We've done much more than learn grammar on this course, I'm very pleased to report. On Tuesday night,
we were playing games. OK, they were educational games, but they were fun nevertheless. Sue split us into two teams... Oh, I should say, we've had another person join our merry band. He's not new to TESOL, though; in fact, he's a refugee from the full-time cert. TESOL that's running at the same time as ours. Let's just say that when we tell people that the full-time TESOL is an intensive course, they'd better believe us! Luckily, he could move to the part-time TESOL as we had only just started, and he's fitted in well. So, Sue split us into two teams and gave us each some games from her extensive secret stash that she's built up over the years (I'm sure she wouldn't mind me reproducing a couple of them here). She asked us to work out how to play the games, then swapped the groups around so that we could present the games to each other. There was one particular game that I had such problems with - I understood perfectly how to play it, but... well, I'll tell you. It was called Guggenheim and involved drawing a grid on the board. Each column had one letter of the word 'bread' and each row had a category, for example, 'furniture,' 'an item of clothing,' 'transport' etc. The idea is to get students to find a word for each category beginning with a different letter of the word 'bread,' so they would all have to choose a piece of furniture beginning with the letter 'b,' then an item of clothing beginning with 'b' etc. The object of the game is to be the only one that has chosen that particular word so, for furniture, if 3 students say 'bed,' 2 say 'bookcase' and one says 'blanket-box,' the one that says 'blanket-box' will get the points. OK, I bet you're thinking this sounds easy. Yes, so did I... and then I tried to think of words for each category myself. The one that really got me was trying to find an item of clothing beginning with 'e.' It soon emerged that no one else could think of one either, so at least I wasn't alone! Go on, try it yourself... not as easy as it sounds, is it? I'd resigned myself to sitting bolt upright in bed that night, having finally thought of something, but Sue eventually came to our rescue with 'earmuffs.' Phew. I can't help thinking that any students I play that game with will put me to shame!
The next part of the lesson was to present a game to the class exactly as you would when teaching real students. I got somehow nominated (I'm still not quite sure how that happened) and the game I had to present was called 'The Adverb Game.' It involved getting one member of the class to leave the room while the rest choose an adverb, let's say they chose angrily. When the student returns, he/she asks a member of the class to do something like walk across the room, and they have to walk across the room angrily. The student that left the room has to guess the adverb that was chosen. As it was for elementary level students, I had to be quite physical in my presentation of it and probably looked like a right idiot miming all the adverbs and how I wanted people to play. I think that's the point of being a successful teacher of elementary students, though, you have to leave your dignity at the door. At least, that's the impression I get. I like the way that ESOL teaching has the potential to be such fun for the students. I remember dreading language lessons at school, chanting of verb tables and endless vocab lists, and I'm so pleased that language teaching has moved on.
So, I'm off to finish my homework. I've been set a task to plan my first lesson and been given the second conditional as a topic. At least I now know what the second conditional is, and perhaps that's half the battle.
No comments:
Post a Comment