My eight observation was yet another conversation club class. The class started with a brief catch up of the weekend and a quick check in with the students. Perhaps due to time zone differences a lot of students weren’t too keen on talking and appeared a little tired. The instructor proceeded to begin the lesson with a warm up activity involving filling the blanks and completing a given sentence. The students at first didn’t know how to begin or think of the words and then shortly afterwards some prompts were provided and that finally received some kind of engagement. The instructor had to call out the students’ names from time to time. There was some gentle encouragement provided and students were called to participate when the engagement dropped down a bit. What I liked about this warm-up is that the instructor followed a student’s answer with a question to start a conversation and prolong it a bit – maybe a minute. That way the students not only provided their answers but also talked a bit more and elaborated on their answers. The warm-up was followed up with an interactive white board activity. A circle image was shown by the instructor and the students were asked to place themselves in that circle by moving their cursor to a ‘seat’ of their own liking. The first student with a helpful prompt from the instructor has to tell something they liked to their classmates and follow it up with a question directed to the next student in the circle; for instance – “I like ______, what about you?”. The instructor went around the circle two times and the second time around students were more involved and a few answers warranted some laughs and light hearted chuckles. Everyone had eased into the class by then and were more comfortable with turning their microphones and adding their own thoughts, contributing to the discussion.
My eight observation – ESL Conversation club class
