Class - Day 12 (Week III)

This was a wacky weather day with some bright sun in the morning, lots of clouds covering the sky throughout the afternoon, a light rain from time to time and then a torrential downpour at 6:00pm followed 10 minutes later by incredible sunshine and the most magnificent rainbow that seemed to span the whole of Galway.

I enjoyed my peaceful walk to school this morning enjoying the sunshine and the somewhat warm humid air. I passed one of my favorite houses and today the brilliancy of the Hydrangea’s color just jumped out at me. I just had to stop and take picture. And since I had my camera out already why not take some pictures of the sun over the water and a lone swam making his or her way down the canal.

Class this morning was all about the uses of the grammar form “use to.” It doesn’t sounds so exciting but our easily excitable class made the most of it and had a lot of laughs. And one very poignant moment when Ruth shared the heartwarming story of when she was ten years old and was sick with a very high fever and to cool her down her father took her outside that night and kept her occupied out there by pointing out stars and explaining all about them. Ruth is such a kind, generous person so it certainly makes sense that she was raised in such a lovely family.

After we pretty much exhausted all aspects of “use to” we moved on to preparing for our teacher practice 5 which incredibly for me and Aoife is tomorrow. It’s only incredible because I had my teacher practice 4 just this afternoon.

Now after a mad scrabble during lunch to prepare as much of my teacher practice 5 lesson as I could I managed to scarf down a tuna sandwich that Maura went out and got for me and did my prep work for the teacher practice that was only minutes away.

It turned out to be a terrifying experience more so than I had imagined. The students were great and again we had a very diverse group. Maria and Alex from Barcelona, Barbara from Poland, Martin and Matilda from France, Magid from Afghanistan, Marie from the Czech Republic and Jose from Peru. They were all very excited to be in class and seemed to enjoy my lesson on “making plans.” I did have them laughing several times but especially when I asked Jose and Magid to come to the front of class and stand back to back so they couldn’t see each other and then read from a preprinted telephone conversation. It doesn’t sounds so funny, I know, but what I didn’t realize was that back to back (not being a term normally used in class) is too advanced for an Intermediate level group so even when I went to demonstrate what I meant by having Jose stand behind me with his back to mine he actually stood right behind me but facing me and basically just staring at the back of my neck and head. The class was hysterical especially the teacher who was assessing. Now, as you can imagine, it didn’t take me long to figure out what was so funny and then I physically put Jose and Magid in a position where they were finally back to back. And in the end they performed fabulously and I was happy and they all had fun.

Now where the horrifying part comes in was when I had to write out all the sample sentences on the board and teach the functional grammar part of “making plans.” Basically “can you”, “would you be able to”, “I was phoning to ask if you…” and then the responses which would be either regret (“I’m sorry, but I can’t” or “I would have loved to but…”) and the positive of that (“Yes I can go.” Or “I would love to.”) There were so many components to teach within a ten to fifteen minute time line that I missed two. I knew I had done it and I knew it meant there was no way I would get a distinction for the teaching practice. I think I was just more horrified at the idea of writing this all on the board, soliciting alternative sentences, teaching what a contraction was and why we used them and also focusing on intonation.

It was all very overwhelming while I was up there but I don’t think the students saw that I was nervous and they genuinely seemed to appreciate the lesson once it was over. I did learn something today which was be very mindful to have examples pre-determined because when I went to explain how intonation works (putting stress on a particular word or word sound to get a meaning across) my spontaneous choice of an example was “I like cats.” Now we all know I love cats so perhaps that’s why I said it but there is not a lot of variation you can have with it. Barbara from Poland however gave a great reading of the line and put the stress on “like” so you absolutely got that she really does love cats. Now when I tried to elicit from a student how this same sentence could sound like you didn’t actually like cats it went down hill fast. I finally got from Martin a good reading of the line but then he second guessed his answer and came out with “I only like my cat!”

In the end I was just happy to get the class over with and will hopefully do better on tomorrow’s grammar lesson that also has 7 different components to teach. It’s all good or at least I’m going to tell myself that so I can get some rest tonight.

Louis followed my lesson with on the grammatical form of agreements and disagreements. And in this picture you can see his visual clearly showing two people disagreeing. His lesson was a huge success and I am so proud of him for getting a distinction. He didn’t miss one crucial part of the lesson and he earned his special honor. Even though Maura, Aoife and I did not receive honors this time we truly are happy that Louis’ superb efforts were recognized.

I met Jean Marie after class and we went to the gym and then she took me out for a quick bite at the Kabob House and kindly dropped me back off at school around 8:00pm so I could finish my lesson plan and all the supporting materials I need for tomorrow's teacher practice.

I am now home writing this all down but getting very tired so I’ll say goodnight for now and think good thoughts that my lesson tomorrow is a huge success.