What a busy few days!

There was no entry on Friday, mostly because I was juggling a final day of diagnostic testing at work and the fact that I was packing up all my worldly possessions to get ready to move into a new apartment on Saturday. Todd came down with my parents (and with more of my furniture-related worldly possessions) and, for the most part, everything went pretty smoothly on move-in day. My parents even opted to take me grocery shopping so I'd have a full fridge. I'm extremely grateful for all the help they provided. This transition would not have gone nearly as well as it did without their support.

I spent the rest of the weekend and the MLK holiday setting things up and lesson planning for my first week. I know there are two schools of thought on lesson planning: some people like the structure and some people don't. Some people write extensive minute-by-minute outlines of what they plan to do every day; others come up with their ideas five minutes before class. I fall somewhere in between. I like to have some structure, but at the same time I recognize that class time is often organic, and there will be times when it's best to let the class take control of the time if they're making valuable off-track contributions. For the first week, at least, I figured it would be a good idea if I made a rough outline of what I was going to do for both classes. I spent most of the evening paging through textbooks, finding activities online, and racking my brain for warm-up activities that would be time and level-appropriate.

I'll be honest: I was nervous going in today. We split up the larger class into two smaller classes, so today was my first day with my core students. I have about ten students in RW and CS, respectively. RW was kind of a scramble at the beginning. I had planned to have copies of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech for students to read through for vocabulary, but when I got to the office the computer lab was shut and locked. I thought, "Oh no! What am I going to do? I can't have them do reading work if they can't actually read the thing!" Luckily, one of my students had printed out a copy at home so I played the beginning part of the speech on my computer and had them listen while I made copies. For homework they have to look over the speech and identify 7-10 vocabulary words with which they are unfamiliar, then define them and bring them to class. There's a lot of terrific language in that speech. Plus, I wanted to get them comfortable with using the Longman dictionary. I also hope to use that vocabulary as sort of a springboard into looking for definition through context clues.

CS was a little easier, by virtue of it being a communications class -- there were plenty of opportunities for students to speak up in class. We opened with "Two Truths & A Lie" -- an icebreaker game that I have used in other classes. Students are given three to five minutes to come up with three statements about themselves, two of which are true. One is a lie, and it is the job of the rest of the class to determine which is which. Most of the time the statements are pretty innocuous -- "I have two brothers," "I like swimming" -- but sometimes you'll get some pretty creative answers.

Tonight I've got to put together a BINGO game for my CS class based on some statements they submitted during an in-class activity. I had them write two statements about themselves that they would not mind sharing with the rest of the class. I am going to write those statements in a 3x3 grid (without their names attached) and have them spend the first half hour of class milling around the room, figuring out which students belong to which statements. I've never tried this activity before, so fingers crossed that it doesn't bomb. I think it will be good to get students in the mindset of asking "Wh-" questions. That's as good a place as any to start.