Language Learning Centre – Conversation Club 10/18

We had about 9 students join us for today’s Conversation Club. This time they were in various levels. Our topic was “Let’s Talk About School.”  Matthew started off this time and did a poll to see if our students liked school when they were kids. This section did not take as much time as I would have liked. For my part, I asked them what are the classes they are taking right now at TRU. There were some active participants and then after that I started calling on students. This topic was easy to answer and I would try to comment on each, asking things like “How do you like that class?”or “What’s different between your writing class and grammar class?” I asked the students if they knew each other and had some good engagement going there. We also talked about which subjects are easy and hard for them. They wrote on the interactive whiteboard so it was easy for us to pick something and have whoever wrote it share.

In breakout rooms we had small group discussions on 2-3 classes that are easy or hard for us and then we had the students explain why. For example, for many of them a lot of homework might be one of the reasons that makes the course difficult. There was one student whose level was much higher and I talked to her about what she finds stressful about certain classes as I could tell she was trying to use more advanced vocabulary.

Something I started doing is writing down everyone’s names in the beginning so I can check them off when I have called on them. This worked well but we went through the first half of the lesson too quickly so not all of the names were called. Everyone did get to talk in the breakout rooms and also at the end for an exit ticket activity, we had them write on the interactive board something they want to learn that’s not taught in schools and we had students actively talking about these. This was the first time we had gone through all the topics with a few minutes to spare so I asked Matthew to share his answer as well. I’ll be sure to always include a couple extra slides in the future in case we need more content. Other things to work on are to always be aware of the words I’m using to make sure everyone can understand and I would like to put in more creativity into the lesson planning to have as much engagement as possible.