Saturday, June 22

With Levels 100-300, we did a 20 Qs warm up...I divided the students into groups and wrote a number of questions on the board, such as *What am I made of?" "What color am I?" "What am I used for?," etc. Then I gave the groups a bunch of cards with various things written on them, such as "a lkoala," "a Christmas present," "mayonnaise," etc. The students would then ask a series of questions to the rest of the group to guess what was on their card. All 3 levels enjoyed the activity very much.

For the Level 400 class, I also divided them into 4 different groups of 3 people and gave them a sheet with a variety of topics to discuss their opinions on, such as "Couples shouldn't live together before they are married" or "Buying omiyage is a waste of time." Needless to say, this class went to town on the various discussion topics and had very good, in-depth discussions.

Level 100 - We mostly spent the remainder of the class chorusing the reading from Unit 9, p. 58-59, after briefly discussing what a detective is and does. Then the students practiced the reading aloud by turns. For homework, I asked them to complete the Vocabulary exercise on p. 59.

Level 200 - We quickly reviewed the language boosters on the top of p. 13, then went over the pronunciation sounds exercise. We finished with paired conversation practice with open book (Speak with Confidence) then did a standing up role play, with the students practicing various check-in scenarios together. It seemed to go pretty well. I asked them to study the vocabulary section at the beginning of Ch. 6, p. 14, for homework.

Level 300 - After the warm-up, we went over the answers to the crossword on p. 25, then went back to p. 24 to discuss the collocation sets and extra expressions sections. We finished with the students in pairs discussion whether they agreed or disagreed with the opinions expressed in the "Speech" section on the same page. Homework for next week was to study the new vocabulary words on p. 26 of the next unit.

Level 400 - We spent the 2nd half of the class discussing the chapter topic, then went over the vocabulary, then watched the DVD news story about 5 times and completed Parts II and IV. The class went excellently, per usual. Went a little over to finish Part IV. Homework for next week was for everyone to complete the True or False exercise (Part V).