food!food! (Ele 3 class Tues/Thurs 2010)

The topic was food plus a revision of the language of asking for directions.

Warmer:'Forfeits'from Hadfield's 'Classroom Dynamics'.
The warmer should have been fairly easy but even though I did the activity with the whole class and an example pair,before dividing the class into two groups,the students were very slow to formulate questions and doing the forfeit of saying an appropriate sentence according to the instruction.
Not many students today,only 13.
The main interactions were more between the more fluent speakers:Allesandro,Akrem and Koubair.
Bassem doesn't really interact with the others more interested in himself.
Mouldi is too weak for this level to interact with the others.
Although Saimi has quite a good level
in her grammar and vocabulary,she is too shy and not really that fluent;often her pronunciation is weak.

From the book Reflective Teaching in Second Language Classrooms,Richards,J.C.,in the chapter,approaches to classroom investigation,some important procedures are recommended:
Bailey 1990,Porter et al.1990,Walker 1985 state that it's important to make entries on a regular basis and immediately spend time after the lesson in writing up about the lesson
In addition to review the journal entries as some things which were not obviously apparent might appear so later on.

On page 16 Richards,J.C. mentions some reflection questions to guide thé writing of the journal:
What did you set out to teach?
Were you able to accomplish your goals?
What teaching materisls did you use?
What grouping arrangements did you use?

Did anything amusing or unusual occur?
Did you discover anything new?
Did students contribute actively to the lesson?
Were the students challenged by the lesson?
What do you think the students really learned from the lesson?
What did they like most about the lesson?
What didn't they respond to?