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selu26
Joined: 11 Feb 2014
Posts: 16
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 Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2014 9:27 pm Post subject: AEON Interview Lesson Plan |
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Hi everyone! I have an AEON interview coming up in March and I'm a bit nervous about it to say the least. I know that you have to come up with a lesson plan for it, and I have some ideas that I'd like to bounce off of you guys. I haven't estimated how long any of these activities take (mainly because I don't know), but I think that some work better than others. Any criticism is welcome, and I am completely new to this.
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LESSON PLAN (SPORTS)
TARGET: Teach beginner English students how to express what they, and others, do for fun, using the appropriate phrases.
VOCAB
Football
Baseball
Soccer
Basketball
Various hobby vocab from polls.
PHRASES
“What do you play/do for fun?”
“What do they play/do for fun?”
“I play/do ____/____ for fun.”
“They play/do ____/____ for fun.”
“He/she plays/does ____/____ for fun.”
INTRO (2 minutes)
Poll students for ideas of sports/hobbies.
Review vocab for prepared sports/hobbies (basketball, baseball, etc.)
Introduce how to describe what the students do, as well as what others do, for fun.
Quick demos of the target phrases.
PRACTICE
HOBBIES (10 minutes)
Poll students ahead of time on what their hobbies are (provide a handout)
Start with a prop (hackey sack) and prompt with “What’s do you do for fun?”
Answer by saying one of my hobbies (Writing, etc.)
Toss the prop to another student, who I then ask “What do you do for fun?”
Have them answer, then toss, and then have them ask the next student, etc. etc.
WHAT DO YOU PLAY? (5 minutes)
Demo by holding up a prop (basketball, baseball, soccer ball) and have the class identify it.
Have a student volunteer come up, and ask them “What sports do you play?”, and hold up a prop.
Have the student respond according to the prop (e.g. If I hold up a basketball, have the student respond “I play basketball.”)
Split the class up into groups, each with their own set of props.
Have the students, in groups, practice the demo with their partners, each time holding up a different ball.
Near the end, have the students all do the activity in unison (e.g. I say, “What do you play?” and hold up a baseball, and then they all respond “I play baseball.”)
SPORTS STARS (10 minutes)
Have some beanbags on hand, as well as carboard cutouts with people of both genders playing sports, and a hole for the beanbags to go through.
Demo by asking “What sport does he/she play?”, and once the students answer, throw a beanbag through the appropriate hole.
Have students line up to take turns playing, following the demo (One student asks “What does he/she play?”, the next student answers “He/she plays ___”, and the first student throws a beanbag through the appropriate hole)
CONCLUSION (3 mins)
Discuss what went well with the lesson.
Review sports/hobby vocab
Informal poll of sports not covered/very quick discussion.
Preview next lesson.
TOTAL: 30 minutes.
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I know that some of the bullets could be explained better, but if anything strikes you as good, confusing, bad, or needing more explanation, please help me out. Thank you!
EDIT: Edited the lesson plan to include time estimates of the activities, as well as changing the intro to reflect its nature as more of a review than an actual introduction of new concepts.
EDIT2: Did some reworking based on advice in the thread. Still trying to pick an activity to showcase, as that's the main thing.
EDIT3: Reworked the plan for a simpler topic, as well as trying to make the activities much more student-talking centered.
Last edited by selu26 on Tue Feb 25, 2014 12:29 am; edited 3 times in total |
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Ryu Hayabusa
Joined: 08 Jan 2008
Posts: 182
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| Posted: Wed Feb 19, 2014 12:35 am Post subject: |
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Are you planning under the assumption that this is a practical English lesson designed to get the students to use vocab and grammar that they've already learned? Or is the assumption that the students are learning this all for the first time? If it's the latter, then you're asking the students to start independently producing the language (at least 12 words/phrases) after only 2min of direct instruction. That isn't possible.
Your teaching of the vocab needs to have more time devoted to it. Furthermore, you need to break up your language into more "digestible" chunks. Like, teach "go" and "turn". Then teach "left,right, forward, backward." Then combine them and teach "go forward" and "turn left."
There's a lot more that I could help you with. But I have a class soon and don't have the time now. I'll come back and edit/add to this if and when I have time. |
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Ryu Hayabusa
Joined: 08 Jan 2008
Posts: 182
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| Posted: Wed Feb 19, 2014 12:50 am Post subject: |
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My class was cancelled! 
I'll address the main part of your lesson later. Here's what I think about your conclusion.
I like the idea of your conclusion--wrapping up the lesson and reviewing things that were taught, etc. But if you're expecting a class discussion where you can elicit ideas from students and get the students talking with you and each other, you should know that it probably won't happen. The students won't have the necessary language skills to participate and/or understand the discussion. And if the students had enough language proficiency to do that, they would already know how to give and receive directions. You're going to have to revise your expectations of what the conclusion will achieve and rethink what you're going to ask.
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Talk about street addresses
Discuss who to ask for directions |
This is a good "minds-on" (warm-up) activity. But I don't think it can be done effectively in L2 (English) if the students' English level is as low as the lesson content suggests. It would be effective at the start of the lesson if the teacher asked the students this in L1 (Japanese) and got them thinking of directions. Then the teacher would present the goals of the lesson and begin teaching the vocab/grammar.
The conclusion could be something as simple as the teacher saying, "Today we learned about giving and receiving directions. Let's practice once more before we finish." (the students probably won't understand all of that, but they'll get enough of it to get something out of it)
Then the teacher would mime/gesture some actions and elicit the proper vocab/grammar from a volunteer student. That's a very simple check for understanding. |
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Big_H
Joined: 21 Dec 2013
Posts: 115
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| Posted: Wed Feb 19, 2014 1:09 am Post subject: |
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Even veteran instructors can sometimes take too long to finish a lesson activity or finish it too early depending on their students; hence the concept estimated time. Don't be doubtful about adding your own estimates rather than just for the intro.
Since this is a demo lesson plan, it's not unusual to "make-up" lesson materials to use as long as the tools are useful and reasonable; like using a ready map instead of wasting time to draw one in class. |
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selu26
Joined: 11 Feb 2014
Posts: 16
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| Posted: Wed Feb 19, 2014 1:37 am Post subject: |
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| Ryu Hayabusa wrote: |
Are you planning under the assumption that this is a practical English lesson designed to get the students to use vocab and grammar that they've already learned? Or is the assumption that the students are learning this all for the first time? If it's the latter, then you're asking the students to start independently producing the language (at least 12 words/phrases) after only 2min of direct instruction. That isn't possible.
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This is a good point, and a distinction I failed to make. I was hoping that my students (having gone through English instruction in primary school) would have the necessary vocabulary to make the lesson possible. My main goal here, as per AEON's instructions, is to create a 30 minute lesson plan, of which I will perform 5 minutes, that is about 20% me talking and 80% students interacting with each other. I wanted to keep the "lecture" section very short, as what I've read about demo lessons at the AEON interview suggests that lecture portions are either discouraged or completely unnecessary.
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| I like the idea of your conclusion--wrapping up the lesson and reviewing things that were taught, etc. But if you're expecting a class discussion where you can elicit ideas from students and get the students talking with you and each other, you should know that it probably won't happen. The students won't have the necessary language skills to participate and/or understand the discussion. And if the students had enough language proficiency to do that, they would already know how to give and receive directions. You're going to have to revise your expectations of what the conclusion will achieve and rethink what you're going to ask. |
Hmm. As I said, I was hoping that my (imaginary) students would understand the vocab necessary already, but you're saying that if they know the vocab, they probably already know how to give/receive directions? Is there a midpoint where the students would know the vocab, but not know how to effectively utilize it? That's the kind of lesson I was trying to target: One where we've already spent a good bit of time getting familiar with the vocab of directions, and so this lesson was going to focus on utilizing that vocab.
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This is a good "minds-on" (warm-up) activity. But I don't think it can be done effectively in L2 (English) if the students' English level is as low as the lesson content suggests. It would be effective at the start of the lesson if the teacher asked the students this in L1 (Japanese) and got them thinking of directions. Then the teacher would present the goals of the lesson and begin teaching the vocab/grammar.
The conclusion could be something as simple as the teacher saying, "Today we learned about giving and receiving directions. Let's practice once more before we finish." (the students probably won't understand all of that, but they'll get enough of it to get something out of it)
Then the teacher would mime/gesture some actions and elicit the proper vocab/grammar from a volunteer student. That's a very simple check for understanding. |
I like the miming gestures idea for the conclusion, as it does sound like a great way to sum up the lesson. I also appreciate the input about keeping in mind what level of student I'm targeting. I hadn't really thought that my students would be at such a basic level!
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| Since this is a demo lesson plan, it's not unusual to "make-up" lesson materials to use as long as the tools are useful and reasonable; like using a ready map instead of wasting time to draw one in class. |
This is a very good point, and I should have clarified that, depending on which activity I choose to demo, I will have the materials made up beforehand (I've heard the AEON reps are really strict about the 5 minute time limit.)
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| Even veteran instructors can sometimes take too long to finish a lesson activity or finish it too early depending on their students; hence the concept estimated time. Don't be doubtful about adding your own estimates rather than just for the intro. |
I'll try to come up with some estimates and edit my original post. I wanted to sort of demo each activity first to see which ones were longer than others, but I was hoping that each activity would take about 5 minutes.
Thanks so much for the help so far. |
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