Holiday Postcard!(Ele 3/Tues/Thurs/ class 2010)

The students revised Present Continuous and developed their writing skills via a holiday postcard.
In addition asking and giving directions.

Began the class with a video of the song 'Tom's Diner' by Suzanne Vega to revise Present continuous.The students watched the video and wrote down what the people in the song were doing and then compared first in pairs and then in groups of fours.The students enjoyed coming up with their ideas.The students then watched the video and listened to the song to complete the song.The students wrote a conversation between the girl
in the video and a person coming into the cafe.
The students then practised their dialogues and read put them
out.There was lots of interactions between the students but the students who arrived late missed out on the beginning of the lesson.
The usual students were the ones who were quiet:Anis(a weak level)and Sami(a good level but her pronunciation is very poor).In each group there was someone who was the main secretary and one person who was mostly silent during the activities.
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?