English Conversation: Week 4

I am posting all of my lesson plans from the English Conversation course I am teaching each week to adults in Vilsbiburg. The class lasts ninety minutes and will run for ten weeks. Each week will have a theme to focus the discussion, and the students' "homework" will be to bring a related item or topic to the class the next week. I will also review my plans to let you know what worked and what didn't. I hope it will help you with your own teaching plans or even help you with your own English skills!

Lesson Plan

Week 4: 7 students

Objective: Create an open discussion, partner work, and cultural interest.

Theme: Books, Art, Music

Show & Tell: Favorite books and authors, or what the students are currently reading.
Partner Presentations: Five minutes to share favorite piece of art, museum, architecture, etc. Partner presents other partner's favorites.

Idioms & Phrasal Verbs: Each student receives one phrasal verb and one idiom to define and use in a dialogue with partners.
Art Pictionary: One student from each team draws the same famous piece of art while both teams try to guess.
Musical Time's Up: Students contribute five slips of paper with famous musicians or music groups (plus one song suggestion) on them to the hat. In teams, students take turns trying to get their teams to guess the famous musician they draw from the hat by trying to sing one of their songs.

Review

Talking about books ended up taking way longer than I expected. We all learned something about different authors and books, as my students brought up several German novels in the discussion. It was a funny moment when I asked two of the students who had read my favorite book, Fahrenheit 451, what they thought of it. They both cringed and said they didn't really like it, as if they were not sure how I would react to a different opinion.

(Nobody cried.)

The partner presentations were stimulating, and I even had to cut two sets of partners off so we could actually start sharing with the entire group. One of the great things about this class is that they do not have to be prodded to speak English among themselves. It's a lot different than teaching English in a school!

We had to rush through the phrasal verbs a little fast, but made the sentences as a group. I will save this round of idioms for next week. Art pictionary was hilarious for two reasons: 1) none of us were very good at drawing, and 2) we had to work really hard to get the titles of the works of art in English! Best drawing of the evening was definitely The Burning Giraffe, by Salvador Dali.

We ran out of time before we could get to the music part and game of this lesson, which means that will be the main focus of next week's class. Always better to have too much planned than not enough!