Nice lesson with a new student

I had a lesson with 2 green and 1 red student last week. I noticed that 2 students had recently joined. Since I hadn’t met them yet I decided to start this lesson with some greetings and introductions. After we all met each other I reviewed last week’s B5 one point “today I feel______ because_______”. I was surprised when one of the students completed the sentence with a nervous answer because this was only his 2nd class. So I tried to make him feel more comfortable by reassuring his English ability.Usually in lessons with 3 students I try to split the 45 minutes evenly so that each has an equal amount of speaking time. I found that each of them had done the Finnegan’s Bar story so I chose this routine for their review. The students were very familiar with its contents. Since the students had completed this routine recently they had little trouble with the question and answer session.

Then we started the Let’s Talk environment item. One of the student’s mentioned that she liked animals. So after asking some of the environment questions I asked her what was happening to the polar bears in the North Pole. She was very familiar with this current news. She started a discussion about this that eventually led to further opinions and commentary about global warming. Each of the students were comfortable talking about this topic. They seemed very happy expressing their opinions and evaluating each others comments. By the end of the lesson I was happy to see the nervous student very confident and talkative.

At the end of this lesson I introduced today’s B2 one point “I want to______but I can’t because______” As an example I completed the sentence using a plasma tv that was too expensive to buy. Then each of the students completed the sentence with something they couldn’t afford to buy either. I was happy to see that all of them grasped the concept of this one point very quickly. This lesson finished with a very positive cheerful ending. Since I strive to make all my lessons this successful I’m always happy to see result.

MW – Smith’s School of English Kyobashi