ACTIVITY 18

           Today, I had a lesson with my students that had as its aim to present the different way the Greeks and the Americans perceive family relationships. What is more, the students were urged to use conditionals while discussing the subject. The truth is the students found the subject interesting as, having grown up in Greece, they could not imagine that their American friends, they were discussing with through Skype, had no relationship with their second cousins. The use of conditionals was constant as there were a lot of questions like: Who would you invite to your birthday party if you lived in Greece?

            All students were more or less engaged in learning. The least engaged was my female student. I think this was because when selecting the subject I didn’t take into consideration that the student is an only child with no extended family so most of the questions did not appeal to her.

            The activity lesson began with a small extract of Jay Leno’s show Tonight on some pranks people played to their friends and family on April’s fool. Though this may seem irrelevant to the subject, one of the pairs called to talk about their prank revealed to Jay Leno that they were second cousins. The presenter immediately answered “You’re not even related” and this was the cause of our very long discussion. The video fired up the lesson as after watching a video with pranks everyone was in a very good mood. Two of the students found the pranks so funny that they couldn’t stop laughing so it took sometime to make them stop and start the Skyping session. During the Skyping session and because the questions used were planned before the Skyping session everything went well.

            The students remained focused throughout the Skype session. I don’t think they could actually do otherwise because they are talking to people they don’t know and there is some embarrassment there in any case… After fifteen minutes or so they started getting tired and that’s when their answers began getting shorter and shorter. By then my colleague from Pennsylvania and I had accomplished what we wanted, though so we could wrap the conversation up.

            After the Skype session the students were grouped in two groups based on their learning preference. They were introduced to the Internet game “The Millionaire’. The game works similar to the actual TV game only difference being the fact that all the questions are based on Conditionals. The team that finished the game having earned the largest amount of money was the one that got to propose the song we’d listen to in our next lesson (a very easy way to find new songs to teach).

            As my students worked I moved among them to check how they were thinking before they actually got to answer the questions of the game. This gave me valuable information on what they do or don’t remember on Conditional so I could provide the ones that had trouble with more online material to do if they wished at the end of the class. Moving among groups of students while they work is for me an ideal way of gathering the information needed to understand whether my students have problems different language patterns.