CLASS: 9-B

DATE: 11.03.2015  Wednesday

CONTENT OF THE LESSON: Simple Past Tense

OPENING

The activity the teacher used to start to lesson was watching a student’s 

presentation about his dreams for future. The student, Berk, displayed a power point presentation to the classroom about computer engineering. While presenting, the teacher asked some questions to Berk to make incoherent parts about computer engineering. At the end of the presentation the teacher directed a question which was attracted almost all students: “Berk wants to study as computer engineering. What about you?”

One of the students: I want to study at Cerrahpaşa Medical Faculty.

Teacher: Why do you want C.M. Faculty instead of ÇAPA?

Student: I don’t know I just want…

Then teacher continued by saying “Forget about the future now, let’s turn present and open your books! Do you want to learn how to use past simple ha?”

Several activities were used to comprehend the usage of past simple construction.

If I scale the opening activity it can be regarded moderately effective for me. Even if the question was not relevant the content of the lesson nearly all students felt motivated thanks to the question.

SEQUENCING

The lesson contained the following sequence of activities:

-         Making some prediction according to the pictures on the book- English for Life

-         Gap-filling activity

Teacher: What can you see in the picture?

Students: There are women and men. They’re talking.

Teacher: Who are they? What are they talking about?

Students: About “yesterday”.

Then teacher make them turned the activity which indicated some verbs with blue. Teacher asked them to explain why the verbs are blue. Some students answered with their reasons then teacher explain in detail past form of “to be” to make it clear. 

  The purpose of sequencing was trying to make the learners realize the rule of past simple indirectly, to get the goal she started from easy activities to difficult ones.

PACING

After making a comparison between “am, is, are” and “was, were” (am-is-are usage is related to present but if you want to talk about 10 years ago, for instance I have to say: I was a student, but NOW in present I am a teacher.) teacher selected students from the list randomly.

-         Hatice, where are you NOW? (with making stress on the word-now-)

-         I am at school.

-         So, where were you last night?

-         I was at home.

Then she said that she did not want to explain the form, instead of that, “let’s examine the examples.”

“We’re at the theatre last night.”

-         Hande, could you make the sentence negative?

The purpose of pacing the lesson in this way: Consolidation the lesson by giving exercises appropriate for the learners’ level.

CLOSURE

The activity teacher used to end the lesson was focusing on listening and speaking skills.

The teacher asked that if the students had any problem about “was & were” or not. Then she selected a student randomly again:

-         Samet, were you out last weekend?

-         No, I was not.

-         Where were you?

-         At home.

-         Could you make it a long sentence?

-         I was at home.

Teacher asked several questions until being sure of that all students understand the content.

When they wanted to do listening exercise, a technical problem occurred. The teacher had to read the text by herself and the students filled the gaps. Teacher read the sentences in the bubble and stopped when there was an unknown phrase.

The effectiveness of this closure was very effective in terms of that the students had no question on their mind about the lesson. On the other hand if the smart board worked, the listening part could be better for students.

New Term Has Started!

MARCH 11, 2015

Today I’ve joined counseling course of 9/E.

The aim of the lesson was to remove the students’ worries about the exam.

The teacher talked about quizzes which were scored last week after that she gave out the papers without declaring the grades.

She emphasized that the writing part was not so good, she warned them kindly about paying attention to grammar mistakes. (She cared about almost all students’ mistakes. Also she gave praises like “best writing was hers, congratulations”, “yours was good but too short”…)

“It is understood that you comprehend the book but you could not express yourselves exactly on the paper.” (She wanted the students to be aware of deficient points.)

The teacher gave them five minutes to check their exam paper if there is any mistakes or not.

Some questions related to grammar were answered again by the students and teacher showed the mistakes which were made in general. (Mistakes were made while mixing the tenses and they were related to using adjectives)

“There are some general mistakes that you did on the quiz, look at the board: a very hard working student-I very love you. Which one is true? ‘Very’ means ‘çok’ but we cannot use it before verbs we use it before adjectives. (She mentioned about how to use adjectives in a sentence again.)”

She wrote another mistake on the board and asked the students to make it correct. “He was comed to the classroom.” The corrections from the students were:

-He did came to the classroom.

-He camed to the classroom.

-He came to the classroom.

At the end of the lesson teacher asked that if there is question or not. No one had any problem. She explained that she could give some projects as supplementary for grammar. Then, the papers were collected. 

A Late Post

*Actually I wrote this blog on December 26th, 2014 but I could not upload the videos due to some technical problems. Hence, I called the title "a late post". :)

We came to an end for presentation tasks. 

Ms. Usta picked up the students who are ready for making their presentations and they showed their own products one by one.

Do not worry! I shot their videos with my cell phone. :) 

Cem was the first student who exhibited his task. The topic was "Spartacus". (I realized that students generally chose tv series as a topic to present.)

After his performance, the teacher asked him to sum up the presentation at least five sentences. And she directed a question to the class: "Do you have any questions?" (They did not ask anything.)

The second presenter was a group. Their topic was "Pole Animals" which was really interesting for everyone. I liked this group's performance since they use their own sentences in the presentation.

Three students told about three different pole animals: Emperor Penguins, Polar Bears, Seal and Sea Lion.

Here are the videos:

After that video, the classroom discussed about the meaning of "approximately".

And the teacher asked the student to answer :"What did you learn from this presentation?"

He said that "I've learnt a lot about penguins. I did not any idea about their kilograms or features of their wings. 

As for me, I have learnt a lot also about Mr. Bean. (I would like to thank the students for their presentations.) 

Ms. Usta Let Us Manage The Classroom

29.12.2014

Today we made a surprise for our lovely teacher and also for lovely students. :)

We went to the school circumstantially. (Normally, Ezgi and I visit the school on fridays but we decided not to go on friday in order to arrange our New Year holiday.)

Ms. Usta was happy to see us and she asked that if we could stay until the last lesson or not. Since she had to leave before the last lesson. Furthermore, she said that we could watch a film in last lesson.

Before she left the classroom the students finished their performance task prepared by the teacher.

At first the teacher asked the students to finish the writing part. Then they listened a dialogue to fulfill the blanks with true or false.

I found the writing part good. I believe that when there are options, students can write something easily and they can enjoy it.

And also listening was good in terms of sound quality and suitability for stundents' level.

In last lesson we watched "Oliver Twist". When all students were ready we started the film. I read the book but I was really impressed by the film again. While I thought it was a good film, some students looked careless and they made some noise.

Ezgi warned them to be quiet and I supported her by controlling the classroom with my eyes. (I thought that if I also warned them verbally some students who really wanted to watch the film could be disturbed.)

In last minutes of the lesson we talked about the film was good or not.

 A nice photo from 11/D

Examine Some Exam Papers

December 24, 2014

Today we attended one of the 11st grade classrooms, 11/E. Students were making their presentations while we are reading exam papers. Ms. Usta asked us for reading some exam papers. This is not a first time for me because I read exam paper also in my high school time. :) Even if it was not first time, I was excited. At the and of reading we noticed that there are plenty of students who get high scores from the exams. We were proud of them when we realized that situation. 

    (A part from the exam paper)

Of course we did not forget to take a special photograph for today.

 This board was full of information about Mevlana. (Thanks my dear friend Ezgi for the photo:))

That's all for today. See you soon until I get new experiences. :)

December 12, 2014

First of all Ms. Usta took the attendance then she gave the students notice that the exams will be on the next week. "We need to hurry up to finish this unit before the exam week."

The teacher passed the warm up activity by asking: "What  can you see in the picture (on the coursebook)? There was an actor and a film advertisement in the picture.

Then teacher kept the conversation by asking "What kind of film, is it action film?" "Is the actor stunt?" "Who are stunt men?" "Are they dangerous?" Today, the subject was about "stunt men".

Meanwhile, the teacher put forward her own idea about action films. "I hate action films because I don't like fire, violence and wilderness."

Reading activity, a text about "Computer Generated Imaging". 

The teacher skipped work- in- pairs activity because they had to hurry up.

The class listened to a dialogue about "how to buy a ticket". Then the teacher described the dialogue in detail by using body language. Furthermore, she insisted on the meaning of "sold out". (She must consider that that phrasal verb could be unknown for the students.)

Explanation some film terms: (By the way I did not know those terms also.)

• Certificate U: Universal
• Certificate PG: Parental Guidance Advised is necessity.
• Certificate 12: Not suitable for children under 12.
• OAPs: Old-age pensioner (For retired people) 

There was a work-in-pairs activity which was turned into homework.

A student made his own presentation which was about an actor from 'supernatural' in last ten minutes. 

I will add his video as soon as possible. 




  

Think of a lesson that gives a chance us to remember Barış Manço :)

Date: December 5, 2014

Today, we joined the class, our lovely classroom, 10-H.

Ms. Usta asked a question to attract the students, “What did we do in last lesson?”. Two students reminded what they did in previous class.

Then, teacher gave information about the new homework about “favourite films”. One of the students interrupted the teacher by asking for explaining the homework in detail because he did not understand. (He asked in Turkish, the teacher explained the homework again in English but more simple)

Teacher continued with an exercise and she selected the students randomly to answer the questions.

There were a lot of unknown words which students wanted the teacher to explain (actually the lesson was about adjectives). And the teacher tried to explain all unknown vocabularies with English descriptions and she gave the usages in the sentences. 

Vocabulary in context

“Hilarious” means extremely funny

“dull” means boring

Explaining the difference between “boring and bored” with sentences:

(The teacher wrote two sentences which include ‘boring and bored’ on the board and she asked the srudents to find out the difference.)

Ø The film was boring.

Ø I was bored by the film.

Ø What an exhausting day!

Ø We were all exhausted at the end of the day.

There was a pair-work activity on the book but students did it together. Then “Vocabulary Builder Part” was finished.

Some time the teacher interrupted the lesson to warn the students not to leave their rubbish under the desks. (“If I see any rubbish under your desk, I will give you extra homework.”) - For effective classroom management, it is necessary to be careful while arranging classroom environment. The teacher has an important role on arranging classroom environment.

There was a reading passage about Keira Knightley. The class talked about her films and teacher promised to watch a film before the exam. (She recommended some films for watching, and gave her opinion about films containing violence: “I hate them.”)

Turning back “comparative&superlative”:

When reading the text, she asked the students underline the adjectives which are in comparative and superlative forms. (Scanning)

By the way the classroom made noise so much today. Teacher warned them “You make me tired, I won’t maket he exam easy!”.

The teacher gave extra homework (making up 10 comparative&superlative senteces) for late comers.

(Teacher generally applies the “punishment and reward theory” for obtaining authority.)

The last part of the lesson two students made their presentation, they started with asking “What is your favourite song belonging to Barış Manço?”

Yes, the presenatation was prepared to introduce Barış Manço. The girls were so excited and I felt really lucky owing to watching such a good presentation!

I will put a little part of the presentation on this page.

P.S. If you want to watch the rest of the video, you can visit my dear friend’s -Ezgi’s- blog J

For more details, please follow the link below:

http://ezgininstajgunlugu.blogspot.com.tr/2014/12/the-end-of-tiring-day.html

 *We realized that there were homework belonging to the students on the board and I want to share them with you. (Comparative and Superlative)