Today's ninth grade third level class was about the use of
Present Perfect Tense. I didn't want to dwell on to the explanations of the
tense which we have already learned about last year, so I started the lesson by
letting the students talk in pairs with help of the Pattern Practice section in
the course book, pages 20 and 21. I let
them talk quite a while as I had to go around the class and listen to their dialogues.
After about ten minutes I reminded the students of the Grammar time out section
in the coursebook and I tried to emphasize point 4, which explains Present
Perfect Continuous. I am not sure that everyone quiet followed at this point,
but I will see the next time if there will be any problems with the homework
(pages 18-25 in the workbook) or with grading.
After that I wanted to upgrade our topic from yesterday, in
the sense that students compare their homework and discuss what they have
found about the Native Americans on the Internet. The idea was that throughout
this lesson everybody would learn something from a peer in the group and in the
end the groups would report to the rest
of the class and teach everybody something interesting about the Native
Americans. Some students found something, but my general impression was that
most of them didn't make much effort at home. The speaking activity turned out
to be no fun at all because pupils didn't have much to say so I interrupted it
and I chose to provide a listening exercise instead.
We started listening to a Native American living in Oregon
explaining what the relationship between young people and elders in Indian
communities is like. Unfortunately the speech Sacred Children only becomes interesting in the second half, which
we could not listen to in class because it's too long. If there are souls
interested in it, here's the link.
A little reflection on my part: It's interesting how giving
the students the freedom to chose what they do for homework (they could look up
ANYTHING about the Natives), the freedom to answer their own questions (not
mine), the freedom to develop their own curiosity does not motivate them any better
than giving them dull drill exercises in the workbook. I guess student autonomy
for entire classes is just a dream. A very small group of highly motivated
students might be autonomous, i.e. they think about what, how and why they
learn, and all such a group needs is a mentor-teacher to guide them through
topics. However, a larger group will always have a couple of students who do
not consider the time spent at school a privilege and hence do not focus on the
learning. But this leads to a completely different story...
I promised a list of links about the Indians:
many audio files: http://www.wisdomoftheelders.org
numerous stories: http://www.firstpeople.us
I have to run now. I'll add a picture later.
See you soon.
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