Hard at it planning TV shows

New semester

These guys were really cheerful on our second day.

Great to catch Jason renshaw's talk about his program in Australia.

It made me remember a few sessions I sat in discussing teaching in Korea  with Jeff Lebow and newfangled technology like what the Korea bridge team was all about.  I remember talking with Dave Cormier at KAIST and he even let me host a webpage on his server.  It was great playing with Cascading Style sheets.  I got some tips from David Deeds.  I was the webmaster at Kotesol many years ago but they have moved past what I worked on.

Guess I am just looking around and wondering what career I can fall into when I get back to Ottawa.  Better do what I can to prepare.

Today I snapped a few pics at a class I am doing for some government workers.

Here we have two learners acting out a should skit they made whee the woman on the table is calm and content to stay home and the woman standing is trying to bully her into going out.

These faces were fun.  I started but explaining we would look at expressing emotion.  What does happy look like?  How do you know if someone is sad?

In teams of 2 they picked 2 emotions to demonstrate in a scene.

The woman on the left was very animated.  Great expression.

It was hard to be serious sometimes but great to show what makes people feel the way they do.

I encouraged them to give specific details and reasons for why someone would feel a certain way.  What makes you angry?  

They liked writing their own situations and learned from watching the other ones.  We did faces then scripts then switched partners and tried a different list of emotions.

I printed enough copies last week but one guy lost his and just took a picture of it to use.  Smart.

What started as a nice idea for the students to practice their English took off as an investigation into the music that shaped my tastes and ended up being a look back at bands that influenced me and I wanted to share.  I did adjust week by week and kept a very organic flow connecting one genre to the next.

We looked at a couple popular shows and analysed what made them "good"  we had the students explain what shows they saw and we looked at scenes, scripts, characters.  I would have liked to have the students make more of their own material to act out themselves but membership was kind of unstable.

Toefl

Started teaching monday and wednesdays.

sequential art

the comic book story and art in the book is crap but at least I love the idea of getting students to make their own.  So I had them draw 3 panels as a group and then I gave the beginning of a story to another team to finish.  Best activity all year.  This class was really creative.

This group really is one of my favorites.    Too many chairs but what are you going to do?

Future

I like talking about the future with students.  How certain they are of something happening.  How we base our prediction on past events and how we try to follow in the path of a successful person hoping to be successful ourselves.  A few of my students are a little low for this philosophy though and when I was eliciting some ideas my first student's response of "SOLDIER" told me that the grammar and nuances of probably, might and "I'm going to +V"  was way over their heads. 

I like to draw out a timeline to encourage them to say when in the future and go a little farther than "after class".  Although in one class " I will hit him after class"  was funny as a girl said it about a big judo major and the next girl said she would kick him.  Really funny class.

Going to may be used for a plan but I had students saying stuff like "going to home after class"  LOL.  

I read a post about an organisation ASIA TEFL and some guy said he saw a presentation there that left a bad taste in his mouth.  I looked around and found another presentation by the same woman.  I met her some time ago and just commented on the talk my ideas.  It was really helpful for me to consider a few of her ideas.

Besides watching that talk and commenting on it, I read about an op ed in the KT.  This guy is a piece of work.

Man I hope when I'm 85 I don't have to read out some crap like this.

Past tense

Fixed

I had someone from their group read it out and I gave feedback.

I missed one...

I said that some would make good thesis statements where as others might be better just in an intro or one body paragraph.

Thesis statements?

a variety of ideas

I tried to encourage diversity.

they had a lot of ideas.

hmm

Charity

my students were putting a sentence on the board that they came up with in a group.

I brought a bag of markers so they wouldn't have to wait.

groups of 2 -3 talking about charity.

Avoid it and what else?

Attendance and kit kat

Board before i came in

I have no idea what this says but it was here before my class.  I try not to erase other profs' musings.

Risk

students have to write about risk and create a narrative essay.  I emphasised adding details and describing what they imagine as it usually goes unsaid.

Etymology

Hey teech,  Where do all these words come from??

Finding books

Easy to buy so why do some in my class not have them?

Blind houses

one student drew what another directed him to.

look, say, listen, draw.

I like these but students drop "There is a"  and to "the right" and just say "cat" or sun.  one kid didn't know the English for "Tree".  I like to get them talking and the drawing is a nice result.  you can look and see how close you were to being accurate.  

Location

Doing position and describing

What is in the Room?  To the left, on the top, etc.

There is a ...

where is it at?

in my hand, on the desk,  etc.  I walk around and ask them what is it?  where is it? and emphasis on a pen, an eraser.

your nutty professor!!