Class Journal: Week 9, Post-testitis and MIC

This week my students seem to be suffering post-testitis. Attendance was down, and the students who did show up looked like they wished they hadn't. It happens every year, so my goal for this lesson was just to nurse students back into the flow of study in a low key way. I tried to keep activities predictable based on what we have done in the past without introducing new procedures or tasks that would require students to lower their affective filter in order to function; with only one exception.  So I didn't try to push the envelope this week, as students are simply not game.

However, I was very surprised at the performance of my class 7 and 8 who are my Friday group. I got a lot of participation in terms of students volunteering questions and engaging in pair work. I think I'm starting to reap the rewards of the new approach I've been employing this semester. Student are really becoming accustomed to working together and it's taking much less effort now in order to get them moving. I quite pleased with that.

That said, I also noticed something that I haven't noticed before. That is, a lot of my instructions didn't seem to get through when I tried some variations on way I set up some of the production tasks. I was looking for that this week and I found it. The way I execute a task usually follows the same pattern week in and week out and students know this. It never occurred to me before, but yesterday I realized that the fact my students seem to follow my instructions may have less to do with understanding my input and more to do with remembering my procedures. It was an eye opener as I had just assumed they knew what I was talking about because they did what I was expecting them to do. This was clearly evident in one task I asked students to do this week that involved complex instructions. Instead of explaining the instructions like I usually do I asked students to tell me the instructions for the task. They had a hard time comprehending what I wanted them to do, I guess because it was something they didn't expect at all. It didn't follow from any of my usual procedures.

All in all, I think I've got to prepare my MIC techniques for new tasks in advance. I didn't think I needed to this week and got caught flat footed.