Language Learning Centre – Conversation Club 10/25
We had around 10 students join us this time for our 4th online Conversation Club. They were in various levels. The topic we prepared was “All About Halloween.” Some of the questions we asked the students in the beginning did not have as much response as we would have liked, as the questions all had to do with their experiences. It was hard for some of them to answer questions such as “What costumes have you worn?” since many of them have not celebrated the holiday before. It was great that the feedback from our sponsor teacher included this point. I loved her idea of having an introduction at the beginning talking about the traditions of Halloween.
I personally like to switch it up and tried to include different ideas and exercises. I had one slide with four people wearing interesting costumes and asked them to share which was their favourite. I introduced the idea of scary costumes vs. creative costumes, and I enjoyed hearing their answers and how they expanded their answers by explaining why they prefer the ones they chose. Next, I had them play a Would You Rather game where they chose between things like walk through a graveyard or have nightmares for a week. Some students were able to give well thought-out answers like “I would rather walk through a graveyard because it’s for a short time, but I can’t stand having nightmares for a long time!” I felt the activities I planned were quite interactive but for future lessons I need to pick on people right away if there are no volunteers. At the beginning sometimes I gave a little bit of time for them to circle or write their answers, but I found that it dragged on a bit and seemed to slow the pace down. Later on I tried to have people share their answers as soon as they were done while waiting for others who took longer.
I didn’t like that we stuck to a formula as I like to take time planning really good lessons that would engage and encourage as much conversation as possible. I didn’t enjoy this lesson as much as many of the questions were just borrowing previous lessons we did, with the same type of questions and same formula for breakout rooms and exit tickets. I think there’s extra challenge with working in a team as you need to learn to work with one another’s ideas, but I welcome the challenge and am working on effectively communicating my ideas. I plan on adding time for students’ feedback for our class soon and hope they will share their thoughts with us.