As I mentioned in my past blog post, Soy Profesora: My First Time Teaching, I spent my first session allowing my students to get to know me and playing a quick game of True or False. I have decided to share my presentations and activities on this platform as a way to help other language assistants create engaging exercises and foster interesting conversations for students and teachers alike! It is important to note that these lessons are designed to cover 1 hour of lecture and discussion time.
My presentation covered topics such as:
Where I was from
Pictures to help capture the essence of where I was from
My family and friends
Hobbies I enjoy
Where I attended university
Things that are important to my life back home (ex: sports)
My favorite book, tv show, and movie
A mini-lesson on dialects in the US (I connected this to "American English" vs "British English")
My experience as a language learner (How my students and I are in the same boat)
While there are many different ways of how to present or introduce oneself, I found this to allow the most time for questions and commented in-between slides. Additionally, after I had presented on some topics about myself --such as hobbies for example -- I would ask a couple students to share about themselves.
After sharing about myself, I then asked my students to introduce themselves. Going around the room, I had them share:
Their name
Where they are from
Why they are learning English
At the conclusion of introductions, I began my activity for the day! A classic game of True or False. First I split my students into small groups of 3-4 with the instructions that they will discuss in their groups and decide which statements they believed to be true and which they believed to be false. However, the most important element to the game is that the students MUST have a reason WHY they chose True or False. Then, I read off the following statements:
T/F: There are more McDonalds than public libraries in the United States.
T/F: The Statue of Liberty is located in New York.
T/F: There is no official language of the United States.
T/F: The United States is smaller than China.
T/F: New York is the capital of the United States.
While the small groups were conferring, I made a small T chart on the whiteboard to record how many groups chose True or False for each questions. I believe a visual tally of these makes a bigger impact on the end result!
After surveying the groups for questions, doubts, and progress, I called the class together to share. After stating each question one at a time, I tallied how many chose True or False to the corresponding question. It is important to recognize that questions 1 and 3 are directed towards the concept of different stereotypes of which those from the United States display. After all groups have shared, I flipped to the following slide to show the answers. I then used the tally on the whiteboard to display the connection between how my students' beliefs often did not match the "Truth".
Using the concept of stereotypes, I then opened the door for the remaining of the class time for my students to share other stereotypes they had of people from the United States. While stereotypes about guns, obesity, patriotism, racism, health care, voting, and family values came up, I made sure to push and ask them what the differences and similarities they had with those topics in Spain. I learned a lot from their beliefs and stereotypes about me and more so the why behind them. This activity and presentation helped me connect and open lines of dialogue between my students and I. Additionally, I was able to answer the questions they were most interested in knowing about.
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