Course Meeting 2: Thursday, 28th February

We had seven students present, and were joined by one of the US buddies later on in the session. The lesson plan is out on the course web site (Meeting 2 link), together with a couple of pages about the different activities we completed.

We started in Peer Gynt with a run-through of the evening's activities: Picking out the Porkies, practice presentations & a practice role play. I also took the students through the marking criteria for Assessments 1 & 2 (take a look at the Business Pages section of the course web site) as a preparation for the evening's activities.

Then we moved over to the campfire, where I told them tall stories of my experience as a teacher, slipping in one outright lie. The actual task for the students was to practise interjecting comments and questions of their own, but they also had fun trying to work out which one was the lie (they failed miserably!). You can read which stories I told in the Meeting 2 section of the course web site.

The next activity was for the students to present their experiences on SL to each other (in one group of 3 and another of 4). Then they had to produce a summary to present at plenary session. One group stayed around the campfire, whilst the other moved to Yggrasil, where they could sit around a table (I haven't worked out how to send the tables up into the air yet!). That way, they didn't disturb each other whilst they spoke … but they were sufficiently close to each other not to waste time when they met up again.

I learned a new technique for monitoring: at the campfire I hovered in the air above them, and was thus able to hear, without being an obtrusive presence; at Yggrasil it was even more fun, since I could stand on the canopy and hear without being seen at all! In general the technology worked even better this time - no-one had any technical problems, and we're working out an etiquette of turning off your mike when you're not actually talking (so we hear less about the domestic arrangements of the students as we work!).

The last activity was the first practice role play: Poisoning the pigeons in the park (thanks to Tom Lehrer!). You can read about the situation on the course web site. Once again, they worked in two groups. I briefed everyone in Peer Gynt before we got going and allocated people to roles.

We used Yggrasil again, and I sent the first group off there first to get themselves sat down and prepare for the activity. Derek had turned up by this time and followed what we did with great interest. We used the convention that the active participants sat down, whilst the observers remained standing, and concentrated their attention on the inputs of the person who was playing the same role as themselves.

The first group were very combative and communicative - but not so good at using the right kind of social discourse language. Derek gave his feedback too about how he experienced the tone of their conversation - and he said all the right things about needing more 'lubrication' to avoid insulting people. I gave the observers (students) the opportunity to give feedback first and then I gave my overall feedback.

The second group was then very subdued, and incredibly polite and careful with each other! Perfect! It gave me the opportunity to talk about calibrating your language properly (we're going to need a session about this next time).

After I signed off, some of the students carried on with individual sessions with their US buddies. I recorded the podcast, made an electronic copy of 'what you said …' and amended the web pages (which I'd managed to put on line only just before Meeting 2).

Things get a bit more relaxing now, so I'm hoping that everything will be up to date in good time for next time (when I'm actually going to be allocating marks to Assessment 1 and giving feedback …).