Giving a lesson using "Signs of the Zodiac"

Today I had a new task in the classroom-another challenging one. I was given a topic to generate an activity; the topic was on the zodiac signs in which I had to also introduce the adjective and noun forms. After finished the class yesterday, I spent time on preparing for materials to run an activities. The goal is to have them learn those two forms with the talking and moving in groups. I first had them work individually on finding their own sign. Prior to going right straight to the activity, I talked to them about the birthday party that we had before the lunch break. We celebrated "Turkey's" (one of the students in the classroom) and my birthday in the classroom. The teacher kindly brought in a cake and some ships to share with the students. Thus, I started talking about my sign in a chinese year and in the Zodiac one. The students were curious and enthusiastic to chip in their talks. Then, I gave out sheet of paper with the describtions of people's personalities in accordance to their birth signs. I took out the names of the signs and left only with the describtions of the zodiac signs, had them skim through and choose the one that suited with their personalities. Later on,I brought in another activity. This one was about the collocations they learned from yesterday. In order to divide them into pairs and play another grammar activity, I had prepared strips of papers with a missing half of each collocated phrase, so students had to find their other missing half by saying the word out loud. The objective behind the activity was that (1) they had a chance to review grammar points, and 2) they moved more and stayed alert. Then, I explained the next grammar activity. This time I gave out a sheet with adjectives and nouns and their meanings. What students had to do was to find the missing adjective or noun forms and make a sentence with their partner.

In conclusion, I thought I did all right. I had them talk, walk to find partners, come up to the board (use the room as much as possible).

What I would have done differently was that I should, with the adjective and noun forms, try to ask them questions that were related to situations; for example, What does a nurse have to be?" or What do you think the three things on the list are you?" or "what do the nurse need to have or be?" Then, put the adj and nouns in the sentenece. I could even ask them to write down a sentence using the adj adn the noun. Considering an hour class after lunch and after their listening test, I thought that I did ok.!

After the class ended, I discussed with my co-teacher about the teaching. She really liked the activities that I used with the collocation review in order to pair them up.