I believe we have an excellent English school curriculum at Smith’s that focuses on things students need work on. I always try to use the “loop”, which is the overriding format for every lesson. It works very well and I use it at Smith’s Tsukaguchi school http://www.smithweb.co.jp/school/tsukaguchi.shtml . I was taught the loop at a free Smith’s curriculum training event. The “loop” is as follows;
1. ESTABLISH TRUST (ET) - within 60 seconds
2. ITEM – coach or review
3. ROUTINE – coach or review
4. ONE POINT – enjoyable end to lesson
Here is an example of me using the “loop”. I gave this lesson yesterday.
1. ET – To establish trust, I wanted to review the one point English I had taught my student at the end of her last lesson, which was “you’re kidding”. I told her that I had seen Michael Jackson at the station the day before. She laughed, looked at her notebook, and said, “You’re kidding!” Bingo!
2. ITEM – I had taught her an ITEM the lesson before, so I wanted to review it this time. The ITEM had been Future Continuous & Perfect. I asked her a few questions using both future continuous and future perfect, and after she had replied correctly, I moved on to the ROUTINE.
3. ROUTINE – I wanted to work on Routine 12, called Shopping 2. I told her that we would be working on Shopping 2 again and she opened her notebook to her Shopping 2 notes from the last lesson. Last time, she had listened to and repeated the story once and I had asked her the 10 questions that accompany the story (QUESTIONS BY TEACHER). This lesson I had her listen to and repeat the story again (correcting pronunciation as I always do), then read the 10 questions to her, which she wrote down. I then had her ask me the questions in context (QUESTIONS BY STUDENT, IN CONTEXT) and I answered the questions. Once we finished that, I had her ask me the questions out of context and I answered using my imagination (QUESTIONS BY STUDENT, OUT OF CONTEXT). I particularly like doing this with students as they often have to change the questions a bit depending on what I answer. I also allow them to add in questions of their own too if they want to. Once we finished this, I did something I love doing, which is telling my student a story which I usually make up (which contains material they have already studied plus some new material too) then asking the student questions on the story. I think this is a great way to improve listening skills while doing review. I did this with my student, keeping my story close to the one I had used to answer her out of context questions before, but adding more in. She did a pretty good job at answering my questions after the story. As always, I wrote down and explained any new vocabulary on the board as well as correcting mistakes she had made. When this was all done, I moved on to the ONE POINT.
4. ONE POINT – Her new one point was “Fortunately/Unfortunately~”. I gave her some examples and once she understood the meanings, I ended the lesson.
I would like to thank Smith’s head office for their ongoing free curriculum training events and seminars https://www.sse-franchise.com/calendar_seminars2007.shtml. I always learn something new there and enjoy meeting fellow franchisees. Thank you Smith’s head office!
Derek
Smith’s Tsukaguchi school
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