1st year Bachillerato

1. WORKING WITH PHOTOGRAPHS, by Isaac Nebot

1st) BRUSHING UP VOCABULARY AND THE 2ND CONDITIONAL FROM VIEWING TWO EXTREMELY DIFFERENT ROOMS:

- Class: 1st Bachillerato, English as a Second Language.

- Timing: 50 minutes.

- Lesson plan: I showed stds a picture of a Coffin Apartment having told them that we would recall known vocabulary and learn new one. Then, following my instructions, volunteers started conveying common both nouns referring to appeared objects and adjectives of the general aspect seen in that apartment. After asking some of the stds who didn't participate for other common ones, I prompted what for most of them were new words like cuttlery (BrE) as oppose to the American word "silverware", blender or utensils, focusing on their pronunciation as well. Next, on the picture I pointed at some of the rest of the objects that were easy to name asking the stds who hadn't said anything yet. After that, we practiced orally the 2nd conditional that had been dealt with in class over the last couple of days, in such a way that I first asked someone the question "what would you do if you lived there". Then I told another std to ask somenone else the same question, and so on. Before everybody had either asked or answer that question, I ask it changing the verb into "inherited" and "bought", so that other answers were expressed. Their answers were as to be expected, but there was one on the extreme side: when Ines said, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if she inherited it, she would destroyed it! Later, I played the video "Teeny cuisine in Paris, the city of style, with Laura Calder" and we did very similar activities to the above mentioned ones. So I used the video as a series of images rather than a video itself, except when I asked them if anyone could guess Laura's accent.

- Students reactions: they quite liked those activities and were fairly participative in general. The shyest ones got to participate more than usually, and as the bubbliest stds wanted to monopolize the conversation, I led the rest to participating too.

- What would I change or improve?  I might try telling them to write at home 2 or 3 questions of that sort for each of the 2 resources (image and video) and their answers in the 2nd conditional form. Then in class, they could exchange their named sheets so that others ask them their own questions and they could answer more confidently what they had worked on at home. On the other hand, I'm going to wait until a lesson on comparatives comes so as to plan it by using these 2 resources.

2. LET'S TALK ABOUT INVENTIONS, by Julia López

1.     Description	This activity was based on the idea of using prompts and visual aids to help my students talk in class. It was an activity to introduce the topic of inventions and to start practising the passive tense. This activity was devised for students of 1st of Bachillerato and it took half of one session (approximately 25 minutes) to complete.
2.     Objectives	·  To give students oral fluency practice in talking about inventions. ·  To activate student’s previous knowledge of the subject. ·  To introduce the grammar point of the unit, the passive tense. ·  To improve student’s speaking skills and critical thinking.
3.     Set up	v  First, students had to predict the topic that was being presented based on the image and the words in the slide. Then, I told them to discuss in pairs everything they knew about the objects in the image. After that, I individually asked them to present one of the objects to the class trying to use the structures given. v  Having covered all the objects, I showed them the second slide, where they could see the hidden message of the image. Now, it was time for them to give their opinion on the selection and to analyze which objects were the most and least useful.
4.     Students’ performance	All my students were able to talk about the topic, even though some of them could only stick to the sentence starters given. Nonetheless, I could sense they were more relaxed when it was their time to speak, as they could rely on the help of the prompts. The first part of the activity was more successful than the second part, though, as they usually struggle having to coherently justify their opinions. Moreover, they realized how little general culture they had, as the only inventor they could come up with was Edison, and it wasn’t even accurate! Hopefully, they will remember some of the name of the inventors for the next time.