Last night the class went fairly smoothly. We started with a dictation. Did a few pages from the workbook. Worked on a few pages from the book. Then we had a break. After the break, I had a puzzle ready I thought would be rather challenging. It was a word search puzzle. Giving a puzzle with words running left to right as well as right to left is hard enough for a native speaker, never mind a student at the lowest level of ESL. I expected this might actually be too hard, and before class I considered holding off on it. Instead, about four people completed the puzzle within 10 minutes. It occurred to me that the book has a lot of extra work online. So as students finished the puzzle, I had them log on to the site, and find the activities. This worked and the students got into the work online. There were a few technological glitches (a bad set of headphones, occasional crashes), but nothing that would upset the applecart too much.
I think for me thing I learn from this is to always have more than I think I need even when I think I have more than enough. I mean, this is something I know. Having taught the upper levels for years now, switching down to a very low level poses some real challenges. It is easier to have fewer activities in a higher level. Three to four things work fine for anything above Intermediate 1. It's a different story with the lower levels. One needs to provide more activities, more change-ups, but more repetition is needed as well. I lucked out last night. I can't depend on that tonight or tomorrow or any other night.
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