Tiring Week

This week was short but was fraught with struggle.  After the long weekend  most of the students were really disengaged and it was difficult to get them into classroom interaction.  Most of the kids were mentally somewhere else and a few were just sleepwalking.  There were a couple of students I had to send out of the class for sleeping.

Tuesday was the really tough one.  Everyone knows things are almost over.  We are near the end of the book.  The weather is amazing and there are tons of activities around campus that are a bit distracting.  No one is interested in the work that has to be done in the book - least of all me.

I was able to correct most of this in the later part of the week when I turned most of the work over to the students.  I lengthened the warm up to include interaction with 5 other students.  I made the students stand and actually walk around the classroom.  It seemed to help, it put a lot more energy into the class.  I also had the students do more peer correction and gave less feedback and teacher talk.  The book exercises were kept to a minimum and students were responsible for asking other for the correct answer.

All this made class more interesting and kept students engaged and productive.  I was able to sneak in some impromptu pronunciation lessons and some important grammar forms.  I think things worked out, but on paper we did very little.  The good news is that we are on schedule and will have enough time to complete the book and let the students speak a lot.