Class

So since I went through my lesson planing process yesterday I thought that I might describe a lesson in a little more detail today. My first class is in many ways atypical of most of my classes since the students are a year older and because of the school having some classes on a weekend before the last holiday it's not always on the same schedule as my other classes. Today about 14 of 30 or so students showed up. The first time this happened I was pretty surprised and a little pissed but I talked to some of the other teachers and they say only part of the class showing up is pretty much par for the course, I guess they're even more like US college students then I had realized. Once the bell for the start of class rang, which for some reason rings at 2 minutes after 8 in this building, I started by telling them about the Halloween party that was going to happen on Thursday. I know that most of the students probably won't dress up and Ken and Dave have made some preparations accordingly, like having masks and things for them to wear, but to encourage my students to come and wear something I had them try and think of costumes they could wear. It took a minute or two to explain what a costume was, but eventually they began writing down some things. Some of my classes try but don't come up with much, this class doesn't so much like to try. Despite my repeated urging only about half of them remember to bring anything fancy like paper.

I gave them maybe 15 minutes to think and write while I walked around and prompted them to try to think of not just a costume but how they could make it. Finally I called on them and got some pretty dry responses that showed that they had no idea or interest in making a costume. After that I went to another event I had worked out where I had them come to the front of the room and hold a card to their head saying a celebrities name. They would then ask the class questions about the person until they guessed whose name was on their head. It took a little bit for them to get used to the event but they had a lot of fun doing it. Some of the names I thought would be pretty famous, but they had trouble with. They knew who Madona was but didn't know anything about her, and to my great surprise they had absolutely no idea who Oprah was. I've read articles about Oprah being big in Iran, so I thought she must at least be known here, but they had no clue. There was a ten minute break in the middle of class, which is honestly an necessary for me as it is for them. The final event we did was having them think up excuses if they can't come to a party, or they forget their homework etc. I tried to make it a little more interesting by having them come up with funny excuses but they're just not that funny. Unprompted in another one of my classes a student came up with a really clever one for forgetting homework, saying that since so many students copied her homework it was just better if she didn't do it.