Doing a teaching
demonstration at a school located in a relatively remote area in Changhwa
County, I devised some tasks targeting strategies like making predictions,
wording meaning in context, making inferences and so on. All in all, the
activities worked well to serve their purpose, which is to help students be a
more active reader and comprehend a given text in group work.
The first activity
managed to keep up students’ spirits with some silly questions of me. The idea
is to create an incentive for discussing their ideas with each other, coupled
with a relaxing atmosphere in the classroom. Following that, I kept students
quite busy with activities which require them to walk around, talk to each
other and share their ideas with the rest of the class.
On top of that, I
also made two different decks of cards for each group, Phrase Match and Synonym
Match, to work on their reading skills, like guessing the meaning from the context
and sequencing. Of course, it takes time and effort to hone these skills and today’s
demonstration was only to provide a glimpse of what it’s like to comprehend a
text without the teacher’s word for word translation.
Unfortunately, due
to time constraints, I didn’t get to finish the last activity, Fast Food Survey,
which was aimed for advanced learners to do a little oral report in English. Also, I
was so greedy to cover as many interesting tasks as I could that I failed to
give more individual guidance to those in need.
Good for you. I wish I could horn more of my teaching skills, too.
ReplyDeleteThank you. As long as you have to share on a regular basis, you WILL. So, you're always welcome to come on board with the Advisory Group.
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