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What we did in our CoC IEP 200 Class on Monday, February 11th, 2013

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Mr. Danoff's Teaching Laboratory

Details from today’s (Mon. 11 Feb. 2013) COC IEP 200 Class at the College of Chicago. You can compare what happened below with the lesson plan, heading into class. For context, please see this page with more past lesson plans for this class and all the class recaps.

NEWS & CURRENT EVENTS

Read “Al-Qaida Branch Expands Power in North Africa“ article from News for You (print edition) about Al-Qaida’s expanding power in Mali. Led to a discussion about the differences between Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

GRAMMAR IN CONTEXT 1 (FOURTH ED.)

Reviewed pages 48 to 50 together then completed exercise 11 on page 51 and read the grammar point together.

One student asked about auxiliary verb in the pages above; this resource The verb do – auxiliary and main verb was helpful for more information.

We also discussed pronouncing the /s/ and /z/ sounds, the Phonetics Flash Animation Project from University of Iowa was incredibly useful to visualize the different sounds.

SURVEY PROJECT

Reviewed everyone’s first drafts of their survey essays and then outlined the presentation they will prepare for Thursday.

COMIC BOOK

Continued reading our fifth “Fantom of the Fair” story appearing in Amazing Mystery Funnies #22 (July 1940) and the students answered the following comprehension questions:

  • Page 5: What did the gangsters do to the balls?
  • Page 6: Why does the player say “That was a close shave?”

ANSWERS:

  • Page 5: They put nitroglycerin in the balls.
  • Page 6: Becasue he would have died if the Fantom didn’t save him.

FICTION

Finished ‘The Old Oak Bowl’ story from Antoinette Moses’ Frozen Pizza and Other Slices of Life and the students answered the following questions:

PAGE 24

  1. Is Walker an English name? Where did it come from?
  2. What did Mr. Walker realize?
  3. Give 2 examples of how the country is always changing.

Answers:

  1. Walker is not an English name, it is from the Netherlands.
  2. He realized that England has always been a changing country with lots of new immigrants. 
  3. Any 2 of: The Saxons, Romans and Normans immigrated to England (answers on the page itself).

PAGE 25

  1. How does the first paragraph of the story on page 18 apply to Mr. Walker at the end?

We were still discussing this question as class ended so the answer will come tomorrow!

HOMEWORK

Survey Project:

  1. Write the second draft of your essay
  2. Finish the first draft of the first 5 slids of your presentation (Introduction, Research, Results, Analysis, Conclusion)
  • Study for Final Exam next Thursday (Download study guide)
  • Grammar in Context 1: pages 51 to 53
  • Fiction: read/review pages 24 to 25 of “Frozen Pizza”
  • News: read “Debate over Sick Days …” article and write a 3 sentence summary

COPYRIGHT NOTES

  • Please respect the copyright plus terms and conditions of all links, books and media not by Charlie Danoff.
  • Unless otherwise noted, class recap text Copyright © 2013 by Charlie Danoff. Rights given a CC Zero 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

UPDATE

  • CHICAGO — 11 Feb 2013 10:16 pm — Added additional links to the grammar section.
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Posted in class review, COC IEP 200, Collaborative Lesson Planning, ELL, ELT, ESL, TESL, TESOL, The College of Chicago

What we did in our CoC IEP 200 Class on Monday February 4th

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Mr. Danoff's Teaching Laboratory

Details from today’s (Mon. 4 Feb. 2013) COC IEP 200 Class at the College of Chicago. You can compare what happened below with the lesson plan, heading into class. For context, please see this page with more past lesson plans for this class and all the class recaps.

NEWS & CURRENT EVENTS

Read “France shuns use of Twitter ‘hashtag’” article from Breaking News English. Interesting article and subsequent discussion about loan words and universal languages.

GRAMMAR IN CONTEXT

Started a new lesson today and learned about the simple present tense.

SURVEY PROJECT

Checked in students draft of their 9 survey questions and edited them. Gave them back to students so they could do their final drafts tonight.

NORTHSTAR

Reviewed and discussed Unit 4 pages 86 to 87.

COMIC BOOK

Finished our fourth “Fantom of the Fair” story from Amazing Mystery Funnies Vol. 3 #1 and got closer to learning the true identity of the Fantom!

FICTION

Discussed pages 15 and 16 of ‘Two Worlds’ from Antoinette Moses’ Frozen Pizza and Other Slices of Life. The two main characters were spending time in Tate Modern and Rosie offered her opinions of the Dali’s Lobster Telephone and Henry Moore’s ‘Recumbent Figure.’

HOMEWORK

  • NorthStar 4: “B GRAMMAR” exercises on pages 84 to 85
  • News: Read “AFTER TRAGEDY, NEWTOWN DEBATES A SCHOOL’S FUTURE” News for You article and write a 3 sentence summary of the main idea and some details from the article
  • Grammar: Do page 45
  • Survey Project: Finish the final draft of your survey
  • Study for Quiz 3 on Thursday: News for You Newtown vocab words, Vocab Words from NorthStar Unit 4 page 74 and Grammar pages 31 to 33, 41-45
  • Fiction: read/review pages 15 and 16 of “Frozen Pizza …”

COPYRIGHT NOTES

  • Please respect the copyright plus terms and conditions of all links,books and media not by Charlie Danoff.
  • Unless otherwise noted, class recap text Copyright © 2013 by Charlie Danoff. Rights given a CC Zero 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
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Posted in Breaking News English, class review, COC IEP 200, Collaborative Lesson Planning, ELL, ELT, ESL, Hashtag, TESL, TESOL, The College of Chicago, Twitter

What we did in our CoC IEP 200 Class on Thursday January 31st

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Mr. Danoff's Teaching Laboratory

Details from today’s (Thu. 31 Jan. 2013) COC IEP 200 Class at the College of Chicago. You can compare what happened below with the lesson plan, heading into class. For context, please see this page with more past lesson plans for this class and all the class recaps.

NEWS & CURRENT EVENTS

Read “British 4G mobile spectrum auction underway” from Wikinews. Was the first time we read a Wikinews article in my class and, understandably, it was more difficult for the students than the news written for ESL students we’ve been reading (Breaking News English, News for You). Students rated the difficulty from “so-so” to “difficult,” yet everyone was able to answer the questions correctly! 

That was very encouraging to me, though I will be switching back primarily to ESL based news, because the topics are really interesting and they already have wonderful activities developed for each article.

  • Read article online in HTML on wikinews.org by clicking here
  • Download article PDF by clicking here [620.2 kB, from danoff.org CC BY 2.5]
  • Listen to the article audio below (courtesy of Wikimedia, source):

QUIZ 2

Students took this block’s second quiz on the vocabulary and grammar we’ve learned thus far.

SURVEY PROJECT

Students wrote all 9 of their questions for last night’s homework. Today in class each student presented them to the class and got feedback from their peers. I also wrote notes on each draft for the student to fix over the weekend.

NORTHSTAR

Reviewed and discussed Unit 4 pages 81 to 83.

FAST LISTENING

We completed the following 2 listening activities from Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab:

COMIC BOOK

Read the next two pages of our fourth “Fantom of the Fair” story from Amazing Mystery Funnies Vol. 3 #1 this one is set in a coal mine and answered the comprehension questions in the lesson plan.

FICTION

Began by reviewing page 12  of ‘Two Worlds’ from Antoinette Moses’ Frozen Pizza and Other Slices of Life (discussed yesterday) focusing on the narrative shift in point of view. Once it was explained in simple terms the students comprehended the concept. I assume it was not too difficult, because they were comfortable with the idea of narrative shifts from consuming art in their own cultures.

We then read pages 13 and 14 together. One student asked about the word “cafés” as she knew coffee was referred to as coffee in English, not café as it is in her home language. I explained they were referring to coffee shops and the confusing plural aspect was in reference to multiple coffee shops.

“Cafe Terrace at Night” by Vincent van Gogh [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

MUSIC

As students were working through the news article Aviici’s new track helped them along (hat tip thisSongisSick.com)

HOMEWORK

  • NorthStar 4: “C WRITING” exercises on pages 86 to 87
  • News: Read “France shuns use of Twitter ‘hashtag’” Breaking News English article and listen to the audio mp3 then complete
  • a the True/False and Synonym Match activities
  • Survey Project: Write the final draft of your 9 survey questions
  • Study for Quiz 3 next Thursday: Vocab Words from NorthStar Unit 4 page 74 and Grammar pages 31
  • to 33
  • Fiction: read/review pages 13 and 14 of “Frozen Pizza …”

COPYRIGHT NOTES

  • Please respect the copyright plus terms and conditions of all links,books and media not by Charlie Danoff.
  • Unless otherwise noted, class recap text Copyright © 2013 by Charlie Danoff. Rights given a CC Zero 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
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Posted in Aviici, class review, COC IEP 200, Collaborative Lesson Planning, ELL, ELT, ESL, TESL, TESOL, The College of Chicago

What we did in our CoC IEP 200 Class on Tuesday January 29th

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Mr. Danoff's Teaching Laboratory

Details from today’s (Tue. 29 Jan. 2013) COC IEP 200 Class at the College of Chicago. You can compare what happened below with the lesson plan, heading into class. For context, please see this page with more past lesson plans for this class and all the class recaps.

NEWS & CURRENT EVENTS

Read “U.S. allows women to fight in wars“ from Breaking News English. Again, having the students read the article before class led to a livelier in-class chat!

FAST LISTENING

We completed the following 2 listening activities from Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab:

SURVEY PROJECT

Students turned in their articles with summaries and then I taught them how to write survey questions, which they’ll do tonight for homework.

COMIC BOOK

Started our next “Fantom of the Fair” story from Amazing Mystery Funnies Vol. 3 #1 this one is set in a coal mine.

NORTHSTAR

Reviwed and discussed Unit 4 pages 76 to 80.

FICTION

Worked through pages 7 to 10 of ‘Two Worlds’ from Antoinette Moses’ Frozen Pizza and Other Slices of Life. Some vocabulary that arose:

  • voice-over, n. a film, documentary, and/or TV show where pictures are narrated by an off-camera actor or actress
  • close to home, adv. (idiomatic expression) affecting people close to, or within, one’s family circle.

On page 10 she describes walking the Tate Modern and the Globe Theatre, both of which you can see in this photo:

image

“Tate Modern et Millenium Bridge” by Bernard Gagnon (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

and below is a photo from inside the Tate Modern’s past exhibition “The Unilever Series: Olafur Eliasson: The Weather Project.”

image

“Tatemodernpowerstation“ by Wikipedia User:Bjoss [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5], via Wikipedia.

HOMEWORK

  • Grammar in Context: Do pages 38 to 39, aside from exercise 3 on page 38
  • NorthStar 4: Do pages 81 to 83
  • News: Read “Fashion brand makes perfume for babies” Breaking News article and answer True/False and Synonym Match Questions
  • Study for Quiz 2 on Thursday: Vocab Words from last week and Grammar pages 31 to 33
  • Survey Project: Write your first 3 survey questions
  • Read/review pages 9 to 10 of “Frozen Pizza …”

COPYRIGHT NOTES

Definition Sources [CC BY-SA 3.0 Licensed]:

voice-over. (2012, December 14). Wiktionary, The Free Dictionary. Retrieved 22:14, January 29, 2013 from http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=voice-over&oldid=19008078. 

close to home. (2012, May 9). Wiktionary, The Free Dictionary. Retrieved 22:14, January 29, 2013 from http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=close_to_home&oldid=16790599.

  • Please respect the copyright plus terms and conditions of all links,books and media not by Charlie Danoff.
  • Unless otherwise noted, class recap text Copyright © 2013 by Charlie Danoff. Rights given a CC Zero 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
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Posted in class review, COC IEP 200, ELL, ELT, ESL, Tate Modern, TESL, TESOL, The College of Chicago