Lesson no. 6

Lesson no. 6

26 June 2009 / Friday

(16:05 – 17:50)

Topics of the day:
General class: (Part 1 and Part 4)
- Questions
- Articles: A/An
- At/In
- For/Since?

Beginners: (Part 2)
- Days of the week

Advanced: (Part 3)
- More practice with ‘For or Since’ (along with the handouts for the general class --> Part 1)

PART 1:
Today many students showed up for the English class. :) I had an exam till 12:00, therefore I had planned to prepare today’s lesson after my exam. I used the lesson evaluations from last year to choose a handout I had made then. After some struggle I decided to choose a handout about ‘Questions and answers’.

There are certain words we use in order to ask questions e.g. what, when, where, which, who, why, how. One by one these words were written on the board and the students were asked to make a sentence (a question) with these words. Once the question was written on the board, an answer to the question was given by a fellow student and written on the board as well. I found it a useful and interactive exercise.

The following handouts linked to this explanation were distributed in the class:
Handout:

PART 2:
Once I was done with the general class, I decided to explain the days of the week to the beginners. Initially I found it a bit difficult to explain certain things because of the language barrier. I asked some other students to translate a few things for me, and for the rest I relied on my body language and gestures. The handout can be found below:
Days of the Week: http://english-zone.com/grammar/calendar2.html
(and for the ‘Days of the Week’ study chart, see: http://english-zone.com/grammar/days.html)

PART 3:
One student from last time was present today as well, and as promised I gave him a few more exercises about the use of ‘For and Since’. Once he was done, he was given an answer sheet to check his answers. Afterwards I also went to him to clear any doubts about the mistakes he had made. The handout can be found below:
http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verbs-m_for-since.htm --> explanation about ‘For or Since’
http://www.eclecticenglish.com/grammar/PresentPerfect1D.html --> for the first two exercises
http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verbs-m_for-since_quiz.htm --> for the third exercise

PART 4:
Since there were many students with different levels of English in the class today, some were very fast with the first handout while others struggled a little bit with it. It was a little chaotic in the class today because I was going from one side of the classroom to the other, giving students new handouts and explaining them things that were unclear. The handouts from the previous lesson about ‘A/An’, ‘At/In’ and ‘For or Since?’ were given to the students. (For these handouts see the lesson evaluation of lesson no. 5: http://azcleidenenglishteaching.blogspot.com/2009/06/lesson-no-5.html )
.
P.S: I will make an attendance list of the students after finishing my lesson evaluation and I will mail it to Mr. Peter.

Lesson no. 5

Lesson no. 5

23 June 2009 / Tuesday

(16:05 – 17:45)

Topics of the day:
- Adjectives and Infinitives
- Articles: A/An
- For/Since?
- At/In

Today there were only three students in the class. I think that the change in the timetable wasn’t seen and understood by the others; or there might be another reason for their absence.

Initially I had two handouts for the beginners, 3 handouts for the non-beginners (general and advanced) and 1 handout for the advanced students. This might sound a bit complicated, but I had decided to explain one general handout to the whole class and once they were busy with the exercise, I wanted to carry on with the beginners and explain them their handout.

Since there were only three students today, who belonged to the advanced group, I did the 3 handouts for non-beginners and 1 handout for advanced students with them.

Part 1: Adjectives and Infinitives

The exercise about adjectives and infinitives was done first. The exercise was handed out and the students were asked to choose the best option.

The following points were discussed in connection to this exercise:
Sentence 7.
The students aren’t prepared ____ the exam. (a. to take, b. to listen, c. to work)
The students aren’t prepared to take the exam. (this is correct!)
The students aren’t prepared to listen to the exam. (‘listen to’ isn’t an option here!)
The students aren’t prepared to work on the exam. (‘work on’ isn’t an option here!)

Sentence 11.
The form of the verb ‘to be’.
He is
Your brother = He, therefore we use: Your brother is

Sentence 17.
Women = plural
They are --> Women = They à therefore, Women are
(Also: 1 Woman --> 2 Women)
For the handout of Part 1, see: http://www.english-zone.com/teach/adj-inf1.html

Part 2: Articles: A/An

The explanation on top of the handout was explained and then the students were asked to answer the questions.

Explanation:
Vowels = a, e, i, o, u
Consonants = all the other letters in the alphabet except the vowels: b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y, z.

You use an: If a word begins with a vowel sound!!!
You use a: if a word begins with a consonant sound!!!

A few exceptions were discussed in connection to the use of a/an e.g. Hour
The word ‘Hour’ begins with the letter ‘h’ (a consonant), but the word ‘hour’ begins with an ‘o’ sound (vowel sound!!!), therefore we say an hour, instead of 'a hour'.

For the handout of Part 2, see: http://english-zone.com/grammar/a-an.html

Part 3: For/Since?

This was a very difficult part. It was more difficult for the students than I had expected. When the three students were busy with this exercise, I realized that it would have been a very difficult topic to be given in a general class if more people were present.

I used the explanation on top of the handout to explain the difference between for and since.

For = used for general periods of time
Since = used for a specific time

The first sentence from the handout was used to explain the difference between these two words. Some other sentences were also used.

I wrote the following on the green board, which was quite clear I think, if one wants to understand when to use which of both words:
When you know when something happened--> it is specific --> use since

Initially the exercise appeared to be difficult for the students, therefore I decided to look at each sentence. E.g. I have studied English for/Since two months. I asked the students whether ‘two months’ was specific or general. I asked them whether they knew about which two months we were talking here. Were we talking about the two months a few year ago or at the beginning of this year. Since there was no clear indication of a specific period of time, the students termed the phrase ‘two months’ as ‘general’. And as the rule says, we use ‘for’ if we talk about a ‘general period of time’.

One by one all sentences were studied, and the students were asked to decide whether a phrase referred to a specific or general period of time. It was a nice exercise as students got the chance to explain some things to each other. Sometimes one understands best if he/she explains it to others.

For the handout of Part 3, see: http://english-zone.com/grammar/sincefor.html

Part 4: At/In

Prepositions: e.g. on, in, under, above, below

The explanation on top of the handout was explained:
At: at home, at school, at work
In: in bed, in class, in jail, in prison

I didn’t know the exact rules as to when one should use ‘at’ and when one should use ‘in’, therefore after finding out the exact rules myself, next time I will explain them for sure.

For the handout of Part 4, see: http://www.english-zone.com/grammar/at-in1.html

Plan for next time:
There are a few things from this lesson that either need further elaboration (use of ‘at’ and ‘in’) or need further practice (use of ‘for’ and ‘since’). Therefore, along with preparing the main lesson I will keep in mind to do something about these two topics.

Lesson no. 4

Lesson no. 4

19 June 2009 / Friday

(16:05 – 17:55)

Topic of today: City Maps & Directions

I started the class with asking the students to imagine if they were in another country for a holiday and they didn’t know the place very well. At such times one needs clear directions to get to a certain place. I first held a brainstorming session about the possible places/buildings that could be present in a city. At a certain point the whole green board was full with words. (In the end I’ll try to write as many words as I can remember from the brainstorming session.) It was a good practice what concerns vocabulary building. Below you’ll find list of some words that were mentioned:

Airport
AZC
Beauty parlour
Butchery
Cinema
Church/Mosque
Dentist
Harbour/Port
Hospital
Laboratory
Library
Museum
Pharmacy
Police Station
Post office
River/Lake/Sea/Ocean (I didn’t know the difference between these :$)
Salon
School
Shopping Mall
Supermarket
Town hall (‘stadhuis’)
Train Station
University

During the brainstorming session any unclear words were explained. Afterwards an imaginary map was drawn on the board, and some words from the green board were chosen and added in the map. The streets were given various names. It was a basic map used in order to explain the concept of giving directions. A blue dot was drawn, and ‘I am here’ was written next to it. Under it a green dot was drawn, and ‘I want to go here’ was written next to it. Then on the map I worked with blue and green dots to let our imaginary person get to the place of his dreams (if I may put it that way :P)

The following words were used in order to give directions:
Left (turn to the left/ turn left)
Right
Straight (go straight)
To cross the road
Next to/ close to/ near to
North/South/East/West
(Some phrases e.g. ‘across the street’, can also be found in the handout)

The handout was distributed and explained to students in small groups. (The handout is pasted below)

Some students were done with this handout quite quickly, therefore I gave them the backup-handout with present continuous and future tense.

Today’s class was really good The students were enthusiastic as always. There were three people who would like to begin with the very basics, as they speak almost no English. I need to think of a plan to do something about that. Further, the rest of the class is doing good. Some people are doing great and I’d try to make more handouts for them.
.
P.S: I mentioned that next week there is going to be a class on Tuesday 16:00 instead of Wednesday.
.
Handout:

Handout removed due to COPYRIGHT... check: http://www.english-zone.com/reading/citymap01.html for the handout I used during the class.

Lesson no. 3

Lesson no. 3

17 June 2009 / Wednesday

(16:30 – 17:55)

I needed to make some eleventh hour changes to the lesson plan of today. I had made a lesson plan yesterday but when I began to check the exercises from last time I noticed that many people didn’t understand the concept of telling the time entirely. Since the explanation about this topic was still fresh in the minds of the students, I thought it was best to clear all the doubts that remained about this topic first. (The lesson preparation that was meant for today will be used on Friday)

The lesson was started with drawing a clock on the board (just like last time). This time instead of explaining everything myself I asked students to tell the time. The explanation and the questioning were integrated.

This time there were two teachers in the class i.e. me and Ruben. He was a great help. I asked him to take over a few times so that he could continue with the general lesson about telling the time, in which each student was invited to the board to tell the time portrayed at the clock we drew. In the mean time I could explain this topic to new students, latecomers and to students who didn’t understand it completely.
(The handouts consisted of clocks in which the clock needed to be read by the students and they had to write the time in words e.g. twenty past one)

While the general class was taking place, handouts were given to the students so that they could work on them if they wanted.

Although I had prepared some extra and more difficult handouts for students who had asked for them, there were still a few students who were done even with them. So for next time I need multiple and more difficult handouts for some people.
(These handouts consisted of a story with 10 MCQ’s and a grammar handout about simple present and future tense with some exercises)

The months of the year were repeated and this time the students were also invited to come to the board to tell when they were born. It was a good idea of Ruben to ask the students to speak the sentences out loud, once they had written them. I’ve never done that but we all learn new things all the time :) Prepositions (e.g. on) and articles (e.g. the) were missing sometimes in sentences. But writing is a good practice not only for these two things but also for the spelling of the months.

Ruben was a great help today. I don’t know what I would have done without him. Thanks a bunch for your help :)

Error analysis:

- I forgot to tell the students about the timings of the lesson of Friday, as there were quite a few new students. (need to ask the COA to put it on the notice board tomorrow)
- There were a few new people in the class today, and I noticed again that the students have different levels of English. I didn’t have enough variety of handouts so I need to work on that.
- I forgot about the time. At 17:55 I saw the clock, and I was like :o we need to finish right away. I really need to prepare my lesson as if it is an hour lesson or a 45-minute lesson. This will probably give more structure to my lessons, but I really need to work on that.

Teaching proposal...

Since I'm busy with the basics I think it is better to give the whole class a general lesson and exercises to work on in class and/or at home. There are a few students who could and who would like to do more exercises, therefore I'm going to prepare some handouts in the weekend for those students i.e. when they are done with the class exercise they can work on those exercises... and while the rest of the class is busy with their exercises I can still try to give individual attention and explanation to these students. I think this is the best option once there are students of different levels in a class. I also think that the everyone should know the basics well-enough, therefore according to me it would be useful for everyone to attend the general lesson.

Lesson no. 2

Lesson no. 2
12 June 2009 / Friday
(15:10 – 17:25)

Intention:

(Also see the handouts at the end of the evaluation... I tried to make them as readable as possible in this blogpost...)

- Repetition of last lesson: this time I plan to make clear which questions should be asked in order to get the basic information about someone. Then I want the students to participate in a class dialogue and ask and answer each other’s questions. Since the introduction is a topic for everyone, I want the whole class to participate in it.

- The numbers 1 till 30 (also for the clock). (use handout from last time with the spelling of the numbers)

BREAK

- Days of the week (working days and weekends) --> What do you do on ___ ?

- Months of the year (Birthdays) & Seasons

BREAK

- Time (:00, :15, :30, :45)

Evaluation:

Part 1:
I started with the first part of the handout about the introduction. I briefly revised the few items we talked about last time with the help of the handout. I asked the first student the first question on the list ‘what is your name’ and he gave me an answer and then he/she asked the person sitting next to him/her the next question on the list (in this case ‘How old are you?’). Like this everyone got a chance to answer and ask a question.

Part 2:
The days of the week were mentioned and divided in the categories of working days and weekend.
Then I asked the first person in the row ‘What do you do on Monday?’. After giving an answer he/she asked the person sitting next to him/her what he/she did on Tuesday, etc.
The main question was written on the board before starting this class activity. Each answer given by the students was written on the board. This was a good activity mainly for both speaking and vocabulary building.
The following answers were mentioned by the students (I am writing the ones that I still remember… I neither got the time or the chance to write them down on a paper). I tried to pay some attention on sentence structure and the use of prepositions.
(note: The use of ‘X’ in the following sentences represents the name of a day of the week)
I watch tv on X.
I go to watch football on X.
I wash my clothes on X.
I like to sleep on X.
I go to the mosque on X.
I go to the football field on X.
I do shopping on X.
I go to the lesson on X.
I go to the church on X.
I go to school on X.

Part 3:
Months of the year: The names of the 12 months were written on the board. Then the main question: ‘When were you born?’, was asked. Each student was invited to come on the board and write their date of birth e.g. ‘I was born on 27 December 1986’. This was a good spelling exercise, because I think one learns best by writing a word. Another alternative to answer the main question was introduced by one of the students, namely ‘I was born on the 27th of December’

Part 4:
The students who began with part 3 were done quite early, and therefore I distributed the handouts about telling the time. These students began with these handouts, and since the rest of the group was still busy writing their date of birth on the board, I had enough time to look at the and also to explain the time to small groups of students. Sometimes it is better to explain difficult topics in small groups, and it helped to quite an extend. The exercises were a great practice. Once everyone was busy or done with the second handout I gave a general class about telling the time. I drew a clock on the board. I used a pink chalk to draw the hour hand (and made it significantly shorter than the long minute hand) and I used green color to make the minute hand. On the right side of the clock I also gave a key as to what color represented minutes and which one represented hours. I also made a big square bracket with one color on the right half of the clock, calling it the ‘past’ half and one on the other half and calling it the ‘to’ half.
‘Minute past/to hour’ was written on the board and I also told them ‘Minute always comes first’. This was a mnemonic to remember that the minute comes first when telling the time, and the hour next. The drawing of the clock with the explanation was very helpful. I explained the clock by drawing the hands of the clock at different times, and asked the students to try to give it a try to guess what time it was. This was an important and difficult topic, therefore I thought to call people to the board to write the time which referred to the drawing on the board. After a student was done, I changed the hands of the clocks for the next student. This was a good practice for writing numbers, because e.g. I asked the students to write ‘twenty past one’ instead of ‘20 past 1’.

Today’s lesson was approximately 2 hours long. That is quite long. There were breaks in between, but I never really said that we were taking a break. Next time I will try my best to keep some breaks in between :$

I really liked today’s lesson. Many people showed up and it was a lot of fun :)

I also mentioned the change in the timings of the Friday lesson and I’ll keep in mind to remind the students of the change during the next lesson too.

P.S:
There were a few things from the first lesson that I wanted to make clear e.g. the use of singular and plural form, and I actually forgot to do that. So that should be done on Wednesday.

Handouts:

Page 1:

Page 2:

Page 3:

Lesson no. 1

Lesson no. 1

10 June 2009/Wednesday

Intention:

I intend to give an introduction lesson on 10 June 2009. I think it is important for the students and for me to know a little bit about each other. This will also be a great opportunity for all the students to get to know each other a little better.
Right now I am a little uncertain about the content of the lesson because I’m unsure about the level of English of the students. As a backup plan I’d like to think of 1 or 2 other topics which I can integrate in the lesson, if the introduction session finishes before the expected time.

Topics for tomorrow:

- Introduction (Greeting, Name, Country of Origin, Age (numbers), No. of years in NL, Family, Hobbies (verbs), Anything else)
- Introduce: I am, You are (singular And plural), He/She is, We are, They are (once everyone is done with introducing themselves, try to use imaginary (groups of) people to practice the use of the verb ‘to be’ with the correct pronoun.)

Handout:

Greetings:

Good morning / Good afternoon / Good evening.
Goodbye / Bye.

Introduction:

Name: My name is _________________. / I am _________________.
Country of Origin: I am from _________________.
Age: I am _________________ years old.
Stay in The Netherlands: I am living in The Netherlands for the last _________________ years and _______ months. (the months bit was added later!)
Family: I am _________________ (single / married).
I have ____________ brothers and _____________ sisters.
I have _____________ children.
Hobby: I like to _______________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________.

Numbers:

(this image is very vague here, but it was clear on the handouts... I need to learn how to use this blog :P But I suppose the concept is clear...)

Backup:

1. Adjectives: Use of Pronouns, the right form of the verb ‘to be’ and adjectives e.g. He is tall
2. Opposites: opposites of the adjectives used e.g. tall <---> short

Evaluation:

16:30
- I gave a brief introduction about myself.
- The basic things that should be mentioned when meeting a new person were mentioned i.e. name, age, country, family composition (married/single, children?, daughters/sons?), hobbies and work/job. I wrote each item in the right sentence on the board (as written in the handout) and asked the students to fill in the blanks.
- When we had practiced all the main items once, everyone was given a chance to tell something about themselves using the sentences on the board. This was a good practice because it not only added to the knowledge of the whole class about a certain individual but the students were also stimulated to think about possible hobbies and interests (see vocabulary list).

17:00
5 minute BREAK

17:05
- The use of the verb ‘to be’ with the correct pronoun: I am, You are (singular And plural), He/She is, We are, They are was explained. These were further used by students with the help of imaginary characters e.g. I wrote the following on the board: Tom, 32, married, doctor, and I asked the students to convey this information into correct English sentences.
- The handouts were distributed and everyone filled in their information on the handout.
- I asked the students to try to learn the spellings of the numbers from 1 till 20 + the spelling of the number that represented their age
- Before the class ended I took the handouts in order to check them. But just now I realize that the spellings of the numbers are on the handouts! (I suppose I need to be a bit alert next time…)

17:20
From 17:20 till 17:40 nothing much was done. I realized that there were two groups (two levels) and if I used my backup plan then it would have become too much for some people, therefore this time was spend in talking, clearing doubts and giving extra explanations. Some people used this time to copy the rest of the sentences from the board.

I think since I was a bit unsure about the lesson because it was the very first lesson, it was a bit difficult to plan the perfect lesson. I personally think it went kinda OK. There were a few people who found this quite easy, therefore I’m going to try to get some extra handouts or work for them for next time. I still need to invent a strategy to teach a lesson which can fulfil the demands of both groups.

Vocabulary in alphabetical order:

Age
Country
Engineering
Hobby
Iraqi
Laughing
Mechanical engineer
Nationality
Playing games
Reading
Somalian
To drive a car
To travel
Watching football
Watching movies

Problems & Attendance --> Mailed to Mr. Peter

1st Meeting

2 June 2009/ Tuesday
1st Meeting (13:10 – 13:50)

Today I had the first meeting with Mr. Peter Geerlings. I signed a contract as a volunteer and he showed me around a little bit. It was a brief introduction session.
- Together we came up with a timetable for the English lessons. The classes will start from 10 June 2009. And there would be a class every Wednesday (16:30) and Friday (14:00). Each class would be approximately 1-1.5 hour long. The Wednesday lessons should always finish before 18:00 due to security reasons.
- If it isn’t possible for me to teach on a specific day I should try to seek contact with Mr. Peter via mail and I should also inform the students apart from putting the changes in the timetable on the notice board.
- I also met two teachers who teach Dutch at the AZC, but I forgot their names. :$
- I have been told to provide each student with a notebook (blok) and a pen.
- I have also been advised to preferably use one classroom, because it would be easier for me and the students.