Joy's class - introduction of a new unit (12/6)
I got a chance to go to Joy's class on Monday. In the beginning of the class, Joy said hello to students and reminded them that there was a guest. However, due to the disfunction of the projector, the class was delayed for about 5 minutes. Then, the teacher started to play the PPT of unit 10. The PPT introduced the musical, Phantom of the Opera, with pictures, mp3 files and even with some film clips. After students had a general picture of what the story was about, the teacher played a game. She asked 10 questions about the musical, and students were really excited because according to the rule, the one who stood up last had to answer the question. In the very end of that class, several open questions were given to students for group discussion, like "What would you do in the end if you were Christine? Would you kiss the Phantom?" "Why did the phantom release Christine and Raoul finally?" Students' answers were creative and out of my expectation.
After attending this class, the first question was how much time did it cost for Joy to make the powerpoint. And also, when we teachers want to give a brief introduction to students in the first class of a new unit, to what level should we introduce? As a personal habit, I used to give brief introduction in the beginning, and I like to lead students to a more detail and innovative extension activity in the end of the whole unit. It reminds me that there are still plenty of alternatives to introduce a new unit. Also, I'm looking forward to see how Joy teaches the vocabulary and reading text in the next class.
posted by Hedy @ 5:09 PM
1 Comments:
Dear Hedy,
You brought up two very interesting questions here: "How much time did it take Joy to prepare the PowerPoint slides?" and "To what extend should a teacher introduce a new lesson?"
I've been through a stage when I did spend a lot of time preparing my PPT presentations. As you can see now, however, I don't really use a lot of PPT's. You might wonder why's that? Well, all I can tell you is that "after a long process of explorations and experiments, a teacher would just understand what she wants to use and or not to use" and that "it is with thir process that a teacher would come to realize what's the best for students' learning." So, it is good that a teacher goes through different stages and comes to form her or his style of teaching. And every method or experiment has its value.
As for the introduction to a new lesson, it is good that you have this chance to see a different way. As you have observed, there are so many ways to lead students to a new subject. Most teachers would choose ways they are most familiar with or comfortable with. For a new teacher like you, I suggest you experiment on a variety of ways so that you can come up with your own ideas according to your own teaching styles and philosophy. Anyway, we need to be flexible lest we should become too stuffy. In this case, we can always keep abreast with new things. This is the spirit that I am always sticking to. I believe you can be a rolling stone too.
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