Success!

For my lesson yesterday with the third years, my JTE asked me to prepare a listening activity on Obama. Normally when we do listening activities, it's me reading from a script and the students filling in the blanks on a worksheet. Which is fine for listening practice (although not really, because it's completely superficial and in no way real life listening experience). But at the conference in Kobe last week they were talking about communicative English teaching, and how you have to incorporate reading, writing, speaking and listening to make a good communicative activity. The benefit of having an ALT in the classroom is that we are native speakers and can help with speaking and listening exercises. But I haven't been doing much of that lately. The kids hardly ever speak in class, because we haven't facilitated it though activities.

So yesterday before class, I was preparing my script as usual ("Obama is from Hawaii. He is 47 years old" etc.) when it occurred to me that this could be turned into a perfect "communicative activity." Instead of having the kids listen and fill in the blanks on a worksheet, I would read the script, and they would have to take notes, and then get into groups and write a summary of what I had said. I proposed this to my JTE. She seemed really skeptical, like she wanted to say no but was too non-confrontational to do so. I almost backed down. In typical Miriam fashion, I started to quail under even the slightest resistance (and it was pretty slight). Normally my justification for backing down is that someone else must know more than me, and if a superior disagrees with me, my idea will probably fail. But this time I forced myself to trust my instinct. I definitely thought the kids could do this, even if my JTE thought it was too hard. They're going to be in high school next year, it's time to challenge them a little. It drives me crazy how they don't have to work for things in English class. The answers are handed to them. With this activity, I wanted them to have to dig in and really listen to English with no help, then compose thoughts in English.

So we did the activity. I read the script, and the kids took notes, and we broke them into groups. Each group (in theory at least) had one leader, one recorded and one presenter. During class there were a few times where I had to stand up to my JTE as she tried to simplify the activity. At one point, she asked me if it was ok for the kids to just say words, like "47" instead of "He is 47 years old." Which completely defeats the purpose of the activity, to compose real English sentences. She really thought this was too hard an activity for them. If anything, I think it is just at their level. With this kind of attitude, it's no wonder why the kids can only speak English is single words. ("Pen." "Pen what?" "Please." "Please what?" "Please pen." "May I please have a pen?" "Yes." I can't tell you how many times I've had this conversation. You see why I'm bowled over every time my speech contest student speaks to me in complete sentences).

The kids did very well. I think the lesson was a success. I want to do more lessons like that. And the best part was, after it was over, my JTE turned to me and said "I was surprised, they could do it!" I kind of wanted to throttle her (partly in amusement) because of course they could do it! They're 15 years old, it's not going to kill them to be challenged a little. Instead of handing them the bar, how about setting it a little higher and making them reach for it? This is my goal for the rest of the school year.