That's What The Water Made Me

This is just a quick update on my drumming. I have learned the raw structure of the song We Weren't Born to Follow, but of course that does not mean that I will stop practising it as you can improve on it all the time. I've been playing the drums in the music room 1-2 times a week, every week. Recently I started playing a new song from Bon Jovi's new album call That's What The Water Made Me. It's great!

Paradiddles, singles and doubles

Finally! I have managed to play singles to doubles, doubles to singles, singles to single paradiddles and doubles to paradiddles at 60 bpm. Furthermore I have also been practicing a new song called 'Good Guys Don't Always Wear White' by Bon Jovi. However, I have also played song such as We Weren't Born to Follow and Thunderstruck. Keeping up with the music is not a huge problem anymore, but I am focusing on timing the fills right and using different fills. Also I have found a great site to teach me some easy grooves and beats, such as some interesting ghost notes grooves and some floor tom ones as well. Therefore my plan for next time is to keep practicing the songs and learn the new rudiments I've found.

The reflection on the second french lesson

In my view it went much better than the first lesson, but this time there was much more focus on learning than last time but there were still some games. I think that they have learned very much vocabulary over the two lessons of French we gave, as we tested them in the first few minutes of the lesson and most of them achieved 80% and above which is very good. The only negative in the planning was most probably that we had to improvise a game of drawing and guessing, because the presentation did not last as long as we expected it to last. However, in the end everybody enjoyed it and we solved this situation well. I think, that my public speech and teaching skills have definitely increased as I was not worried anymore to stand up in front of the class.

Let us once more see the opinions of the students collected in the end of the lesson:

"Great lesson! With funny game & questions!"

"Thank you for teaching us!!! I really liked when we drew the pictures and people had to guess them."

"Thank you for the lesson, I had fun, it was funny and now I remember the fruits and vegetables. Thank you."

As you can see, they really liked the drawing game, which I did and also the vocabulary, which will be really useful to them. In my view this was an excellent experience and I enjoyed it very much too.

The Lesson Plan for the second French Lesson

According to my reflection, we created the plan for the second lesson by us.

First of all, we are going to test them on the vocabulary of the previous lesson as we set that for homework last time.

Then I will introduce them to the vocabulary of this lesson and also do the repetition vocabulary game, which also helps them with their pronounciation.

After that we had a huge presentation which Mark will make an idiomatic presentation and I will conduct the game in which they had to guess how they end, and as they are all to do with fruits and vegetables, they are connected to our previous lesson.

This presentation will approximately take the whole of the lesson so we did not plan more.

Reflection on the first French lesson

I will honestly say that the lesson went much better than I expected and the year sevens enjoyed it without a doubt.  We managed to run the lesson as we planned, but I think that we should have planned somethings in between the main activities. Furthermore, I think that we managed to teach them many words, but we will definitely see in the next lesson. I also think that we should have given out some kind of rewards for completing exercises successfully to students.

The above is my reflection on the lesson, but in the end we have collected the views and ideas of the students as well with small cards given to them in the beginning of the lesson.

Here are some quotes from the students:

"I liked the lesson because you taught us many fruits and many adjectives. I have learned many things today."

'I liked the lesson because it was fun and I learned many new things."

"I really enjoyed this lesson. Next time you might explain more carefully."

According to the students' opinions, I can deduce that they enjoyed the lesson but as I mentioned it above they agree with me that we should plan more for next time.

Lesson Plan for the first French lesson

We spent some time last week to plan the lesson we are going to give to the year sevens this Tuesday.

First up we are going to have an introductory section, where they can introduce themselves and we can too. We are going to tell them to create name cards from the cards we give them.

Secondly I will introduce the vocabulary of fruits. Eg: cherry, apple, pear, orange, grapefruit etc.

Then I will play a vocabulary game with them where they have to pronounce the words and they say the words on the board to which I point and then I erase one at a time and they have to remember the word that was there.

After that, the students will be introduced to more vocabulary by Mark.

Then, I will play a game with them where there are pictures on the board and two students come up and they have to touch the picture of the corresponding food which is said.

Next Mark will teach them phrases such as "Apples are round" or "Grapefruits are sour".

After that I will teach them how to pronounce the phrases and get them to create some with my help if needed.

For homework they will have to learn the vocabulary for next lesson as we will test them on it.

Planning of the French lesson

Before the midterm holidays, me and Mark have decided to give two French lessons to the year seven French group of our school. Since it was their first year of studying French, it was a good idea to expand their vocabulary and possible break away from the habit of their normal lessons just for entertainment and more effective learning.

So in order to make this lesson possible we had to take several things in account:

• the lessons could not be when we have French so we had to communicate with the teachers whose lessons we will miss.
• we had to gather the materials for the lesson
• we had to plan the lesson itself
• we had to devise a technique for getting the reflection (ours' and the students')
• we had to learn some vocabulary and research the web for teaching French
• We also had to plan some games in order to keep them entertained and make sure that they were learning

When we were planning this, our aim was to make the year seven student benefit from our lessons and improve their pronounciation and their vocabulary by much. Furthermore, we also wanted to make sure that they enjoyed it too.