Reply To: ETC – 2020

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#12164
Shelley Zansler
Spectator

Site: ETC
Lesson Title: Let’s go to Fred Meyer!
Date of Class: Mar 11, 2020
Time of Class: 8:15 AM
MC: AmandaAdventurousTraveler
DJ: ShelleySincereLearner
Assistants/Shadowers/Auditioner:
Module: Kindai Senshu Program
How Many Learners: 7
Materials Status (loyalty cards, alphabet sheets, etc):

Self Evaluation

Preparation: Forgot to Show Up (1) vs. Every Hair In Place (10) = 6
Technique: Completely Incompetent (1) vs. Flawless Delivery (10) = 5
Engagement: Snoring Loudly (1) vs. Absolutely Riveted (10) = 5
Connection: Open Hostility (1) vs. Kumbayah (10) = 6
Poise: Charlie Brown (1) vs. Prince (10) = 5
Reflection: “It was ok.” (1) vs. Life-changing Epiphany (10) = 7

What happened (as short or as long as you like, but be specific): Everyone was pretty tired today, so things were a little low energy. We also had to switch up the lesson plan again, but we rolled with it as best we could. It was a generally okay day, with nothing super great and nothing super terrible.

We started off by asking everyone how they were feeling. Everyone said sleepy. Then we did an action movement activity to get everyone moving a bit, which went pretty well. We were originally going to have the learners work on thank you cards on Friday, but we found that they were going to be working on them today after English class, so Amanda pulled together some card prompts while I worked with the learners on choral response for the “Me!” song.

Learners took a little bit to catch on to the card prompts–we had to directly ask each learner things like, “What did you enjoy doing with your host family?” for them to produce answers. One learner wrote the prompts but left spaces blank because, as he explained (with translation assistance from the ETC coordinator), they’re only halfway through their stay, so they can’t yet know if a food or activity is their favorite. That was funny, and it was nice to see that at least one student was interested in writing a meaningful card.

Then we did some grocery list choral response and walked to Fred Meyer. We split into teams to find the prices of the items on the grocery list. I was with Team Star, and Amanda was Team Green Miso Soup–emphasis on *green* miso. The activity started out pretty strong. Once my team got the hang of finding if prices were “EA” or “LB” things picked up a bit. It seemed like most of the learners fizzled out toward the end, so the activity may have benefited from being a bit shorter. It was funny to find, in discussing afterward, that my team and Amanda’s team had very different approaches to the activity. Team GMS went to an item and just picked whatever price they saw first, whereas Team Star did a lot of hemming and hawing about which yogurts or cucumbers to write down, even if there was an easier answer. For instance, we needed to know how much two cucumbers would cost. There was one type of cucumber priced in pairs (2 for $3), but there was *another* type of cucumber that was priced individually. These situations slowed Team Star a lot but lent a lot of opportunities to discuss “cheap” and “expensive”. It was similar for things on sale and prices with coupons. Of course, they opted to write the price for a frozen pizza that was on sale, a two-fer deal, AND had a coupon price. Boy! Haha. It was fun to watch them catch on, though.

Everyone played rock, paper, scissors to pick a bakery treat we’d all eat. Somehow we ended up with nearly-frozen doughnuts. We finished class by pairing up to ask each other “How much are _____?” “______ are $X.XX” and then listened to Taylor Swift while eating freshly microwaved doughnuts. Everyone was pretty wiped out, but some were moving along with the music and singing a bit, even without their lyrics. That was a nice thing to see at the end of a low-energy day.