BOSTON 2015 C10 CELTA SEPTEMBER 21 - OCTOBER 16

Comment

Comment by John on October 7, 2015 at 9:52pm

Chris Meoli, I'm changing my lesson Friday to the topic of reported speech. As I was thinking about the passive-voice lesson, it seemed too cumbersome to organize well in a 40-minute period, so I set out to find something else. I've already got a nice plan for the reported-speech topic, so if it's alright with you, I will continue!

Comment by John on October 7, 2015 at 9:50pm

For my part on the video observation, I also thought the emphasis on pronunciation was fitting. The students have a lot of trouble producing English phonemes, and teacher was doing well to have focused so much on this. That said, I think repetition of the activity made him a bit less exacting of the students' accuracy than he should have been to the extent that some of the students really weren't reproducing the models he was put forward.

Although I think Kenna was correct to point out the overall awkwardness and inefficiency of the card-flipping task, it was a good use of classroom time on two fronts: the students were able to get out of their seats, getting their blood flowing, and overall the mood of the classroom lightened. The students were laughing together, and that is a good sign that the teacher is creating a comfortable environment, in which students can feel comfortable enough to practice and extend their language abilities.

In general, the teacher had an agreeable attitude toward his students, and he has, in consequence, a good rapport with them. This has the effect of lightening the severity of his corrections, which, while being direct and severe in germ, come across as friendly and helpful. His communicative and friendly gestures also contribute to this point.

Comment by Meliena Decuypere on October 7, 2015 at 8:45pm

For the functions lesson, can I make a separate stage for choral and individual drilling or should I put it in the "Clarification stage"?

Comment by Meliena Decuypere on October 6, 2015 at 7:42pm

I thought the pre-teaching of the vocabulary was pretty good, he put out some pictures and had the students use the fixed constructions "I think that's called/I think they're called... in English" to find the words in pairs.

After giving them some time, they then compared in pairs the words they had with the words that were up on the WB before going over them with the whole group.

He saved a lot of time with explainig meaning thanks to the pictures, making sure he had more time for more important stages of the lesson.
When teaching the students the pronunciation on the board, I would have maybe erased the words first (especially those where you can't rely on the spelling to reflect the sound such as jewellery and knife) and when they had the pronunciation right, put them back up on the board and draw their attention to what part of the written word disappears in the spelling...

Comment by Chris Meoli on October 6, 2015 at 7:32pm

MEliena: Functions functions functions.... Ways of responding (positively) to good news and ways of responding (showing sympathy) to bad news.

Focus on the stems and not on vocabulary words.

Meaning for ALL functions is the same:
1. they show sympathy in a response to bad news
OR
2. they show positive reinforcement in a response to good news.

Form will be HOW they can use them... (e.g. what comes after the stem?)

Pronunciation you know:)

Comment by Chris Meoli on October 6, 2015 at 7:29pm

Just got home:) here is the sample LRT we did today in input.Lrt%20practice%20vocab.docx

Comment by Meliena Decuypere on October 6, 2015 at 6:14pm

Chris, just to be sure, Thursday I am teaching a functions lesson and not a speaking lesson, right?

Comment by Chris Meoli on October 6, 2015 at 11:56am

Here is a great corpus tool as we discussed in vocab 2 today.
Remember that this may be a good resource for teachers, but is too complex for most students (unless they are at a high academic level).

Comment by DeAnna A. Pavlenko on October 6, 2015 at 7:08am

Video Observation Response:

I liked what Adrian Underhill had to say about the teacher "not giving a model" and "looking inside for reference points" which encourages students to remember how the sound feels. This enhances muscle memory and produces a long term awareness of how to make certain words and correctly pronounce without a guide, next time. In everything we do, muscle memory plays a very critical role which most of us aren't aware of and Adrian's method throughout the video focuses on the students experience of making sounds. Also, I really liked the activity that he used continuously throughout to emphasize that sounds can be "taken" from the chart and held in your hand. This technique highlights the idea that sounds are very much a physical aspect of language and once the observers "felt it," it seemed as if they could remember it better and recreate it.

He also talks about learning all of the sounds over a short period of time. He talks about "success giving confidence" when learners figure out that they've "learned all the sounds in English". I learned the Phonetic Chart sporadically and know that it would have been more effective and useful to learn all the sounds at once!

Comment by Chris Meoli on October 6, 2015 at 12:11am

REMINDER:

WEDNESDAY is external observation day.

You will be spending 2 hours of your morning observing classes at Embassy Boston Study Center near the Boston Common. Then you will have a break until afternoon TP. Use this time to make adjustments to your LP and to work on any written assignments.

You will need to observe from 8:30am - 10:10am and will log two hours in your CELTA 5. Please arrive at Embassy by 8:15am at the latest and make a good impression both for yourselves and for Teaching House:)

Please be sure to write the name of the teacher you observe on the feedback form.

A few things about observation: There is an external observation form in your Teaching House Handbook specifically for this purpose. Please bring it with you and fill it out.

This center occasionally hires CELTA graduates and also recommends teachers to us to do the CELTA, so many of the teachers do teach in "the CELTA way":) However, not all teachers are CELTA certified and they may not teach exactly in a “CELTA format” that you are used to. See what you can get out of this. Think about alternatives and variations and think about what you might be able to “borrow” from the teachers you are observing. Gather evidence for your LFC☺

Here is a map and a link to directions. Please, please, please do not show up late.

Map%20to%20Embassy%20English.jpg
EMBASSY CES Directions (#2)

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