Second Class

Class #2: Saturday 10th September 2016

Activity #1 Review

The teacher started the class by giving instructions about the activities of this coming Saturday (17th September 2016). After that, the teacher started to activate previous knowledge in students by giving them some pieces of papers with questions in Second Conditional. Students were required to ask those questions to their partners, to teacher and to the TAs (Herber and me). Then, students created their own questions and asked that questions to the teacher and TAs.

Moreover, the teacher and TAs asked questions in Simple Past Passive to the students, the questions were related to general culture. Furthermore, each student created a question and each of them had to select who were answering the question (teacher, Herber or me).

Activity #2: Grammar

The teacher introduced the grammar structure “Passive Causative”. After a brief introduction, the teacher told to students to read the book in order to analyze the grammar structure. On the board, the teacher wrote the name of the structure and made two arrows, on every side of the name, one for the form of “Passive Causative” and the other for its use. Then, students were divided into two teams, one team passed to the board to write the form of “Passive Causative” and the other had to write the use of it.

Moreover, the teacher presented some videos about “Passive Causative” in order to go deeper in the grammar structure, because it was a little bit complex and students had troubles to understand it in some way.  

Despite the fact that teacher spends the whole session explain the “Passive Causative” because of the complexity that it has for students, I have to say that I really enjoyed this class because we were more involved with the students.

How we get involved with them? Well, after the break teacher asked to Herber and me about a suggestion for the next activity, he wanted the students played a sport and we decided to ask the students about what sport they wanted to play? (They chose soccer). The game consisted in penalty shots (with grammar), the class was divided into two teams (Brazil/Germany), each team chose a captain, the captain received from the teacher an envelope, it contained seventeen sentences that they had been transformed into the “Passive Causative”. Then, the captain has to select the order in which every member of the team needed to pass to transform the sentences that the captain of the other team will show.  Maybe at this moment, you are asking to yourself: “Well, it sounds like a really good activity, but how you and Herber get involved with them?” Well, let me explain you, each had a coach that supported them, and gave advice and in somehow  helped them to transform the sentences into the “Passive Causative” and that is the answer to your question, Herber and me were the coaches of each team, Herber was the coach of Germany and I was the coach of Brazil.

However, we really enjoyed the activity, we had a lot of fun and the best part of all these, is that by the end of the class students really got the grammar structure and they use it correctly.

Oh, if you are asking which team won? Well, it was a kind of obvious no? Brazil won!