I took a listening exercise straight from the students’
textbooks (Everybody Up 6). The title of the listening exercise was “An
Afternoon at the Opera”. I started the lesson with a TD approach of activating
the student’s schema with regards to Opera. We had open discussion about what
opera is, and then I showed two short famous opera videos. The Ss were not that
excited by the performances. I had hoped ‘O Fortuna’ would give goose bumps all
through the classroom, but no joy to be had there.
After the preview, we moved into the presentation phase of
the lesson and I used a lot of CI techniques that Tom suggested in my last
micro teaching with Andrew. I made sure I modeled questions on the WB, and then
had Ss ask other Ss questions. The students were definitely taken aback by how
much speaking I suddenly expected them to do. The Ss did not nominate their
friends to answer their question, but rather chose a rival in class. I got the
feeling that the Ss felt like answering a question had a negative connotation
attached to it.
Other than that, we got through listening exercise, and I
only played it once to keep the experience “authentic”. Most students could
answer the questions (true/false) with no problems. I see that I gave the
students some of the answers to the handout BEFORE I played the recording. Doh!
I only realized this after having it pointed out in my 2nd STG micro teaching. Other
than that, I felt the lesson went as well as can be expected. My students are
still very new to these CIs and having to negotiate for meaning in class.
Keep going with the questions for them to ask and answer, and do it in a friendly, sincere way, and they can relearn what questions are for in your classroom. They have learned to feel negatively about them through a lifetime of practice...
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