LLC Conversation Club 9/27
The class observed was led by a student teacher. Approximately 12 beginner to lower intermediate students were in attendance at this Conversation Club. The topic was “Mmm…Food!”
The student teacher started out with the opening question “What is your favourite food?” The students wrote down one food item they liked on the interactive whiteboard. According to what was on the board, she picked food items and had whoever wrote them talk about it for a little bit. For example, someone who wrote down ‘chocolate’ talked about how chocolate is not really a food but more of a snack item and he likes it because it’s sweet. I liked how the more free structure was used here as food is a general topic that most students would be able to talk about!
The next question was “What do you prefer? Healthy or Unhealthy food?” This activity was done in a similar style to the previous, with no language focus but a general speaking practice where it’s an informal chat / discussion between everyone. The student teacher used the poll function to ease into this topic, and the students bonded over the fact that most people had similar thinking in that they like healthy food but love the taste of unhealthy food. It was naturally a topic people mostly felt confident talking about. The student teacher also had them extend their answers by explaining themselves a bit.
The conversation topic to follow was Cultural Foods, with the question “What foods are traditional in your culture?” Some students drew pictures along with their answers on the interactive whiteboard to show what these national dishes looked like. (Some examples are pig blood cake, spicy hot pot, dumplings, and borsch) They then proceeded to talk freely about the food. The teacher was helping by typing in some of the words which might not have been clear to everyone such as “sweet tooth” and “kebab” in the public chat box.
The last activity was watching a short clip from the TV series Schitt’s Creek where the characters who were cooking didn’t understand the term “fold in the cheese” in a receipe and it resulted in a funny exchange between them. The student teacher then asked “Are you a good cook?” in the form of a poll and published the results. Students were called on to talk about why they think they are or are not a good cook. I think it was a good idea as having the students practice expressing their thoughts and ideas fully in a natural situation is helpful for their language development.
In this particular class there were some technical issues where the student teacher wasn’t familiar with the functions so it caused quite a bit of delay at times. I would keep in mind to get familiar with the functions for the online class and to keep chatting when something happens so everything will flow more smoothly. Being mindful of the pacing is one major takeaway from this class, as there were long lulls sometimes whenever a student finishes speaking. The teacher was there to prompt the student teacher to pick someone to talk to next. I learned that you really need to get comfortable taking the lead and just confidently take over the whole show, so to speak, so there aren’t constant pauses and so it doesn’t look like everyone’s waiting for someone to take charge. There was a small section about phrases for eating in each other’s languages, which I thought might have been better suited for the beginning of class while waiting for students as more of an icebreaker.