Language Resident/Assistant Name:  

Kozue Matsumoto 

Day and Date:  

Wednesday September 2nd, 2020   

Language and Level (intermediate or advanced class):  

Intermediate 

Class theme/topics discussed:  

  • Your Hometown 

Goal of the class:  

  • Introduce hometown using Google Map

How did you structure the class?  

  1. Sara introduces language table, language partners, and tutors (5min) 
  1. About Labor Day (3 min) 
  1. Good news (5 min)  *We share positive stories at the beginning of each class.
  1. Introduce the topic: Hometown (5 min)  
    1. Where is it? What’s there? 
    2. Anything special about the town 
    3. What did you do? What do you remember? 
  1. Breakout rooms: 3-4 people (30 min)  
    1. Share stories each other using Google Map
  1. Back to main room. Share briefly each other’s stories (12 min)  

What technology, media or props did you use? (internet resources, playmobiles, handouts, etc.) Class agreement, breakup rooms 

Zoom, Beakout room, google maps, share screens. 

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

  • Hometown stories developed to family stories and high school stories.  
  • Students enjoyed showing their homes, hometowns and the places they know using google maps and episodes related to such places
  • Internet became a little slow when zoom and google maps were used at the same time. But students were handling it with no problems 
  • This time each student spoke for a long time when they were sharing stories. Rather than exchanges of a couple of short sentences, this time it was more like a speech.  
  • I didn’t get to hear everyone’s stories as I was moving around among breakout rooms, but apparently, they were sharing some funny stories when I wasn’t there and laughing. 
  • It was good to see that one student talks about another student’s story when I ask what’s been happening. It means they were engaging conversations and finding something interesting in stories. 
  • One dog joined at the beginning. That was cute. 
  • Students liked this, and one of them used this activity for another class/session.

How could this class be improved/ modified? 

  • Today’s class was more like each one’s story sharing with a few questions from others (as far as I saw). Next class probably I will try to do a more interview-oriented topic.