March 27th, 2018

Mentoring Journal

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Entry #5: Preparing for One-hour Lesson on Future Simple 

 

I ask Gabriel how the planning is coming along.

He tells me he has planned to play Find Someone Who at the beginning of the lesson. The questions will contain both will and be going to. I ask him why he decided to cover both will and be going to in the warmer activity and he answers it’s because he will cover both will and be going to in the lesson, so he wanted to have both future simple forms covered in the warmer.

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I ask him about the activities he had in mind and he tells me he scrapped the “Continue the Story” activity that targeted will in sentences describing what classmates will be doing in twenty years. He thought it would be too complicated. Instead he decided to narrow his focus and cover only the cases for will and be going to that he felt were more common:

1. Will: rapid decisions, offers, promises (scrapped threats because he felt it was a grey area where be going to could also apply, and refusals because he couldn’t think of any good dialogue examples for that category)

2. Be going to: prior plans for near future

3. Both: predictions

 

I asked him if he had a timeline or lesson plan to guide him in the development of the lesson. He said off the top of his head it would go: warmer => compare will and be going to on the whiteboard + feedback => dialogue fill in the gaps activity, PTV (How will you cover it I asked? With a handout he answered) => activity from the book, and a transition activity to hand over the class to the next teacher.

I asked him about writing a lesson plan. He mentioned that in the textbook used for his class he read about not teaching to the lesson plan but teaching to the class, the context, and the students. He said he has felt less stressed without a lesson plan because that way he doesn’t feel he has to follow it to the letter. He has all his activities planned, and in what order they will be delivered and how long they will take, so he doesn’t need a lesson plan.

 

I asked him how he was feeling about the ongoing challenge we have had for him to try and explore freer activities, semi-controlled and free instead of just controlled activities.

He answered that for the summer activity I had suggested he was afraid the students would not have enough ideas/words to describe what they would be doing in the summer. I suggested that he could provide prompts/keywords on the board that they could use to help them. He answered that he was afraid the students would be making too many mistakes and not be able to do the activity. I asked whether he felt it was a problem if they made mistakes. He was not sure. I answered with some pedagogical implications he might consider are that it is good for students to make mistakes and get corrected, that the classroom is a space for learning through making mistakes. That the theory in applied linguistics suggests that it is good to challenge students with +1 (Comprehensible Input: Krashen, 1985) so that they are working on things will not come too easily,  but are not impossible. I suggested that one way he could do a freer activity would be a modification to the “Continue the Story” game would be to have it be based off of the Find Someone Who answers from the warmer instead of it being based on what students would be doing in 20 years. Gabriel said he would think about it.

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I am not sure whether he decided to do that in the end. But he was open, and has been open to the freer activities challenge, and laughs good naturedly when I bring it up. I always point out that I am suggesting alternatives to what he has planned but it is up to him to see if he wants to take my suggestions or not.

We agreed to talk again to discuss his lesson plan for the 2nd evaluated lesson.

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