Hi everyone,
Today's classes were quite busy for Shally. After observing our practice editing lessons in last week's class, it was his turn to run these types of lessons on his own. Eventually, he'll have to teach the writing program on his own.
In our practice editing class last week, we had a sentence auction. Students had to categorize sentences into correct and incorrect sentences. They then had to correct the sentences with errors. We then had a sentence auction in which students had to compete against other groups to "purchase" correct sentences with "BEA dollars". I've noticed that students have been able to identify errors in isolated sentences. However, they've had difficulty finding errors, especially structural errors, when these sentences are in a paragraph.
For this week's practice editing class, I decided to tweek the activity. Rather than identifying errors in isolated sentences, students had to find both grammatical and structural errors in a paragraph. Students then played the same sentence auction game, but they were "purchasing" sentences within a paragraph this time.
For today's lessons, I wasn't in the classroom with Shally. When Shally and I are in the classroom together, I often find that students will turn to me for grammar explanations rather than asking Shally, especially in the pre-intermediate class. Since the last part of today's lesson is going through the answers by analyzing each of the errors, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to have Shally show off his own grammar knowledge and to show the students that they can turn to both of us for grammar explanations.
Prior to the lessons, Shally and I did have a mini-training session dealing with some of the more difficult points of the pre-intermediate lessons, such as the use of acronyms (=a word formed from the first letters of the words that make up the name of something) in formal writing style.
From Shally's observations, the lessons seems to go off without a hitch. He observed that students in all the classes were able to identify the errors in the model paragraphs (for the Basic courses) and in the model cover letter (for the pre-intermediate course). Hopefully, this a positive sign that students are starting to internalize the writing process. We'll see in tomorrow's editing class.
I was a little surprised at how Shally altered the administration of the auction game. Usually, the groups have "money" and they use this to pay the auctioneer (the teacher) for the sentences. However, he decided it was easier to manage the game by keeping track of the money for each team by writing the amounts on the whiteboard. In one way, this does make this game easier to manage, but at the same time, it makes it more teacher-centered.
While Shally was teaching, I was able to finish marking all the final drafts from our first writing workshop. However, at the end of class, the students handed in their first drafts for the second writing workshop, so it was back to checking in the evening.
Back to the books,
Nicole
The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
Today's classes were quite busy for Shally. After observing our practice editing lessons in last week's class, it was his turn to run these types of lessons on his own. Eventually, he'll have to teach the writing program on his own.
In our practice editing class last week, we had a sentence auction. Students had to categorize sentences into correct and incorrect sentences. They then had to correct the sentences with errors. We then had a sentence auction in which students had to compete against other groups to "purchase" correct sentences with "BEA dollars". I've noticed that students have been able to identify errors in isolated sentences. However, they've had difficulty finding errors, especially structural errors, when these sentences are in a paragraph.
For this week's practice editing class, I decided to tweek the activity. Rather than identifying errors in isolated sentences, students had to find both grammatical and structural errors in a paragraph. Students then played the same sentence auction game, but they were "purchasing" sentences within a paragraph this time.
For today's lessons, I wasn't in the classroom with Shally. When Shally and I are in the classroom together, I often find that students will turn to me for grammar explanations rather than asking Shally, especially in the pre-intermediate class. Since the last part of today's lesson is going through the answers by analyzing each of the errors, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to have Shally show off his own grammar knowledge and to show the students that they can turn to both of us for grammar explanations.
Prior to the lessons, Shally and I did have a mini-training session dealing with some of the more difficult points of the pre-intermediate lessons, such as the use of acronyms (=a word formed from the first letters of the words that make up the name of something) in formal writing style.
From Shally's observations, the lessons seems to go off without a hitch. He observed that students in all the classes were able to identify the errors in the model paragraphs (for the Basic courses) and in the model cover letter (for the pre-intermediate course). Hopefully, this a positive sign that students are starting to internalize the writing process. We'll see in tomorrow's editing class.
I was a little surprised at how Shally altered the administration of the auction game. Usually, the groups have "money" and they use this to pay the auctioneer (the teacher) for the sentences. However, he decided it was easier to manage the game by keeping track of the money for each team by writing the amounts on the whiteboard. In one way, this does make this game easier to manage, but at the same time, it makes it more teacher-centered.
While Shally was teaching, I was able to finish marking all the final drafts from our first writing workshop. However, at the end of class, the students handed in their first drafts for the second writing workshop, so it was back to checking in the evening.
Back to the books,
Nicole
The Bayon English Academy (BEA) is an NGO school that provides underprivileged youth with quality English language education in a safe, clean environment in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
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