I am beyond proud of us for this class. It was our best class yet! Such a contrast from our 4th hour of teaching.
It took us 5 weeks to get our students this comfortable around us, and I’m so happy to bear the fruits of our labour. This class was extra special, as I wrote the reading for this class (granted it was inspired from a story, but completely re-imagined).
Here are a few highlights of this week’s teaching:
- Students were more engaging than before.
- Ken’s acting during our reading was fantastic! I would not have done it better!
- The energy in the class was phenomenal.
- I partnered up with our level 2 student for Kahoot! and helped them win (they sent me a private ‘thank you’ after, which I thought was incredibly sweet). For once he shone among all the level 3’s.
- Students used their critical thinking to guess the killer of the story.
It seems that we followed the nativist theory for this class. We depended on the ‘optimal input’ to help our students’ language acquisition, i.e. through reading and listening. I believe they were able to perceive the bigger picture of the story even if they had not understood 100% of the words. The fact that the story was compelling and interesting enough helped stimulate their brain, and activate their cognitive process through critical thinking. They were forgetting that they were learning, probably even forgot that this was an English class. Our comprehension included numerous subjective questions and classic comprehension questions, which pressured them to guess, and trust their opinion.
Unfortunately, we were unable to cover the pronunciation section fully. We’re still learning to manage our time, but I’m sure that the students left class that day satisfied.
