To recap, we were given our first teaching task to plan a 10 minute lesson in pairs and had to teach it to the rest of the TESOL class. My teaching partner (Anwar) and I had chosen to teach 'how to order food in a restaurant.' We actually planned most of it while we were still at the school - yes, we're clever like that :) - so the next week was spent gathering materials and working out how to deliver the lesson. Anwar found some pictures of food that he forwarded to me and I set about polishing the lesson plan. The level we were aiming at was Elementary so we had to consider the language we used very carefully.
There's absolutely no point using complex language with Elementary level students, they just don't understand, and one of my faults is to lapse into academic English when I'm nervous, so I realised this was something I needed to focus on. I imagined myself in front of a sea of quizzical faces and thought how best to explain that I wanted them to tell me (acting as a waiter) what they wanted to eat. As I understand it, teaching Elementary students is a very physical experience. Gestures take the place of words to a certain extent so I pranced around the living room like a loon acting out the lesson and teaching the cats how to order fish, something I'm sure they're grateful for and will use lots in the future.
Another big thing to think about was the extent to which I could use technology in the classroom. I admit it, I'm a bit of a nerd, but it helps with my job - I'm the online coordinator and administer the A+ English Online Course. Some kind of Powerpoint presentation was definitely going to feature, well, actually Keynote for me as I've got a Mac - and here lay the first problem. I've never connected my Mac to a projector before. I don't know how I thought I was going to manage it, but to be honest I'm so used to everything being wireless these days I think I thought I could just magically send the images across. In my defence, I've not had a Mac for very long and have always been a PC girl before then. So, when I went to connect to the projector, I was dismayed to discover that it wasn't wireless and I couldn't plug the bulky VGA cable into my sleek silver laptop. So, back to the drawing board on that one. Luckily, I discovered that I could export the Keynote presentation into Powerpoint with most of the fancy transitions intact so could use one of the school laptops instead. Phew. I can now better empathise with the teachers when I see them running around the office holding a text book screaming, "Who's got the CD for Language Leader Pre-Int?!" Lesson learnt. I bought a shiny new adapter at the weekend, too late for the lesson, unfortunately, but I'm now prepared for anything! Except maybe zombie attack, but who, apart from Bristol council, can truthfully say that they're ready for that?
So Tuesday arrived and I saw some very nervous people filtering into the classroom (to be honest, I was one of them). Zoe and Neil had positioned themselves at the side of the room to appear unobtrusive, and had friendly greetings for us all, but the marksheets in front of them heralded the terror that was to follow. Then the unthinkable happened - I volunteered to go first! I'm not quite sure how that happened; the words just seemed to fall out of my mouth unbidden. I think the adrenalin in my body had taken over my basic motor functions and forced me to get it over as quickly as possible. I got to my feet and stood at the front of the class for the first time in about five years. It started quite well, I thought. I projected a picture of people in a restaurant on the wall and asked the class (my fellow TESOL trainees) where the people were. "A restaurant," they dutifully answered. I then introduced them to a range of meals they could order at the restaurant by projecting other pictures on the wall and asking them what they were. Being native speakers, they had no problem with this and this bolstered my confidence. I then played the listening that I'd stolen from the online course and asked the class to notice what the waiter says and how the customers answer. One of the customers on the recording was myself, so I saw a ripple of recognition spread through the class when they realised. It occurred to me at that point that using a recording of myself might be counter productive for real students as they might get too distracted by that to glean the information needed. Never mind, this is why we practise on each other before being let loose on real students, after all. I asked the class what the waiter said and wrote it on one side of the board in green. I then asked them if they knew other things that the waiter could have said that mean the same thing. I was met with silence at that point so, conscious of the ten minute time restraint, I just said answered myself and wrote it on the board. I knew as soon as I'd done it that I'd messed up, that Elementary students are so unlikely to understand what I was asking of them and to just provide the answer myself so quickly wasn't adequate elicitation. I checked myself, my nerves growing, and moved on with the lesson, asking what the customers said and writing the answers on the other side of the board in red. Having given them the necessary language, I then used the only low tech piece of my lesson. I had spent a frantic half-hour before we started desperately trying to get the laminator to produce nice, wipe-clean pictures of food, not the crumpled, useless pieces of plastic it seemed to want to give me. I proudly held up my pristine laminated pictures and went round the room asking each person to order the food from the image I held up. Obviously, they were all wonderful and I positively reinforced their answers. This activity led into the next one where I split them into pairs for a roleplay; one person was the waiter and the other was the customer and they were to order food, then swap roles. This was where I fell apart slightly. There was no way that any Elementary student could understand what I wanted them to do from my explanation, even with copious arm movements. I used the word 'pretend' for some unknown reason. What Elementary student knows the word 'pretend', for heaven's sake? This got picked up by Anwar, who (in the guise of a student) asked, "Teacher, what is 'pretend'?" I faltered a bit at this but said that he should be a waiter (a bit of Zen, for him). I also completely failed to use any sort of concept checking questions so sent them off on their activity with no idea if they knew what they were doing or not! This was a major error on my part and as soon as I stepped into the feedback session I confessed. I can only think that nerves got the better of me as I had practised them several times, knowing their importance. I rounded the lesson up by asking each person what their favourite food was and asking them to order it from me, then collapsed back in my seat and breathed a huge shaky sigh of relief. After our break, we got together to discuss the things that went well and what didn't so we could improve the lesson for Anwar to then teach it. All I kept saying was, "Concept checking questions," in the manner of someone traumatised, so I think he got the message!
I gained a lot from teaching this first lesson. I put a lot of things I have learnt over the course into action but intended to include more. I think the most important lesson for me was to not only write a lesson plan, but then write out cues for myself (Zoe suggested that different colours would be helpful here) and have the relevant concept checking questions written out, instead of just floating around my head - which is where they were when they dribbled out of my ear!
So onwards and upwards. Our next piece of homework is to plan a half-hour lesson to teach to real students (!) at the beginning of February so I'm thinking about how I'm going to teach 'giving advice and reasons' to Intermediate students now. It'll be fun. I'm thinking about turning us all into agony aunts; I hope some of them come up with some interesting problems to solve.
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