Lesson no. 9

Lesson no. 9
8 July 2009 / Wednesday
(16:05 – 17:50)

Topics of the day:

General/Advanced class: 1 student
Synonyms
They/Their/They’re
A/An

Beginners: 3 students
Parts of the face + Questions + Your face/my face – here/there – is/are
Parts of the day
Weather

- Only four students showed up for class today. Three of them were beginners and one of them was an advanced student.

- I gave the advanced student the ‘synonyms’ handout (http://www.rhlschool.com/eng8n2.htm
) and briefly explained it to him.
- While he was busy with the handout I went to the beginners group and went through the ‘parts of the face’ handout (http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/exercises/people_animals/face.htm) with them. Since they didn’t know any part of the face, I explained part 0 till 9 to them. I wrote the number 0 till 9 on the board and gradually mentioned the name of each part, showed it on my own face and wrote it on the blackboard. Then I asked them to write down the names of the parts on the handout and try to learn each part.

- I checked the exercise of synonyms with the advanced student. I explained words that were not understood e.g. rude.
- I gave the handout about ‘they/their/they’re’ to this student and explained him the difference between these three. (http://www.rhlschool.com/eng2n27.htm)
- To add to the vocabulary I thought it was a good idea to draw pictures and ask the students what they thought it was. I drew the sun and told them what it was. Then I made a sentence with it ‘it is sunny’. I did the same with clouds, rain and wind. The wind was a bit difficult to demonstrate for me, but once the students understood it they were very good at demonstrating it :P :)
- A student said that it was cloudy in the evening, therefore I revised the various times of the day i.e. morning, afternoon, evening and night.

- While the students copied this in their notebooks, I checked the exercise about they/there/they’re of the other student. I saw that the correct use of these words was also dependant on the understanding of the words used in the sentences. Sometimes when a specific word or the sentence in its totality wasn’t understood, mistakes were made in choosing the right word.
With the help of explanation, synonyms (in English and/or Dutch), pictures and my own grand drawings (ahem), I succeeded in explaining words like pigs, curly, wardrobe, poodle and couch/sofa. However I had a lot of difficulty explaining the meaning of ‘unless’. Finally I rephrased sentence number 18. in order to explain the meaning of this word.

- I gave an exercise about the use of a/an to the advanced student. (http://www.rhlschool.com/eng2n26.htm) This exercise was meant as a revision. While he was busy with that I thought of practicing the parts of the face with the beginners. I wrote the following on the green board: Where ___ your ____? Then we practiced with e.g. ‘Where is your nose?’ – My nose is here (pointing towards your nose). Then I also said: My nose is ‘here’ and your nose is ‘there’. The difference between ‘here’ and ‘there’ also became clear.
I explained them the difference between the use of ‘is’ and ‘are’ i.e. ‘is’ is used for singular and ‘are’ is used for plural. We also did a mini practice with singular and plural i.e. 1 ear and 2 ears. Like this they knew whether they were supposed to use ‘is’ or ‘are’. I was very glad with this exercise. Usually I need other people in the class to translate their message to me and vice versa, but today the whole communication was a grand success. Since there were very few students present today, I could give everyone a lot more attention than I normally can.

- I checked the a/an exercise of the advanced student, explained him the concept of the use of ‘a’ and ‘an’ once more and then went through the whole exercise with him.