April 24, 2012

We had another gray, cool morning for the second day of the ETM. Corrie was already there as well as Tahmina, but no Aziza with the laptop to hook up to the projector. She came in at five minutes to 9:00 and two of the teachers were late in arriving. I did my presentation on “Perceptual Styles”, but had little time to carry out the activities that went with it except for the quiz and identifying the various strategies used in the classroom. I hope to have a chance to expand on it tomorrow prior to their lesson planning session. Corrie took over to do two very successful speaking activities and then we went to lunch next door where we shared our table with one of the teachers from Gharm who is trying to arrange for our transportation there this weekend.

It was my turn again and tried two different grammar games that could be used to review specific points. They both fell flat as the teachers couldn’t understand the rules for playing “The Sentence Auction”, bidding according to whether the sentences are grammatically correct or not,  or simple board games with the instructions clearly printed at the top of the board. In fact, one of the participants wrote on the feedback form that he didn’t like the board games because they were “boring”. Corrie continued with writing activities that included a thesis statement and two supporting paragraphs. There wasn’t enough time to listen to what they had written.

All participants requested to be shown where the new national library is and where the American Corner has relocated to. I’ll be taking them there tomorrow after the closing ceremony. Ruth will be joining me as Corrie has classes tomorrow. I had to carry back all the materials I had brought in yesterday and felt extremely tired all of a sudden.

It was back to the house to prepare another presentation on lesson planning, request final evaluation forms to be printed and burn some CDs of the children’s songs Ruth will be presenting tomorrow. I also signed all the certificates so I can drop them off at the American Corner tomorrow. A most exhausting day indeed.