Saturday, December 15, 2007

Teaching Tricks

This isn't "magic" tricks. This is about teaching tricks, meaning tricks for teachers. I read "How my day was saved" on Frumteacher and I remembered something I did recently at work.

I've been teaching EFL English here in Israel for ten years, into year eleven now, and up until just over a month ago, the "mefakachat," supervisor never showed. I know her, because she taught me "Testing and Assessment" when I did my teachers license a few years ago. We got along fine then.

But I went into a total panic when I heard that she was coming to visit and observe. My 10th grade group is a challenge. Sometimes the lessons are great, and sometimes... not so. Of course, that's the class she was going to observe. And I know those kids wouldn't cooperate.

I had been teaching them "questions," how to understand and how to write them. So I made up a form, with all the question words and space to write questions. They had to write questions to ask the guest. She got bored before they finished; they are sort of slow. So my "guest" wrote "answers" on the board and asked the kids to guess the questions.

I'd be lying to say that it was a rousing success, but it wasn't a total disaster.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the idea. Like the TV show (is it Jeopardy?) By me, the 9th graders are the worst!

Batya said...

Glad you liked it. My worst teaching experience was subbing in the junior high, 7th and 8th grade damaged my health.