Teach me that GRAMMAR!
13 october
So recently we have been having lessons on specific teaching skills (teaching listening, teachin vocabulary, teaching grammar, etc.) and they sprung it on us last session that we´re going to have to teach mini-lessons in front of our peers for practice. Basically how it works is that you have 30 mins to plan a lesson on anything, 30 mins to teach the lesson (if chosen), and 30 minutes to receive feedback from your peers on the lesson. Each teacher (2 groups) has 5 students and 5 outside observers. The teacher is selected randomly, so noone knows if it´ll be them. Yes, kind of nerve-racking!
Last week, I escaped and didn´t have to teach vocabulary but this week I got selected for grammar! Much more difficult in my opinion… oh well, though. I feel my “structure of English” class at MIIS prepared me well. I busted out a lesson on the Past Perfect. example = When I arrived at the internet cafe, I realized I HAD FORGOTTEN my money. The topic was ambitious, yes, but it´s what we´re teaching in my class so I figured I would give it a test run.
In the last few days my students have written daily schedules and what they did yesterday/last weekend (in the past), and we´ve talked about the past simple. I also gave them my schedule as a model and we wrote short paragraphs about what we did yesterday with simple sentences. Example = Yesterday I woke up at 7:30am. Then I showered. Then I went to class. Later I played soccer. etc.
So here is what we did today:
- I read a short paragraph with some sentences in simple past and others in past perfect and asked the students to write down what they hear (dicatation). Most of the vocabulary was on the board in my schedule to help them out. Their goal was to fill in the gaps of the story. for example: the transitions, the past perfect, the details.
- Then, as a class, we reproduced the story highlighting the simple past verbs and the “different verbs” which were in the past perfect (they didn´t know that).
- We talked about the structure of the past perfect (had + past participle), what it means (that 2 activities happen in the past and one occurs before another), and some practical uses (when storytelling and we forget to mentions something, to emphasize a point – maybe badluck, or to emphasize the sequencing of events)
- We then wrote 3 sentences about activities I had done yesterday using the models found in the paragraph.
- The students then wrote 3 sentences related to their own schedules using the past perfect and shared those with a partner to peer- check for understanding and structure. They then presented 1 sentence each.
- Then we had some time for chisme (gossip) using the past perfect which is so commonplace here in Nicaragua: “I can´t believe I… ” / “I can´t believe he/she …” They seemed to like this part.
My overall thoughts after feedback: As a whole, I think it went well. However, the dictation was harder to implement than I had imagined. The instuctions needed to be clearer and one of my students got lost in the process. The students didn´t understand exactly the purpose of the dictation which should have been better explained. They were able to pick out the past perfect though and with a little guidance, did discover when and why it´s used. The students were able to successfully write their 3 sentences after the examples done as a class, but I think I could have made the examples ever clearer to aid in the process. Sometimes I referred to actions as being BEFORE others and sometimes as AFTER. I think more consistency would have helped. They liked the chisme = cultural which was a plus.
I now definitely have a better feel for how the lesson will run in class and the corrections I should make beforehand. I hope it goes well! 
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