One thing that went well: Conversation time at the end. We only had about 15 minutes for it, but I asked them something to the effect of, “If you could choose only one, youth or money, which would you pick? Why?” They seemed to find it interesting, it made for a really fun mood with which to end class. Yay! Also, it wasn’t the only part of the lesson that went well. Double yay!
One thing to improve: Explaining and modeling the warm-up could have gone better. Specifically, we were practicing quick, formulaic small-talk you might have with your neighbor if you both happened to be walking to your cars at the same time. However, I didn’t make this clear enough and some students took the opportunity to have a longer chat. This wasn’t catastrophic, but it also wasn’t the purpose of the activity.
One surprise: My (perhaps obsessive) planning from yesterday actually resulted in a laid-back pre-class morning, well-paced and in-depth English practice, exactly the right amount of material for our three-hour class, and overall good feeling as everyone filed out the door at noon. I’m not sure that all of that has ever happened before in one class period as a result of my good planning. Maybe I’m getting better at it! Confession: I didn’t pick out the conversation starter itself until it was time to write it on the board. But I’m still Captain Planny for the day, ok?
Learning to Teach English 