On Tuesday we started to learn about the Cause and Effect Essay and I have discovered that the beginnings of each individual essay unit are the most fun to teach. I believe the reason is because we primarily do fluency activities and brainstrom the first day of a new unit. This allows the students to communicate with each other and come up with ideas on their own. They enjoy the interaction and I enjoy helping them come up with topics and organizing their thoughts.
Thursday also went well, but I don't think I explained my expectations well enough. Sometimes I feel like I go over everything too much and other times I don't think I explain it well enough. Anyway, on Tuesdays we started the Cause and Effect Essay and so I decided on Thursday we should finish our group work with that. I broke the students up into their groups again and had each individual in each group write a paragraph that worked with their introductions. I then went from group to group to help the students and when they had finished with their complete essay I sent them to the library to type the essay and put it in the D2L dropbox. Most of the students finished early and some of the others took the entire two hour class period to do their work.
LIke I said earlier I don't think some of the students understood what I expected from them and because of that they got a little frustrated with me. Next time I will certainly make it a little clearer what I expect and perhaps model my exact expectations on the board for them.
As far as relating to the reading is concerned. I have really been thinking about my students and the culture shock that they will be going through very soon and I have shared my own stories with them about language ego, etc... I think I have earned their trust and hopefully I have made the classroom a safe place for them where they can express themselves in English without the fear of being embarressed. We shall see....
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