During our practice period, we have been teaching English in Year 7 at a primary school. One of our missions during practice, was to execute a lesson with Grammar-to-go. We did this lesson two times: One time with half the class, and the next time with the other half. In our class, there was 38 pupils with different levels in English.
Most of the pupils were at an average level for their age, while a few of them were at a higher level. The once at a higher level were able to understand more and to participate more actively in class. Some of the pupils were at a level way lower than the rest of the class. These pupils had a hard time with expressing themselves in English, both written and orally. This is something we had to take this in consideration when planning our lesson.
Choice of text
We started our grammar-to-go lesson by gathering all the pupils in front of the Smartboard. The text the pupils worked with was the song lyrics from Lenka - Everything At Once. We planned the whole lesson around these lyrics. We chose this particular song because it contained several adjectives. After the pupils listened to the song, we handed out the lyrics and they started working.
Lenka - Everything At Once
As sly as a fox, as strong as an ox
As fast as a hare, as brave as a bear
As free as a bird, as neat as a word
As quiet as a mouse, as big as a house
(Refrain)
As mean as a wolf, as sharp as a tooth
As deep as a bite, as dark as the night
As sweet as a song, as right as a wrong
As long as a road, as ugly as a toad
As pretty as a picture hanging from a fixture
Strong like a family, strong as I wanna be
Bright as day, as light as play
As hard as nails, as grand as a whale
(Refrain)
As warm as the sun, as silly as fun
As cool as a tree, as scary as the sea
As hot as fire, cold as ice
Sweet as sugar and everything nice
As old as time, as straight as a line
As royal as a queen, as buzzed as a bee
As stealth as a tiger, smooth as a glider
Pure as a melody, pure as I wanna be
(Refrain)
Description of the lesson
The first assignment we gave them was a quite straightforward assignment. The pupils were going to find as many adjectives as they could in the song lyrics. When they were done with the first short assignment, the next assignment was to create new verses with new sentences while using the same adjectives as in the original song. We chose to use the same adjectives to make sure they knew how to use those adjectives, but in different sentences than the ones they just read.
Before we started our second assignment, we had a small talk with the pupils on how we could use the same adjectives, but with different forms (absolute, comparative, superlative). Some of the pupils had a good grasp on how to use adjectives in the different forms, while other needed some guidance from us. However, all the pupils seemed to get a hang of it after a while. We did this tasks to help pupils develop an even better understanding of the adjectives.
Our third assignment was a bit different from the other assignments mentioned above. We handed out a piece of paper with several different faces on. The pupils assignment was to play a game "Guess Who?". The pupils worked in pairs, where one of them described one of the faces on the paper. The other pupil would then try to guess who was being described. If the second pupil got it right, he/she was awarded 1 point. Then it was the other persons turn. Some of the pupils finished the assignment quickly and they got to describe one of their classmates with as many adjectives as they could.
As for our role during this lesson, we mainly served as "guiders"/supervisors. Before each assignment, we gave the pupils instructions on what they were going to do. The pupils worked more or less independently, and we walked around actively in the classroom helping them when needed. We planned this lesson together and we did this lesson two times, where we were in charge of one lesson each. In that way we both got to try out this method and experience Grammar-to-go in practice. Both of us found this experience to be quite useful. After we read the text on Grammar-to-go, we were nervous considering that neither one of us had done this type of exercise before. Luckily, we walked out of the classroom one positive experience richer!
Reflections and evaluation
Concerning the first exercise, we had different thoughts on how the pupils would react. Have they worked with songs in an English lesson before? Will every pupil be able to find adjectives in the song lyrics? Or perhaps the text is a bit too much? There were several questions on our mind. The pupils reacted in a positive way, and we think several of them enjoyed working with grammar using this method. Some of the pupils even added the song we used to their own personal music playlist! Afterwards the pupils started creating new sentences with the adjectives they found in the song. We estimated that the pupils would use about 10 minutes on this task, but most of them were done after 3-4 minutes.
We started the second exercise by discussing the use of adjectives in different forms. We did this to ensure that every pupil knew what we were talking about. Most of the pupils already knew how to use adjectives in different forms, but other pupils benefitted from this little discussion. When the pupils began their work we saw quite early that this task was a bit too easy for the strong pupils, and they finished the task quickly.
The last exercise was the "Guess Who?" exercise. We think that the pupils found this game to be most challenging considering that they had to describe a picture as detailed as they possibly could. Several pupils had to be creative and think of new adjectives to use, and some of them even used the dictionary for guidance. Other pupils just described the faces really briefly, and just wanted to "get this finished".
In summary we think that it was a really good experience for both of us working with Grammar-to-go. However, we realized after these two lessons that the exercises we picked was a bit too easy for Year 7, considering that most of pupils finished most of their exercises quite fast. If our exercises were a bit more challenging we think the pupils would have learned a lot more than they did these two lessons.
I think the choice of your text was perfect for studying adjectives, but as you have mentioned, pupils at the 7th grade could have used more challenging and complex tasks, than simply identifying adjectives. It would have been nice to be able to see what the pupils have produced with their creative work, just to see the level of their written skills. Good to hear that this teaching scheme was a valuable experience. Your grammar/language is generally good, but there are a few consistent errors you should try to avoid: 1. Use comma after a dependent clause preceding a main clause, e.g., If our exercises were a bit more challenging, we....), 2. Don´t forget apostrophe for possessives, e.g., the other person´s turn. Good job! :)
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