Throughout all of Tanya’s lessons, she provides a nice easy, coherent flow for instruction and understanding. Each lesson advanced from the previous lesson while continuing to study the topic of shopping.
Tanya is an engaging and encouraging instructor as she interacts with each of her students. Tanya continuously points to her students as she makes all the students repeat back to her what she is saying. Repetition is one of her key techniques for learning and understanding a new language. The students are actively listening to what the instructor and the other students are saying. As well as the students are reading what is on the whiteboard then pronouncing what is written. The students are learning how to create sentences and how to respond to questions. Students are interacting with the teacher in a conversation base. Both the students and the instructor are active in participation. The structure of the conversation is very simple and basic, allowing the students to understand easier and having the ability to initiate and participate in the conversation.
The instructor makes the students stand up and speak, making sure all students are paying attention. Making facial expressions and tone of voice enhances the pronunciation of the word and sentence. Tanya ensures each student is addressed directly. The teacher provides two different options for a conversation allowing students to challenge themselves if they wish.
Playing an activity such as a card game allowed for the students to interact with one another, to ask questions and to respond, to exchange or pick up cards and see different visuals for items pictured on the card. Students learn how to form questions for what they need to match a pair. Students are helping each other with pronunciation.
Using a visual helps the students to see what the item is to help pronounce the correct item. The instructor is using a fill in the blank technique to help fill sentence structures. As the teacher is describing location, she is pointing to a direction to allow students to follow the conversation and where to find an item if they were in a store. Elimination of words tests the student’s memory and understanding. Active participation in student roles such as being a shopper and a store owner tests the student’s ability to understand the lesson and how to communicate with others within a shopping experience. At the very end of the lesson, Tanya did a short-individualized assessment for each student, asking what the student was wearing to class and the colour of their clothing.
It was nice to see Tanya get personal with her students when she pulled out a suitcase full of clothes and she was asking her students if they were her son’s clothes or her husband’s clothes.
I would like to bring Tanya’s techniques into my classroom. My goal is to be organized and have a structured, easy flowing lesson plan similar to Tanya’s. I would like to engage with each student and allow each student to have a turn talking within the classroom.