutes seemed impressive, so I
didn’t worry, especially as I had a hard time getting them speaking in the
second half of the lesson. I was observed by S and peer-observed by L.
After
class, I got the lesson that my counterpart wants me to teach. Not next
Tuesday, though, as all schools in Ukraine have a break. I have a large amount
of material to cover, and a double lesson to cover it in. After that, we had a
Tech Session, where we learned about the 4 skills, and how to teach them.
The four
skills are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. They are necessary to
understand any language, but can be difficult to teach. We have to remember our
student’s ages and abilities when we pick our materials. There needs to be a
specific purpose for everything that we have them do, as we to avoid
overwhelming them. We then used our next lesson to ‘plan’ how to use all of the
4 skills. After that, we went to the grocery store, as our LCF was out. I got
some water and some sweet cheese for lunch. Once we were back in his flat, we
had lunch and then started class.
There, we
went over the diorama that we did Monday, reading out what we’d written. We
learned some new grammar rules, as we had made some mistakes. After that, we
wrote down a question, and passed them around, to answer our classmate’s
question. We are going to do that everyday. After that, we went over problems
in the flat. We went over common problem, and who to call. We then practiced
dialogues about what the problem was. We were broken into pairs, and each pair
had a different problem and a different emergency number to call. After that,
we a break, where we made coffee or tea and had a moment to speak English.
After our
break, we learned a new tongue-twister, and practiced it. We’re supposed to
have a competition on Wednesday, to see who says it the best and the fastest.
After that,
we learned some new verbs on motion. In Russian, to form various English
tenses, you use different verbs. The verb for “I was walking to the store when”
is a different verb than “I walked to the store.” We went over them, practiced
them, used them, and were assigned them for homework.
After that,
I walked back to the flat, where I had borshch and did my homework. I hung-out
with my host-family for a bit, read a bit, and went to bed.
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