I hate this workbook. In one tiny box on one page, they glossed over the huge topic of the prepositions “to,” “in” and “at,” whose distinctions can be very blurry. At the same time they introduced them to definite articles and zero articles. And all of it without an explanation or repition. There’s never any production in the workbook.

The night before I’d done some research to see if I could find explainable rules, and posted them to the school blog, but it wasn’t really helpful so in class I had to wing it. I nearly panicked when Jaime asked outright: “What’s the difference between all of these?” I really had to wing it here, without any help from the teacher’s guide. Even things so apparently simple are highly complex in English. I’ve always known that and feared having to tackle grammar stuff when I don’t know it. Oddly, however, through the grammar discussion the boys overall seemed to be very attentive. I had them do a lot of drawings on the blackboard to illustrate prepositions of place. I asked if they like grammar and they said “no,” but all of them, judging by yesterday, seem to like to find concrete rules rather than experience seemingly pointless conversation.

Here was my lesson plan:

Lesson Plan T/T Adults: February 4

Supplies: CD, CUED tape, dream responses, Norwegian Wood lyrics, homework, 8 WB markers.

GA listen for: gender pronouns, past tense in context.

WRITE on board: TO, AT, IN  — THE

Time	Teacher	Students	Notes
10:00	Pair greetings. Model it. Write on WB: What did you do yesterday? Get someone to ask me.	Take turns asking each other IN ENGLISH. Help each other with words and pay attention to the past tense.	When stuck, instead of speaking Spanish, first try to ask each other or me.
5:00	Reconvene. Write answers on WB.	Randomly pick person to say what partner did.	Model as necessary.
5:00	Class goals today: get a lot of practice with past tense verbs in sentences. Keep working on pronunciation. And as workbook says: using “to,” “at” and “in” with the definite article. Guess at meaning? Different than Spanish.		AGENDA: Dreams Back to the past Norwegian Wood Teachers
10:00	Dreams: Your dreams are on blog with corrections. Also here they are on paper.	Read aloud your dreams. Choose a person randomly to ask a question about the dream.
5:00	Play Norwegian Wood. Dreamlike song. Not quite like real life.	Just listen, noticing the past tense verbs.
0:00	Do you recognize the musicians? We’ll be coming back to this later.
10:00	Homework stories. Model. Tell someone my story (Draco). I’m going to make a mistake. You’ll be listening and ready to correct me after I finish.	Pair up. One person reads story. Other listens and reads along. Listen for past tense and help each other if you think something needs correcting. Make corrections.
5:00		Swap roles.
10:00		Read your corrected story to the class, if you don’t mind. Take turns asking a question about the story. Then hand in papers.
5:00		All at once, come draw a picture of your teacher on the WB. Tell what s/he looked like.
10:00	Workbook #1: Read instructions aloud.	Read the questions silently (to yourself).
10:00	Play tape	Check answers
5:00	Need another listen? See who checked what. Call on people. Ask comprehension questions as needed.	Selected Ss read the sentence and then write it on WB. (x5)	Answers: 1, 2, 5, 7, 8
10:00	Play Norwegian Wood again. It’s also about the past.  Listen for past tense verbs.	Everyone tell me one thing that happened in the song — or at least a verb they remember. What’s it about?
5:00	Workbook #2: I read the headings and the combinations	They look at the box. They take turns reading combinations of #2 box.
5:00	Think about: The	Look at box 2 and see if they can figure out when it is and isn’t used.
5:00	Think about: to, in, at. [They or I draw it on the board]	Look at Box 2 and purple drawings to figure out the difference.
10:00	Read instructions. Explain they may or may not need words in parentheses (draw on board)
	HOMEWORK: Model the first example.

In fact, things went totally differently, from the first second. At first only three students arrive so instead of plunge into the lesson we talked about our dream homework. I had everyone look at another student’s story and see if they thought it sounded right. They’re having a lot of problems with the past tense in context/usage, though they know many of the words.

Overall I think the class went okay. The breaks (Norwegian Wood, etc.) seemed to me to be disconnected and random. I need to learn more about transitions. But the class was full and overall they spent more time participating than before, and seemed more engaged. I don’t know if it was because I tried to get them up to the white board more often or what. In retrospect this LP looks pretty thin, but I barely made it through the class in time.