Teaching Day # 2

Pani,Pani, can we play Bingo? That was the question from yesterday, so I promised my Cisie students that today would be Bingo.

I started first asking them to finish the sentence: Today is ...and they could fill in Wednesday and pronounce it correctly. Then I asked them to finish the sentence: The weather... This one stumped them. When I said weather is pogoda in Polish they immediately got it and decided the weather was sunny and cold. The word, cold, is the reason I do this little exercise nearly every day. They seem to be exposed only to hot or cold as choices in their English textbooks. So I told them we would save cold for weather associated with snow on the ground. Weather today is cool, and it is. Perhaps by noon we made 61 (16C) but at 8:00 AM this morning when this class started the weather was definitely cool!

The Bingo game I chose is Sight Word Bingo. Instead of numbers on the cards there are words. This is an easy way to expose the students to English, English, English because they are hearing all English words all through the game. When someone won Bingo then I stopped the game and we discussed the words in that student's winning line.

I always start the Bingo game as caller and then when a student wins that person becomes the caller. That gives students a chance to pronounce the word and a chance for me to quietly correct pronunciation. This group of young learners are still applying a lot of Polish rules to the pronunciation of English letters. For example, they will pronounce the word, new, as nev. In Polish the letter W has a V sound; there is another letter in the Polish alphabet that carries the W sound.

My first afternoon with the beginners had 8 students. Today we again reviewed the alphabet. Then I wished to assess how they did with numbers. They knew the English words for numbers 1-20. After this assessment, I put pages of numbers on the table with numbers 1-12. Then I gave them two dice. They took turns shaking the dice and then adding the amount shown on the two dice and then finding the correct page with that number from the group of pages placed on the table. 

This group meets for one hour and they have already done a day of work at their elementary school. So for the remaining time I gave them a page to color that pictures of fruit. Once they were done they came me and then we read the names of the fruit in English. I know when I study another language my brain gets fried after a bit trying to use that language and it is nice to have a bit of break.

My second class is middle school students. I had 5 students. We are not getting all that indicated they wished to come because today is the day those in 8th grade participate in a confirmation service. They and their families have been busy preparing for and then today participating in this event. We spent most of this time playing Opposites Bingo -- words such as hot, clumsy, crunchy, and fast.

I am enjoying working with these great kids.