First week of the summer holidays almost at an end and my brain finally has the space to think! I've been giving some thought to how I want to start off my classes in September. Usually, I go for the 'Rules of the classroom, sanctions and rewards and sticking things into books' lesson, but I am always left at the end with a really stodgy feeling; I haven't been true to my beliefs about teaching in the TL, the pupils haven't learnt any German/French, and most importantly, they have been bored to death with the 5th such lesson in one day. This year I have decided to break the mould and start all my classes off in the TL.
As far as rules and behaviour expectations go, I read an interesting article in the TES about a year ago about a teacher who launched straight into teaching and allowed the pupils to 'work out' where the boundaries were. I must admit, it's a little daunting, but then I don't work in a school where behaviour is an issue. I always put my classes in seating plans, which helps with remembering names and I have various ways of rewarding and applying sanctions. I am going to re-launch Class Dojo with my lower school classes for an individual team point thingy and I will be implementing my yellow and red card sanction system. I have also considered starting a football card collecting system off the back of the world cup - not sure yet; maybe too much.
Hopefully with all this in place, I should be able to jump right in at the deep end with the TL, using lots of simple language and cognates and of course mimes galore!
Any thoughts? I would really love to hear them. Post comments here, send an email (see right hand side) or send a tweet (@reebekwylie)
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