Lesson Reflection #3

A few weeks ago I decided to try a lesson directly out of the Syllabus & Materials module coursebook with my adult eikaiwa. It is a task-based lesson focused on written English. While the aim of the lesson is to get the students to predict the text and then share information about the text in order to create a more complete story, it turned into a different type of lesson because the students didn't really understand what they were doing and why. At the end of the lesson they said they would like to do something like this again because now they understand what the point of all the different steps is. It was a learning process for both of us.

Step 1: I wrote the title of the article up on the board and asked students to predict what the article was about:

'Excuse me, I've just jumped off the Empire State Building'

Step 2: I divided the class into two groups (3 students in each group) and gave each group key words from the article (jig-saw activity). Each group had a different list. With this list students were supposed to create a story based on these facts. Instead of trying to piece it together, they created wild stories that might be related to these hints.

List A Clues:

John Helms, a young artist - took a lift - awoke half an hour later - 85^th floor - gave up the idea - knocked on a window - I poured myself a stiff drink - families offered him a home for the holidays.

List B Clues:

Decided to kill himself - 86th floor - a 1,000 feet below - a two feet ledge - Bill Steckman, who was working there - Christmas was not such a bad time

Step 3: After solidifying their story (adding lots of their own creativity), they sent an ambassador to the other group to exchange stories. The problem with this step was that because their stories had become so wild and off the wall, it wasn't possible to pick out the real tid-bits to improve their own stories. Perhaps the clues just didn't provide enough information to make a coherent story without adding lots of other information. Maybe they should have been given more clues to connect!

Step 4: The ambassadors returned and retold the other stories. But again, this was only useful as a retelling excercise, they couldn't take the information to improve their story because they had all made up so much information that wasn't given in the clues.

Step 5: Each group presented their story and we discussed the liklihood of each. Not very likely considering one group had decided it was Santa's sleigh who had gotten stuck on the top of the Empire State Building.

Step 6: The finally got to read the article. At this point they were curious to read the article and they read it very quickly given they had been exposed to hints and some key words/ideas already. So the steps that came before were useful in getting them to read it quickly, instead of spending a long time trying to get through each word, which they often get caught up in.

Step 7: Discuss the story and compare it to their stories. They realized at this point that their stories were totally off. And it clued into them they each group had been given different clues that might have helped them create a story similar to the original but they had decided to take a creative route instead. So maybe if we try it again it will work differently. After the reading the discussion turned to topics like suicide and the holidays and cultural differences between the US and Japan.