This was the first week that my group met together with me as the big sister for a "real" lesson. I heard that one of my members was struggling to participate and connect with other last week so I wanted to make sure that she was feeling part of the group this week. I noticed that she seemed really quiet in some cases, but she also participated in all the activities well. The second day she was much more lively. I know she has a busy schedule (5 classes) on days that we meet so she is extremely tired. When I talked to her during the activities she always responded in doing her part as well as seeming engaged in the topic (whether it was during the activity or free talking during break or if we finished early).

I know a lot of the other groups seemed very interested in the topic of fashion, and I know my group was, too. For some reason my group seemed to finish early in all the assignments even while I checked to make sure they were using the target language function. So I made sure to have discussion related to the activities to check their work or to keep the topic similar for the purpose of staying on track for future activities. Overall, the group bonded well and it was nice to click together even with our different guests both days. All the little sisters in my group seem to get along well no matter who they pair up with for the activities/tasks.

The focus of the lesson was challenging...it seemed that the students tried to avoid using adjectival/noun phrases. During the first day when the students had to describe their bachelor, I noticed a lot of the little sisters would go for cliche descriptions instead of focusing on phrases. Because it was boys and the other classmates giggled, they seemed to rely on big reactional words like "sexy". It would have been nice if even the lower intermediate level students could have focused on using only a few descriptions and really try to use the target language function. This means that while it's good to have fun with the little sisters, as big sisters we need to try harder to push and guide the little sisters to make more of their content. For example, even when my highest level little sister tried to "take the easy way out" and just use one word nouns, I would ask her how to make that word an adjective to build it longer into a phrase with other one-word descriptions she gave. So then her 3 ways of describing became one phrase. 

As long as the big sisters had developed relationships with their little sisters where guiding them/pushing them to do more makes the little sisters feel accomplished, we should try to do it as much as we can. I know we should have fun, but I'd feel better knowing that whoever in my group is actually learning rather than just using what they know. I was proud to see that the lowest level in my group took her time to describe a picture for the "telephone" game. I was surprised that it took such a looooooong time, but I was also glad that she wanted to be as descriptive as possible.