10/4 (Team Teaching with Matthew)
The online conversation club started a little slow as we only had 1 student in the beginning. We were able to have the teacher and assistant teacher help out and join in for the first little bit talking about their hobbies, which was the topic of this conversation club. Later on we had around 7 more students joining us. Their levels ranged from beginner to lower intermediate. I started by greeting the students, introducing the topic of the day and giving a rundown of the main activities. I picked different students to talk to each time to ask them about their hobbies, and tried to phrase it a little differently each time to keep it more like a conversation, ie: “Student A, what do you like to do for fun?” “Student B, what about you? What do you like to do in your free time?” This way, they also got to hear many ways in which people can ask this question. I tried to have more questions for them such as asking a Japanese student if she has gone to Whistler in talking about her love of skiing, and where she went skiing back in Japan, to keep the conversation going in a natural way.
We decided to alternate between us, so Matthew took over for the next part to discuss reasons why we have hobbies. Then we had a slide with pictures of many different hobbies, where the students could think about which of these hobbies they also participated in. Seeing the ideas there generated some humorous conversation, such as when one girl (refering to a picture of someone sweeping) said “Well… I definitely don’t clean as a hobby” The next activity was to have students go into breakout rooms to discuss the tools needed for their hobbies. We had the teacher and assistant teacher help out and take over one breakout room while Matthew and I each led one small group as well. Within my group, we had a lot to talk about and thought of everything needed for their hobbies, I tried to provide new vocabulary which would be helpful in the form of the question “Do you need…?” (Examples were rash guard for surfing and goggles for skiing)
It was very rewarding to host the conversation club as the students really show their appreciation such as when I provided the term ‘physical strength’ when one student said ‘ strong physical’, and I think we kept the students engaged. What worked well in this lesson were our use of several different functions like the breakout rooms for small group discussion, a poll (where the conversation got me curious and I asked how many people like doing puzzles.) and the interactive whiteboard at the end where they wrote down one hobby they would like to pursue as an exit ticket activity, and the fact that I provided clarification wherever needed, such as saying “tell us one hobby you would like to try or do in the future / something you want to start doing” to make sure they know what ‘would like to pursue’ means. We ran out of time for one activity to talk about the most popular hobbies during the pandemic, but this was expected and we were more concerned about carrying out each part well and making sure we started and ended on time as last time we observed many students telling the student teacher that they need to go to their next class at the end of the lesson.
Feedback from Hilda was very encouraging and some good points I will be taking into the next conversation club are to call on more people, to put in a question right away after students’ responses, and to watch the level of our words and our speed. Something I want to work on is having a go-to for any type of response as I found that for some students it was easier for me to delve more but there were a couple where I had a tiny pause thinking about what to say. Overall, I had a reassuring first attempt and am anticipating the next one and to learn much more through the process of building experience and confidence.