The students in this class are all kids, probably around 12. They understand the basic English instructions and seem engaged in the activities provided by the teachers.
The teachers open with a controlled communicative activity where they provided the dialogues and used famous cartoon characters to make the exercise more relatable to the kids. They quickly move on to the listening activity. It all seems a bit rushed, which seems to work to their advantage because the children picked up on this energy and became very eager to answer questions as quickly as possible.
Transition back to the speaking dialogue, students engage in group practice and pair up. The teachers constantly praise the students with positive words and the kids seem to thrive on this, yearning to be recognized. “Excellent”, “good job”, “very good”,etc… getting called and having your name associated with a praise. Kids are living for this in that class.
I thought it was curious at first when the teacher used a hand clapping sort of beat to mark the end of an activity and have all the kids pay attention. It’s curious, but effective! In a class of possibly 30 students, it worked beautifully.
This is where I think it didn’t work out so well. The teachers brought in a song that the kids would learn and sing altogether. It was a very basic song that, in my opinion, missed the age mark for this class. When the teacher asked the kids if they wanted to sing the song again, they weren’t shy to say no. Was the song too challenging? I doubt it. It was a good educational song, and it was too bad that the children didn’t like it so much.
They move on to the “Last Word” game: a team activity. Compared to the song, the children LOVED this game. They get into competition mode and want to win so badly, which brought this thought to my head: kids thrive under pressure and team building activities, adults, not so much. I tend to thing that adults may prefer support from their teacher and peers instead of a competitive spirit.
