Lights, Camera....

This week I used some of my old tricks which I was reminded of during this weeks readings from Harmer.  The weekly  topic focused on food and cooking, and opposed to having the students just act out the script that was issued at the beginning of the chapter, I had them first read it to themselves silently and then circle the words that they did not understand.  Once they were finished, the students gave me the list of words which they were having trouble with and I wrote them on the WB.  For example one word was "yolk", and the word "yolk" went up on the WB.  When all the words were listed on the WB, I pulled a "volunteer" from the class and had him "mime" the script as the other students read it aloud.  When we came across a "circled" word which appeared on the WB, I again asked the class what that word meant.  To my delight, I could actually see the "light switch on" when the class saw the student act out mixing the "yolk and the white together" (when making scrambled eggs). When I asked  "What is yolk?", many students said "yellow" or they gave the Korean word for "yolk" .  Now I must admit that I didn't remind the class to use complete sentences, or to say in the words in English.  I  was caught up in the moment and my swelling pride for the students overtook all professionalism.   The class didn't use dictionaries, they learned how to discover the meaning of a word on their own, by looking for clues in the reading.

Seeing "the light switch on" has been rare these days, because I used to just write the definitions on the board and move on with the lesson.  However, teach a man to fish...  I explained to the class that there are "hints" throughout the reading and had the students  define the rest of the WB words in their note notebooks as the "volunteer" finished acting out the script.  When finished, I asked the students what the rest of the words meant and they has no trouble defining them. I then had the students pair up practice the script.  Next I had a few students come to the front of the class and give their performance.

Ttalk for this portion of the class was at a minimum since the Ss did the bulk of the talking, and since the did most of the work, they seemed to grasps the new vocabulary a bit better.