Inspired by Beyonce’s song!
Posted by aalhammody on April 29, 2013
Hi everybody,
One of the teaching professional skills that I’m still working on is finding alternatives in designing lessons. By alternatives I mean having paln A or B just in case one activity doesn’t work for some reason and you want to replace it with something more fun or different. However, I could see that by the passage of time, I’m improving! I have a couple situations during my practicum teaching where I was confused about what to do instead of a task that I could see not working. Peter also gave me feedabck as he watched the videos of my teaching.
Though the story I will tell now is not with English teaching, it still touches upon the same issue. Last week, I had a class of Arabic. I’m TA for Arabic at the GSTILE. So the professor of Arabic wanted me to review with the students the conditional cases in Arabic. I planned my lesson the night before, including two tasks for students to do in class. As I walked down to MIIS, I was humming an Arabic song to myself. Then I realized that the song is full of examples of conditionals in Arabic. I cannot describe my happiness at that time that I found out about it! But how could I make use of it for the class?
I remembered Beyonce’s song activity that Peter introduced in class. I ran down to the library, opened my computer, found the lyrics of the Arabic song, and translated half of it really quickly. I only had 20 minutes before the class. However, I managed to finish the activity and printed out hand outs for students. They loved it very much.
Thank you Peter for inspiring us with your wonderful teaching magic!
Adnan
May 30th, 2013 at 8:14 pm
I like Leslie’s idea of an archive of brilliant ideas like these. In the old days, it was almost all written stuff and I would have lots of manila folders, marked either “conditionals” or “health, diet & exercise” or “ordering in a restaurant.” Today we have many options and that’s why we need online tools as well.
Here’s the problem, though: I thought that when I reached a certain point in my career, I would have enough stuff archived that I could start cruising, or at least slowing down a little. But, as the Beyoncé video indicates, new stuff crops up all the time (I estimate I get 5 items a day in my e mail alone) and, yes, I suppose, it’s better to keep things fresh. For one thing, you never know what something might inspire in others!
May 4th, 2013 at 6:16 pm
Adnan,
I love this story! I have had many similar “lightbulb” moments, especially when discovering materials for French teaching. I might be watching a video, reading poetry or prose, or even reading recipes, and I’ll come across something and think “This would be perfect for x,y, or z.” Unfortunately, in the past, I sometimes failed to write things down or print them out or whatever, thinking that I’ll remember it when the time comes,but I discovered that is a poor strategy and I’m always kicking myself when I can’t find it or remember it again! I’ve started a file box and a folder on my computer for these items so I never lose them now.
It’s great that you had this epiphany just in time to use it for the class. Usually mine happen afterward or when I don’t have a class coming up and I just have to file it for later. Congratulations to you and I’m glad that this worked out.
Leslie