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.