Conversation Class Lesson Summary

 

Language Resident Name: Rosina Desimone

 

Day and Date: Thursday, September 25th

 

Language and Level: Spanish Advanced

 

Class theme/topics discussed: Crime 2

 

Goal of the class: For students to learn vocabulary about crime and judging criminals.

 

How did you structure the class:

 

Ice-breaker: “Imaginery”: the teacher draws a shape on the board and tells the students that it is an object seen from a certain perspective. In groups, the students have to guess what kind of object it is (For example, a square with 4 circles is a table seen from below) and convince the teacher to buy that object.

 

Warm-up: The students brainstorm some of the concepts related to crime from last class. Then, the teacher writes on the board the word “Juez”. The students brainstorm words related to this term as the teacher makes a mindmap on the board.

 

After that, the teacher divides the class into 2 groups. One group, faces the TV set. The teacher tells the students facing the TV that they are going to watch a video without sound and that they must describe what is going on to their classmates. The teacher stops the video and the group changes turns (this is repeated until the video has ended.) After that, they all see the complete video with sound and check if their assumptions were correct. The teacher asks the students about their opinions on these kinds of TV shows and whether these situations are taken from real-life or not.

 

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALzCjbJAJUQ

 

The teacher divides the group in pairs and asks them to act the end of the trial.

 

Finally, the teacher divides the class in groups of 3. Then, he/she assigns each group the following situations:

 

“Robo de dentadura postiza como causa de divorcio”

 

“Venta de curso de Inglés falso”

 

“Robo de una vaca”

 

“Venta de auto en pésimas condiciones”

 

The students are given up to 5 minutes to plan a short play on each of the latter situations. They all have to represent the judge, accused and victim.

 

What technology, media or props did you use?: Slips of paper with talk-show situations, TV set and my laptop.

 

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

 

The students loved the class! Disscussion activities led to more vocabulary related to the topic while they were talking about recent events (such as celebrities getting divorced.) The fact that had the chance to act varied ridiculous situations motivated them to use the FL even more. This group in particular enjoys roleplaying, so they had fun while acting the different cases. It was a great class!

 

How could this class be improved/modified?