Day 12: Playing with flashcards.

Today, I have attended the reading session as usual, in which the students had to read some books. One student asked me for the Tintin comic he was reading, and I said the other teacher had borrowed for a Tintín project, so he picked up another one. I corrected the students who were asked to read some fragment of their borrowed book when needed and talked a little bit about their reading interests.

When we came back class the English teacher told me today the students would play an interesting card game, in which they would have to speak in pairs. First, the teacher gave the students a photocopy with some questions which were missing words. These were all questions in present about knowing each other, in order to get information from different people. These included both questions with numeric answers, such as number of family members, age, weight and size, and some other non-numeric ones as well, about hobbies, interests and names.

When most of the students had finished filling in the gaps in order to complete the questions, the teacher made a global correction in a power point presentation, in which each click meant displaying another answer. Some questions were in red color, while other ones were in black. Then, the teacher told the students today we would play “big town game”, having brand new flashcards. She explained the game rules, by telling the students they would have different flashcards with data about a character, and they would have to talk to a classmate. Then, they would have to ask him/her non-numeric questions, and the other person had to answer: “and you?” in order to find out things about each other. Each one replied according to the information they had in their flashcards. After having made 5 questions, then they had to play scissors, rock and stone, and the winner had to ask a red question, meaning one with a numeric answer. The one with the highest quantity or number was the winner, and took the card from his/her classmate.

The teacher made an example so as to illustrate how the game worked, by asking a student what to do. When all the students had learnt the game mechanics, she gave each one a set of 5 flashcards and the game began. I was moving along the class with the students, checking they talked in English and formulated the correct questions and answers. The game was fun and successful, and in one time I was given a flashcard by a student who did not have a partner for me to play with. At the end of the session, one student asked the teacher to display a video on YouTube, and she agreed. I was surprised to see that the video was actually appropriate for the lesson, as it was in English, had comprehensible age and stage appropriate English level for the students and was fun.

In the video: “Mario the cook”, a Mario puppet was cooking a recipe, explaining the ingredients, while funny things happened. The characters talked in English, so the children had a positive input in the language and the video was really fun. When it finished, we saw another video with the same character trying to cook a fish, but the fish nearly cooked him instead. It was really funny as well. Tomorrow the students are travelling to France and then Sweden, so today the teacher wanted to make something especially fun but didactic at the same time and she managed to do it perfectly. Today it was raining, so the students stayed in the classroom playing board games, and I stayed talking with them and making sure they behaved well.

In the afternoon, I was asked to repeat the session of the contest about London, the “Who wants to be a millionaire” power point presentation because the teacher normally did the same with both groups. This time, though, I had changed the money mechanics, so that the students could either win or lose money according to the wrong or correct answers they gave. This way, the students did not stop focusing on giving the right answer towards the end, and practiced sums in English through the money calculations.