Marc - It's like releasing a Best Of album after only one album

BEST LESSON or Sleeper Non-Single Hit in the LP


That said, I hope I'm no one-hit wonder.
Instead of the usual three-tiered, multi-skill multi-layer all-encompassing never-to-be-surpassed English Language lesson, I shall outline a simple lesson with just two objectives: (i) students are to infer the meaning of their given word, find their 'match' and subsequently construct a sentence - make babies get it get it? - together; (ii) students will be able to predict the passage they will read in the next session from the ratpack of sentences.


The rules are simple. The class gets a list of 20 sentences with a 'vocabulary' word and attempt to infer the meaning of this word. With the boys assigned the words and the girls the meanings of teeny weeny slips of paper, the Bs and Gs will seek each other for a correct R.

Students are up on their feet and so cannot daydream or blatantly sleep in class (as is the norm when I get the last period of the day). Students cannot passively listen to the teacher as they do in the Social Studies class just before mine. Students have to do something or risk embarrassment. Students cannot resort to the easy way of flipping their dictionary open or copy each other's answers. Done and dusted, issues solved. The chaos of movement in this instance can be tolerated, as students are most likely to be on task (again, the 'incentive' of embarrassment!)

Once students find their match, they can then construct a sentence together and share with the rest of the class. Discussion and sharing component fulfilled. Students love Mr. Lim, Mr. Lim errr, puts up with students. :)

P.S. Short and sweet, got power got point.


OFF THE AIR, ON THE RECORD

Just one issue not yet highlighted: an exam-centric approach, as my TP school has undertaken to moderate success, has moulded EL into more labour than art, more do than dare, more how to take the safe route than how to express yourself the way you want to (you're only as smart as what you write/say eh?). Towards the end of TP, I started letting go. Structure is good. Planning is mandatory. Yet, as much as I enjoy showing students new 'things' and asking them to pay attention to principles (P-E-E, audience, context, purpose etc), I feel like I'm bowing down to exam-centrism. Can we not move away from practicality and just try to develop students the best we can, albeit with a solid (substance) yet fluid structure? As my CT observes, there are neighbourhood schools which just try to 'expose' their kids to as much material as they can, rather than offer rigid guides which really offer little to both the weakest and the strongest students.

To come to think of it, you can't actually have 'fun' without there being some exchange of information (even if non-verbal), without there being some realisation of structure and subsequent conformity/exploitation?