Mariana's Lesson

Today we had the opportunity to observe Mariana's lesson at Thungnonhaengprachasan High School. Mariana decided to avoid the heat of the classroom and brought her students to an open air pavillion under one of the buildings.

She had a great lesson beginning with students learning greeting. To practice she had them form shifting lines and each student got to practice introducing themselves to several of their peers.

Mariana then taught students vocabulary for emotions - happy, sad, excited, angry. Her energetic animated teaching style got the students out of their shells to act out the emotions. She ended with a fun game where students formed a circle with one student in the middle. Each student had an emotion picture card. The student in the middle would pick an emotion card. Any student with that card had to jump up and change seats, and the student in the middle would try and grab one of the seats. The student left without a seat would be the new student in the middle. The students really got into it.

What was great about Mariana's lesson and many of the others we have seen is the emphasis on listening and speaking. As students learned to the vocabulary and sentence structure, Mariana would step back and let the students take the role of the teacher to give the instructions and commands.