Growing and Learning

Today is the last day of the TESL Reading and Vocabulary Course (the Grammar course starts next week). The final assignment is a lesson plan for a two hour class. I chose a task-based lesson on how to find necessities for oneself, items for the home and gifts for another person in one trip to the mall using a mall website.  I also included reading the return policy on receipts to determine if and when items can be returned. I based several of the in-class activities on the LINC 3 Classroom Activities by moresettlement.org (search LINC 3 Lesson Plans)

CF Polo Park Shopping Mall

I spent a lot of time on that one lesson plan, partly because I haven't done a formal lesson plan in a long while, partly because it is my first TESL lesson plan and mostly because it is a graded assignment. However, the experience showed me that there are many resources available online that can be used or adapted, and that I can also use my own creativity and experience to enable meaningful experiences for my students. I know that after I have done a few of these, it will get easier, as I develop my preferred format and discover even more resources.

I have been spoiled by my previous teaching assignment at Butler Community College, where the teaching departments develop the courses in small committees, provide course outlines, syllabus templates, review and testing materials and still allow the instructors to be somewhat flexible in how they teach the course. Thus I spent about the same amount of time updating and improving my semester plan and syllabus that I spent on this one lesson plan. After teaching the same classes for a few semesters, my daily lesson plans involved reviewing my previous notes, adding a few prompts in the text book margins and making sure I remembered how to work the examples (algebra problems!) 

I suppose that's one reason I chose to pursue a TESL Letter of Accomplishment. I was getting bored with working the same algebra problems, though not with seeing students figure out how to do it. As I explained on the TESL course forum when quoting the Doctor Who episode Blink , if you are not growing and learning, then you are dying. 

-Vicky