Pete on "The Evolution of Conversation"

Pete reflects on one full year of the conversation group:

I came up with the idea of a conversation group in the fall, because many students needed conversation practice. After consulting with the Program Coordinator, we decided to have it during sixth period lunch—because the majority of our students and virtually all of the newcomers had sixth period lunch. I was concerned that it would be difficult for the students to concentrate in our room, so I approached some teachers, and eventually, one teacher agreed to let us use a classroom during lunch.

I began the group with activities and games for several different levels: beginning, intermediate and advanced. I went to advisories every week to encourage students to come and participate. Three to five students would come, so I was able to give them a lot of individual attention. After a few weeks, only the newcomers remained, and they thought of the group as a class, so, for a while, I approached it as a class, and did a brief lesson—usually a grammar topic with a focus on speaking.

In February, we decided to move the group back to 217B. I made a new flyer and called the group “Conversation Corner” because the set up was similar (in the front right corner of the room) to the after school reading group on Mondays, which had been going very well. The approach was to have the students sit in a circle and discuss topics each week that would work for different levels of English speakers. Many students had become very used to doing homework, or socializing with their friends, or working on the computers during this time, so it was, and has remained difficult to get them to participate. The nice thing about it is that we can sometimes draw a student in as he or she comes into the room.

Recently, I have started using conversation games again with the students—like Conversation Tic-Tac-Toe. Students choose to be “x” or “o” and then choose a square and answer a corresponding question, or they complete a sentence correctly, in order to get the “x” or “o” for the box they select. The students have been enjoying this format, and I think making it more of a game is a fun way to end the year for the group.