Happy Monday!

I'm sure this fits into a lesson plan somewhere, right?

Happy Monday!

My Reading Experiments

Well, somedays I leave class thrilled with how my students responded to an activity. Somedays, I walk out thinking, well . . . I made it through. I'm in the process of trying different methods of presenting the reading material to my level B Reading and Vocabulary classes. The traditional, open your book, read the story and answer the comprehension questions hasn't been working so well for me lately.

So, today's approach was to put the story in chunks on the Keynote, and give them questions to answer for each paragraph as they read. I felt that this was slightly more successful, but I could not get them to stop speaking Turkish, and it quickly became a group activity rather than a read and reflect activity. So . . . now I will be brainstorming some new approaches, and hopefully writing about their success! If you have any tried and true methods, please leave them in the comment section! I'd love to hear about them!!

Saturday Mornings

Ah . . . the respite of Saturday mornings. I love taking my time waking up, reading a great book in bed for an hour or two with baklava and coffee, then cutting my husband's hair while watching 24. What a wonderful morning! No English musings this morning . . . that will all take place in a whirlwind later today and tomorrow.  Have a wonderful weekend!

If you're having a bad day

I'm probably at about my twentieth view just today . . .

Professional Observation

So . . . I had my professional observation today. I hadn't told my students about it, so when someone walked and sat at the back of the class they were understandably confused. During a speaking activity, one of the students whispers to me "What is he doing?" I told her he was my teacher. Another student then concluded . . .

 "Oh, so like a grand-teacher!"

All in the family . . .

So, today's speaking activity went well, in my opinion. Hopefully it will be helpful to you as well!

All in the family . . . 

Groups of 4-5 students
Upper beginner/Lower intermediate
20-25 minutes
handout

This activity was designed for my speaking class that needs to be able to speak about culture for roughly 3 minutes for their midterm in a few weeks. The classes I am teaching are all repeating this level and topic, so they've spoken about culture quite a bit already and were a little disappointed to find out they had to do it again. But, this activity put a new spin on culture, and I think they enjoyed it.

1. I split the students into groups of four or five and gave them all name-tags (father, mother, son, daughter). I then explained to all of the groups that they are families and I would give them a scenario which they would then discuss as a family and after 2 minutes they would explain to me their answers.

2. I handed out the scenarios (i.e. The daughter is getting married next week.) The scenario was accompanied with 3 questions to discuss (i.e. How do you feel? What is important to do this week? What will be different after the wedding?)

3. The students had 2 minutes to discuss the questions together before I stopped them and called randomly on students to tell me their answer. This allows you to find out how a father would react to a scenario differently than a daughter or son would.

My students enjoyed this activity, and I just kept handing out new scenarios. One twist I threw in was with one class, after we had done a couple of scenarios, I gave them the daughter is getting married and the son is getting married. Because the groups were big to begin, I had them choose a daughter and son from the families that broke off and became a new family to work together. Next, I gave all three families the scenario that they were going to have a baby. This gave me quite some insights to the culture surrounding a grandchild! I had the two fathers arguing over what they would name the grandchild!

The downside to this activity is that it is difficult to monitor their L1 usage, but I liked the activity because it gave almost every student a good amount of speaking time.

Hope it helps!

A thought for today . . .

 "Love that's too timid to ache isn't love at all." 

-Steven James, The Rook

If you meet Lady Gaga, what will you ask her?

Why do you wear interesting clothes? Why did you wear a dress made of meat? What is your favorite color hair? Or my personal favorite . . . Do you have a brain?

So, I am often online for hours looking for good activities that will work with my students. I don't know if I found this online or eventually came up with it on my own, so I don't know who to cite if I borrowed it. But, here is the handout I created for this activity.
This has worked really well in my classes.


If you meet _______ . . . 

Audience: This activity is designed for upper beginner/lower intermediate Turkish students (ages 18-22) - but I think it can be adapted for any class.

Time frame: 20-25 minutes

1. Have students brainstorm some questions they would ask to famous icons if they met them. I like to have the students brainstorm first so that they have something to work with. You can really spin this off for a long time once you get going.

2. After I have given the class about 5-7 minutes to write questions, I call up one student (usually one that I think fits the persona of the icon) and announce to the class that this student is Lady Gaga (or whichever icons you are using.)

3. I then have the class asking any questions they want to the famous person, and the student who is acting as the famous person must answer as though they are that person. It gets quite hilarious with some of the questions that students come up with, as well as some of the answers. My students are often hesitant to speak in class or come up with original conversation, but I have found that I can get most students to talk using this activity.

Let me know if it works for you!

Just because . . .

Okay. So, I'll clarify right now before you spend too much time wondering. I'm blogging because . . . well . . . because 1. I want to be a better writer. 2. I want to discipline myself. 3. I want to be able to brighten other people's days. 4. I want to share things that have been helpful to me.

So . . . that having been said, this blog will probably be random and eclectic, but hopefully enjoyable and hopefully will help lighten life for the few minutes you visit.

Just to let you know, I am currently an English teacher at a University Preparatory School. I have some funny stories, as well as some big questions. This is my first year as an official teacher. I love it, but some days I feel like I am at the end of my rope. So, that's when I tie on another piece and keep going . . . keep scouring the web for ideas . . . keep wracking my brain for innovation. I want to share some of that with you all here. But, I also want to share the funny parts of life, the books I'm reading, the quotes I find . . . anything really. I hope when you visit my site, you'll smile, think some, and go on with your day glad you stopped in.

Thanks for the minutes you've given already, and I hope you're ready to join me in the grand adventure of life.