It’s a great feeling when a class just “gets it”.
This week’s lesson has been on how to invite someone to a party over the phone. Yes, I know, an actual goal-oriented lesson. Some textbook pages in our New Horizon textbook, labeled “Speaking Plus”, are supposed to be geared toward speaking exercises. They’re pretty poorly written and contain no real variations; for example, if someone asks you for directions in English, you should always tell them to take Bus Number 3, even if there are no buses present. Usually teachers just steamroll over these pages and tell students to follow along by reading their textbooks. This covers the vocabulary, but obviously it turns “Speaking” into “Reading” and removes the logical thought that should go along with speaking. (I wanted to do a more generic invitation, but the textbook included the word “planning” and so we had to use the phrase, “I’m planning a party”. At least the teacher let me change the dialog a bit.)
Anyway, my original plan was to not write anything down. I had the kids repeat some sentences, but they were having trouble remembering things when it came to pair exercises. I wound up writing the sentences on the board with arrows where a question was being asked in the dialog. Then, after the students practiced and as I asked them to say the dialog in front of the class, I gradually erased it from the blackboard until the only thing left were the words “Saturday” and “12 o’clock”, and a few arrows. Then it was just a matter of reminding them that they didn’t have to look at the blackboard. And then before long I had them changing parts of the dialog; not much, but enough to give them a hint that they could muck with the dialog and still get it right.
Did I mention we had props? A pair of old telephones. That helped a lot too, I think.
That’s great that they gave you old telephones!