Tuesday Reflection

There are a couple issues that I noticed this class. The lesson focused on using sequencing phrases while giving instructions. The last task, Yuri and I gave a paper to help write down ideas and notes. We did not clearly state what the purpose of the paper was. We found that while students were "giving instructions" on how to celebrate Creation Day for their island, a couple students just described what the holiday was like. Even when prompted to use sequencing words, a student said they were just saying what was on the paper which was to explain the meaning behind the holiday category. This made me aware that students really trust the paper rather than the instructions for the task. 

When discussing this issue with the professor, it was also mentioned that having a clear goal for the task will naturally force students to use the language function instead of reminding them to use the target language. I remember in my instructions telling students that they will explain "how to" celebrate the holiday to other groups. This was a special note on "how to" because that was the title on the pictures in the activity just before this last task. Students were given holiday pictures and needed to instruct "how to" do something. Examples were, "how to make an April fool's joke", "how to decorate a Christmas tree", and "how to dye Easter eggs". But perhaps a model of giving instructions of a holiday right before the students should instruct other groups would have helped solidify the goal. We also didn't create a strong context where students would feel the need to instruct others instead of describing the holiday.

While groups were describing/instructing on how to celebrate the holiday, I intervened and had everyone act out the instruction/description to make it feel more like they are actually learning how to do something. 

Thursday Reflection

Easter Egg Hunt: This first activity went pretty well. The instructions seemed to work well, but it was a little confusing to explain how two groups would hide eggs on one side, two groups on the other, and the eggs one group was hiding was for another group. So directing who is hiding what color eggs and who will find different eggs...could have been confusing. But big sisters helped and the directions were kept simple.

To regroup instead of saying time's up, I said "Happy Easter" and asked the little sisters who came back first to say it, too. After finding eggs, we spent 2 more minutes finding the leftover eggs because only one group found all of them.  This was planned for 20 minutes and it was about 25 after once we got back to the classroom. In hindsight, maybe we should have left the unfound eggs unfound but there were 10 clues in 10 out of the 12 eggs to arrange to practice the sequencing phrases for giving instructions.

Basket making: This activity too far too long. More than twice as long. Yuri and I tried hard to help make it more efficient but some of the little sisters just wanted to spent a lot of energy on the basket. Perhaps if we said that we really need to only spend 15 minutes in order to learn to dye an egg and learn 3 other ways...the students would have been more motivated to hurry. The professor mentioned that our example/model crafts should be less perfect so that the little sisters won't care about making theirs as nice.

Learn to egg dye: Because of the lack of time, we could only have the little sisters learn one way to make eggs. If any person finished egg dying quickly, they could try another groups. But they seemed to have a lot of one. One of my little sisters said she really enjoyed egg dying. Another student said she wrote a note to her mom on one of the eggs. And at the end of class we also gave white eggs out since we had extra. Lots of little sisters took them to fill their basket as well as eat on the spot. Haha.

Teach Egg Dye: We had to cancel this part out. But each group was able to dye at least 3 eggs per person. They were only putting one egg in one color and a time and I just started grabbing more and said, "Who wants a pink egg?" And started dunking more eggs at once in the egg dye bowls so the little sisters could see that time was running out, and that they could dye lots of eggs at once.  

Overall, Thursday's lesson was horrible for time management, but they got to experience holiday activities for the first time. The speaking homework is related to how to dye eggs so hopefully they will do well from being motivated with the class activity.