Vocab Lesson

So, I wasn't able to teach much vocabulary last week. I was planning on teaching it towards the end of the week but I got sick and had to cancel most of classes on Thurs/Fri. Therefore, I incorporate vocabulary into a lesson today in my session with the 5th grader. The topic of today's lesson was: I'm sick. The goal was for him to be able to talk about his symptoms and correctly guess what someone's ailment is. By the end of the hour, he was able to do so, using I am ..., I have ... and I ....

As a warm up, I asked him why I missed last week's session, and told him about my ailment and symptoms. Then, I used a mind map in the beginning to get a gist of how much vocabulary he already knew. To my relief, he knew what a mind map was and so I didn't have to explain what it is to him. In the middle, I wrote SICK and he wrote illnesses and symptoms (new word). The ones he wrote on his own were words already in his word bank. I presented new words like, vomit and fever. I can't remember how many new words there were. I'll have to take a look at the sheet. In the article written by Nation, it said that only a few words should be introduced. I think I exceeded that quota. Even though we practiced (charades/guessing game), words like fever and symptom weren't retained in the production stage (role-play). It may have been due to the fact that the practice activities didn't really go as planned. This week being our second week together, I think he's gotten a lot more relaxed and is more comfortable with me so he goofs around a lot more and can't seem to concentrate. I know, children have short attention spans. Therefore, he couldn't focus and didn't really want to follow my rules. He didn't stick to the words on the sheet and started to talk about other ailments, like memory loss (amnesia). I had to try so hard to get him focused. It was a little exhuasting.

Overall, I think the vocabulary exercises were successful and enjoyable. If I were to teach it again, I might prepare pictures (I think children like pictures) and do a mind map with pictures and talking, instead of writing.