Professional development | Book Club class no.3 – WSI

Students study poems 'Goldfish' and 'The Mosquito'
 (Alan Jackson/D. H. Lawrence).

One very good skills lesson.

In this class learners saw a large picture of a goldfish via Google Images then listened in horseshoe seating as I related to them my own story about a camping trip in The Blue Mountains, Australia.

I asked the learners that over the next few minutes they recall an incident of their own involving either fish or mosquitoes.

As learners thought back over fish and mosquitoes in their life, I played a Monty Python clip via YouTube,  "Mosquito Hunting" followed by another clip of some interesting looking fish, that their memory may be jogged.

They moved themselves into groups of four and recounted their stories. Everyone had a story. The materials, it seemed, had activated the schemata.

I let this go on for at least ten minutes.

We then listened to a reading of two poems. Firstly, 'Goldfish' by Alan Jackson and 'The Mosquito' by D. H. Lawrence (which I'd had recorded by one of the staff at the centre). We listened to the first poem three times. In between listenings learners tried to piece together fragments by sharing what they had  heard and understood. The same for the second poem. I handed them each a copy of the poetry they had just listened to and asked them to mark anything either interesting, difficult, or similar between the two poems – I wrote instructions on the board in case of any misunderstanding.

Learners worked studying alone. 

Key moment: some students from higher-levels finished quickly and started already discussing meaning of the poetry.

Therefore, I mixed the class so that there were new people at every table. They discussed the words or sentences they had marked in the poetry, which eventually grew into a wider discussion of the meaning of the poems.

After about five minutes worth of feedback and some varied interpretation of 'The Mosquito' and 'Goldfish', I made some comments, announced the next class and handed out materials to be discussed there only to those who said they would come back for it.