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May 12, 2009

Today my classes didn’t start until 10 am.  It was so nice because I sort of just took my time getting up and getting ready in the morning.  Instead of it taking me 30 minutes to get to the centre it now only takes me 25!  I think I’m getting a bit faster at the stupid hills that seem like mountains!  I swear its like uphill both ways but I think I might be exaggerating.  When I got to school a lot of the teachers were in the teacher’s lounge talking about this thing that’s been going on at school.  Apparently the school is going to cut back one of the 4^th’s class next year.  That means one of the 3^rd level classes from this year will be dissolved and integrated into other classes next year.  This means they will also have to cut back on teachers and everyone is pretty worried about who it’s going to be.  If you remember, I explained that students stay with their classes all five years so obviously they grow close together and no one wants their class to be broken up and have to join another class who has already been together for three years.  I think the students might be planning some sort of protests. 

Our first class was the 5^th.  As always there was an interrogation.  I really need to learn these kids names so I can be able to identify them.  Anywho, there was an interrogation of one student on the Lord of the Flies.  He was to describe the particularities, the setting, and main themes.  This student was as well prepared as others have been and the teacher had to fish out a lot of examples from him.  It is SOOOO hard for me to stay awake during these interrogations sometimes!  Half way through Professor Monaci ran out of questions so everyone was like, “okay, what now?”  Sometimes this is quite painful to watch.  I think if he plans to do these interrogations he should at least come prepared with questions, but not just any questions, good well-formed questions.  There is a serious art and technique to asking good questions so that it can lead to strategic thinking and response.  I first learned about this on the mission; asking questions to investigators is not only an excellent way to evaluate comprehension but it is also a way to help the learner realize things and have “ah-ha!” moments.  Maybe if you’ve been teaching for as long as Professor M. then asking good questions becomes more natural?  I’ll make a note and ask him tomorrow about this.  Maybe this guy is just a master at winging-it. 

The next class was the 2^nd G class.  Like I’ve mentioned before, we teach two 2^nd classes, A and G.  The A class is a whole lot better at English than the G class.  So for this class period we taught Grammar!  I think I might have only heard one negative comment the whole class period!!  I was so surprised.  After a student gave the wrong answer Professor M. said to him, “Why do you even exist?!”  Besides that the class period went pretty well.  Two amazing and phenomenal things happened.  During one of the grammar explanations Professor M. actually STOOD UP and WROTE something on the board!!  I was like, “WOAH!”  Not only that but he proceeded to walk around a bit while giving a long explanation.  I was totally amazed.  That was the absolute first time that I’ve seen him do that and I can tell it makes a big difference.  The students all sort of perked up and paid more attention because he was getting closer and his voice was getting louder.

The next class period we also taught a 2^nd class.  We started the class out with a dictation exercise.  I dictated a paragraph to them in English from a short story that they had been assigned to read and they had to write it down.  They sort of protested to this at first because the students are SO comfortable with their teacher’s accent and since it has a heavy Italian accent it is a lot easier for them to understand it.  I read the paragraph to them once at normal pace, then I read it to them sentence by sentence at a slow pace, then I read it again one more time at regular pace.  The passage was fairly difficult but like I said this class is a lot more fluent than the other 2^nd class.  The two smartest kids in the class only missed about 4 words out of the whole paragraph so that’s really good but I think the rest of them might have not done as well.  We then moved on to a pronunciation exercise.  I read to them a sentence and then someone was called on to read the sentence again, after which I pointed out certain mispronunciations and gave examples of how they were to be pronounced.  I think it was helpful to them because they were mostly all paying attention and practicing it. 

After school I went to the library to use the Internet for a bit and then I went rode home.  Traffic is crazy sometimes and since the streets are so little it can get sort of crazy sometimes.  Italian drivers are good for the most part but some of them do really annoying things like double parking when the street is really little to start with and cars pulling out in front of me without looking.  Anyway, I’m trying to be super careful and I’m making good use of the brakes.