parasitegirl | Where our plans differ. (Reply)

Last week, Thursday, I taught with Mr.Hosoda, a cute. English-literate, young teacher at school Y. Our goal was to have him, a homeroom teacher, function as the primary teacher in an English lesson and I would be his back-up/teammate. This would also be infront of at least 20 visiting parents. We originally planned to do a lesson directly from the “English notebooks” that will be used by every school in Japan next year, but his quick once-over convinced him that the notebook might be a fine place to get teaching goals and a few structure points, but that he would rather not be limited to it because he thought his students would find it booooring.

We emailed back and forth about how to use the teaching goals but make more interesting, interactive activities. Each lesson in the English notebooks is broken up into four class hours of plans. Lesson 4, which we would kick off, was about “can and can’t.”

This summer I will use this lesson as an example of taking the teaching goals from the English Notebooks and make more interactive and interesting lesson plans from them.

This is what the first lesson would have consisted of if we’d stuck to the textbook…snide “new knowledge gained” are mine and reflect what additional “reward” info students get beyond “can/can’t” and “English.”

Hour one:

(5min) Greetings: no different than what I do.

(10 minutes) Teaching assistant asks questions/ Let’s listen:

Page one has illustrations of hippos, bird, penguins, and flying fish. TA gives hints and students identify which animal is being hinted at. TA and Teacher establish that a hippo can swim but can’t fly. TA and Teacher also establish if the teacher can swim or fly. Students then interact by listening to three tracks of a cd and writing the number of the track next to the animal it describes.(I can swim but I can’t fly/ I can fly and I can swim/ I can fly but I can’t swim). New knowledge gained: Students learn shit about animals that they already knew. Maybe they also learn if their teacher can swim.

(20 minutes) What the TA can and can’t do/ Let’s listen:

TA and teacher, using illustration cards, talk about what they can and can’t do.

Students then listen to a CD dialog between a fictional boy and girl and must circle illustrations of what they can and can’t do New knowledge gained: Students learn about their TA. Students also learn about the fictional likes and dislikes of fictional people.

(5 mins) Let’s chant! Students learn a chant about a bird and a penguin from a cd and then break into two groups and take turns doing the chant:

A: I’m a bird. I can sing, Penguin, can you sing?

B: No,I can’t

A: I can fly (make flying gesture) Penguin, can you fly?

B: No, I can’t.

A: What can you do?

B: I can swim (make swimming gesture) I can swim very well.

A: Wonderful!

New knowledge gained: A new dislike of English and perhaps a dislike of smartass, patronizing birds.

(5mins) closing greetings.

Lesson 4 at Y:

What we did:

We explained that today would be special and that their teacher would be the main teacher...in English. This took up the time I usually use for my introduction time.

3 mins: Introduction, how are people feeling? Review old vocabulary like “sleepy” first orally to see how many students respond and understand, and then orally with gestures to help students who didn’t understand the word.

Goals: show that “how are you” is a question with many answers.

To review basic mood words and check understanding levels.

Get verbal and non-verbal information on how kids are doing.

To slowly introduce new words with gestures (hot, cold, humid, angry, sad, stressed…) once students know the basic ones.

5mins:

Homeroom teacher and supervisor talk about what they can and can’t do and then ask students to raise hands about what they can and can’t do.

Goals: Get students to understand what today’s topic is through an easy to understand, a repetative but varied English conversation that engages their cognative thinking instead of by explaining it in Japanese.

Get students used to the can/can’t pattern.

Assess basic level of understanding, first by if students laugh or express surprise at the answers their teacher give and second by asking students to raise their hands if they can or can’t do something.

5 minutes.

A worksheet using the images on page 26 (part of the second hour of the notebook lesson) was handed out to the students. This page has a variety of activities on it. Changes have been made to the worksheet. There is now a space for students to write their own name and their club activity in romanji, to circle 女or 男, and the words Yes, I can and No, I can’t are written in English next to the circle and triangle marks where the book had the Japanese words.

Using easy English, gestures, and writing in English on the blackboard, the two teachers explain to the students that they will need to write their name and club activies in romanji, circle boy or girl, and draw triangles in the activities they can’t do and circles in the ones they can do. When majority of the class indicates through nodding or “ok” that they understand, start. Teachers work one-on-one with students who have problems understanding what to do or problems with romanji.

Goals:

Get students to write a few things in the roman alphabet to review.

Listen to basic English explanations and show understanding by doing the activity.

Connect the written words can and can’t to how they sound and what they mean.

Students communicate what activities they can and can’t do non-verbally.

10 minutes:

The teachers collect the worksheets.

The next activity was explained. Teachers use the worksheets as a listening activity. Teachers picked a worksheet, read the information about if it was a boy or a girl, what what they can and can’t do, ending with the club they belong to. (I am a girl. I can…I can’t…I am in the…club. Who am I?) Students had to guess which student the information belongs to. Repeat as long as the students are interested or for 10 minutes.

Goals:

Expose the students to multiple model “can and can’t” sentences.

Learn more about other students.

Communicate information about a student using spoken English, gestures, intonation, and facial expression.

Get the students to listen to information and hypothesize about who it belongs to.

Confirm information and confirm that the students understand. If they are participating, guessing, actively listening, and laughing at jokes, they understand.

Surprise addition to the task: some students used the additional information of “boy” and “girl” to make jokes. This showed they could understand new information and used it to communicate humor.

Last activity:

Sensei quiz, a group competition/activity.

Break the students up into groups. Each group gets an answer sheet to write answers on. The “who am I?” quiz is expanded to include school faculty. The hints are expanded and include can, can’t and sometimes hometown, hobbies, what grade the teacher teaches, and occasional visual clues. Students talk in groups, write down their guess, and when asked shout them out. Answers are revealed and correct groups get points.

Goals:

Expose the students to multiple model “can and can’t” sentences and new sentences they haven’t learned.

Communicate information about teachers using spoken English, gestures, intonation, photos, and facial expression.

Get the students to listen to information and hypothesize about who it belongs to.

General groupwork skills: including encouraging the students stronger in English to help the weaker ones.

Surprise addition to the task: some groups wanted to use Mr. Mrs. Ms. for their answers, so we clarified the differences. Some students made deliberate gender mistakes to make other students laugh.

We ran out of time, so we had to end the teacher quiz when the bell rang.

I skipped the goodbyes and went straight to speaking Japanese. I first got the students to clap for how well their teacher had done and what a challenge it had been for him. Then I reminded the students how they had whined when we announced an “all English class” at the start but that by the end of the class everyone was participating and having fun, so big applause for them as well.

Great points about the class:

Mr. Hosoda was AWESOME. We didn’t practice dialogs before hand and just winged it. We got students to laugh at certain point, which is my favorite way of being shown that a student grasps what is going on. I had brought a set of zills, because I always have a set on me to quiet kids down. At one point, after quizzing students about what instruments they could play, I played my zills. While I played, Mr.Hosoda “danced”. After I stopped I said “See, I CAN play finger cymbols and Mr. Hosoda CAN’T dance.”…laughter. Thank you. I’ll be here all week!

Mr. Hosoda has the worst behaved class in the school, but after 10 minutes they were all paying attention and smiling and waiting for what was next, with no scolding…even the boys who usually whine the whole time and antisocial girls who won’t participate in classes. I suspect that many of the boys will be raising their hands and shouting Ms. Hosoda Teacher!!” from now on…considering that Mr.Ms. can be very hard for students to remember, this is impressive.

Mr.Hosoda had worried that students would quickly grow tired of the student quiz and the teacher quiz and asked me to prepare some filler songs and stuff, just in case. Students did not lose interest and we could have stretched the teacher quiz another 10 minutes.

We started right at the start of class giving the students more information and constantly had them show, in non-verbal ways, that they understood. With our lesson they were exposed to more model sentences and stayed interested. We did everything as a class or in groups, where stronger students were in a better position to help and model for weaker students. This should help them whip through any “let’s listen” activities they’ll be asked to do individually on the same grammar point…instead of starting with individual listening and marking first and then doing group stuff is sometimes backwards. They all got new information on teachers they hadn’t previously known.