Conversation Class

Lesson Summary

Language and Section: Russian Advanced

Date:  02/26/13

 Class theme/topics discussed: Ways to know your future; Giving advice

 Goal of the class:

–        To practice future tense

–        To develop imaginative talk in Russian

–        To practice problem-solving

 Structure of the class (unless you attach your lesson plan below):

–        Pair work: students exchange their dream collages[1], they look at them for a while and try to imagine the future for another student according to his/her dream collage. They also think of questions they would ask regarding their future. While they are doing that, the teacher is writing down some expressions the students could use on the whiteboard;

–        Pair work continues (role-play): one of the students wants to know his/her future, another student is a fortune-teller. To make the game more interesting students ask their questions they came up with earlier;

–        Pair work continues: switching roles;

–        Presentation: each student tells his/her future after he /she ‘went’ to a fortune-teller and comments on whether it was close to what he/she was actually dreaming about;

–        Discussion: Fortune-tellers, can they really predict the future or are they just good psychologists? + Students tell whether they would ever go to a fortune-teller for real;

–        Asking students what other ways of predicting the future they know (horoscopes are among them);

–        Students go to the white-board and draw 3 zodiac signs each. The teacher tells the name of each of it in Russian;

–        Students get their February horoscopes and read them to the class;

–        Together we identify the different parts of a horoscope (love life, career, family & friends etc.) and note its element of advice;

–        Students need to write down on a piece of paper their own or an imaginary problem that needs a solution/advice. The teacher writes down such expression as ‘in my opinion’, ‘to my mind’, ‘I believe/consider’, ‘my advice is’ etc.

–        Game ‘Doctor Ai-bolit’: the teacher collects the papers with problems, mixes them and pretends that he/she is the one who needs a piece of advice. He/she reads the problems one by one and students pretend to be the ‘doctors’ – those who give advice. In order to get 1 point a student should be fast and creative in giving advice. The one, who gets the most points, also gets some prize.

 What technology, media or props did you use? (satellite tv, internet resources, playmobiles, etc.)

–        Dream collages

–        Whiteboard

–        Fact magazine, which contains horoscopes

 What worked well in this class? What did not work?

It was a fun class as it involved a lot of different activities implying different skill sets. The students had a chance to imply their imagination while telling the future to their partners. The final stories were quite interesting. Another fun thing is that they had a chance to draw on a whiteboard. This way they remember new vocabulary better due to association. The students also like the activities that involve competition and some prize. So they were really motivated during the ‘Doktor Ai-bolit’-game. During this lesson the students talked a lot so be prepared that you might not have the time to finish all the planned activities. However, you can always continue them in the next lesson.

[1] We made those collages during one of the previous lessons when we were talking about the dreams. Otherwise, they could be made in the beginning of the new lesson.