For our Last Class

This semester we have practiced teaching in class, studied various methods of teaching English, heard Mr. M's lecture, and observed junior high school English classes. It is time to use what we have learned!
For our last class I would like each of you to design a lesson plan for either page 50 or page 51 of the New Horizon e English textbook. (If you would like you can design a lesson based on another page).

Remember that it will probably not be possible for you to teach one page in one class so you will have to decide what to focus on.
When designing the lesson plan please consider the following:
1. What is the goal of your class and what will you focus on?
2. What will you do for warm-up?
3. How will you introduce the new material?
4. What kind of activities will you do to accomplish your goal?
5. How will you consolidate the class?

You do not have to write the lesson plan in your blog (Although it would be nice). In the last class we will present our lesson plans to each other and comment on them. In your final blogging assignment, I will ask you to write about what you now think your strengths and weaknesses are as English teachers.

Thinking about group work

Please do one of the following by Wednesday, July 20:

Please describe an experience you had either as a student or a teacher where you tried a groupwork or pairwork activitiy and it did not go well. What went wrong with the activity and how could it have been changed to make it work?

or

Do part 6 of your handout: look through the New Horizon textbook and find a page which would be suitable for pairwork or groupwork. Plan the part of the lesson where you will do groupwork.

1. Decide how to divide the class into pairs or groups. What kind of classroom English would you use to give these instructions?
2. Plan an introduction or demonstration to make it clear to the class what they have to do.
3. Plan what you would do after the students finish the activity.

Blogging Task 10: Class Observance, Teaching Grammar, or talking with an ALT

Please do one of the following by Tuesday, July 11 of next week.
Please comment on someone else's post by Wednesday, July 12.

1. If you are going to Mr. M's junior high school to watch a demonstration lesson, please write about your observations. Were the prinicipals for teaching English that Mr. M mentioned apparent in the demonstration lessons? If so, how?

2. Please go here to view all the grammatical items that are taught in Japanese junior high schools. Which grammatical item was most difficult for you to learn as a student? How would you attempt to teach it now? For example, you can talk about what kind of sample sentences you would you use to demonstrate how to use it and its meaning. You can also talk about the kind of mechanical and communicative practice you would conduct to help students understand it.

When writing about the grammar, please be sure to use the grammatical terms in English. For example, instead of writing "助動詞 can" you should write "auxiliary verb can".

Optional:
3. Anne, a very dedicated ALT in Iwate, wrote in this post, that she was having difficulty promoting "internationalization" in the English class. I commented on her post and asked her to elaborate and she did so. Please react to Anne's comment by writing a comment on her post.