Tom, CO # 1, Grammar - Felicia Ciappeta, September 3

The day's agenda was:

1. Bell Ringer;
2. Attendance; and
3. Grammar Review continued.

There were three new people in the class, so the first activity was introductions.  A student would introduce him- or herself to a new person, and the new person would respond appropriately.

The Bell Ringer proceeded as follows.  First, form into pairs and tell your partner three exciting things that you did this holiday weekend.  Then, the 'hot seat' portion of the activity would take place.  Each person would go to the front of the class and describe their weekend to everyone.  The teacher would ring a bell to let the student know that they had made a grammatical mistake, and the teacher would immediately correct the mistake.

The purpose of the hot seat activity was to:

• talk about things that happened this weekend in the simple past tense; and
• self-monitor your use of English.

Some typical errors were:

• "A lot of stores were on sale";
• "No is hot";
• "We made fun" for "We had fun"; and
• Using 'homework' as a countable noun.

The next activity began with each student choosing a classmate that they do not already know.  Ask them to make 5 predictions of what their hometown will look like in 30 years.  They are given five minutes to complete this portion of the activity.  Then each student is given the opportunity to share their predictions.

For the last activity, the students are asked to take out a sheet of paper.  The teacher writes 10 sentences, each with a mistake, on the whiteboard.  Then the students write down the sentences and make appropriate corrections.  The sentences were:

• It will have more fun.
• Is there many people?
• No is good for ...
• Because question is ...
• without job
• I think it will be change with technology
• I think there will be more population.
• there will be many employment people.
• The will change the chairman of my country.
• They would use the public transportation.

The source of these errors was (for the most part) the prediction activity that we had just completed.