Class Journal: Week 10

This week, I read the readings focused on vocabulary and as it happened, this week's lesson had some good vocabulary exercises.  So I wanted to pay more attention than usual to how students dealt with the new vocab.  As a second objective I also wanted to stop repeating myself as I explained things in class.  (I was reviewing my module 2 assignment class videos and transcripts and I noticed that I keep explaining without first seeing if my initial instructions are understood.  I now believe that students find this more confusing because they have to find meaning in a barrage of words.  It's also probably the reason why some of my students don't listen and just memorize procedures.)

The vocabulary to be introduced were nouns depicting sports and fitness activities.  So the burden of learning these words were fairly low.  The meanings were all direct correlations to my students L1 lexicon.  And dictionaries were not required at all as they were all pretty easy to act out.  The only challenges where related to the verbs they collocate with.  But thankfully, in this case the verbs matched logically (though the L1 versions of the verbs grouped the sports and activities under differing subsets.)  Once I wrote the rule the students pretty much guessed the right verb for random activities I threw out there that weren't in their books.  So in the words of President George W., "Mission accomplished... heh heh heh"

In terms of my secondary goal.  I caught myself slipping into my old habits on a couple of occasions but I found it easier to stop my self once I adjusted my mindset.  Usually, I have a lot of enthusiasm about explaining stuff but this week I just imagined that I didn't give a shit and seemed to work like magic!  Habit flushed!