Group 1 Wednesday/Friday Pre Inter

Last week Abir and Marwen were quiet;especially Marwen,the youngest student was working with the new students and was quieter than usual.However,outside class he's very communicative.


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? 
Reflecting on some  of the students' 'territorial' behaviour for instance,the some of the latecomers (in group 1 as well as group 2) very often chose to sit with the same student/s,even though there wasn't space at the desk to work properly. Nizar who always arrived late for class ( because of his job) often sat with Abir or his preferred partner but not with the new students.

On page 84,of the book 'Group Dynamics in the language classroom',Dornyei and Murphey discuss the classroom environment contribution to group dynamics and state that 'humans,like animals,are territorial by nature,students who sit in the same seat in two consecutive lessons are already apt to think of that palc as theirs.Therefore the students who always sit in the same place or with the same students limit the number of potential interactions with the other students;they put constraints on their using/developing the target language.

Dornyei and Murphey mention that 'having students move around in class,changing seats and partners from the very first lesson,not only keeps them from claiming a permanent position in the classroom,but it can allow them to get comfortable in the classroom working with different partners and in any part of the classroom. 



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?