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[MozartFloyd]

My situation is almost identical: taught freshman last year ... this year teaching sophomores. I didn't dilly dally around thinking they'd forgotten English. I devised a Talk Show where I got them to list topics they're interested in or good at. I did this on the chalkboard, with students naming their interests rather than mine; topics like music, reading, dancing, watching TV, sleeping, etc. I asked the students to pick a topic that interested them ... one where they would act as guest on the show. I encouraged the best students to be the hosts and they agreed ... something you would know from teaching them last year.

Next we went through a series of relevant questions, where again, they came up with the questions. I had them role-play this with each other at their desks before we launched into the first Talk Show which took about 15 minutes. The first topic was "eating" and students really got into it. Overall, it's a great casual way to get students talking, and thinking creatively; which is more the goal in their second year. This took ten minutes in the first period, and all of the second period. However, over the next four weeks, we will continue having talk shows in the last 20 minutes of class until all students have participated.

Everyone enjoyed it immensely and the show continued past the bell.