I have a demo coming up and I am really nervous. I’m teaching a few pages from the Side by Side book on present perfect and present perfect continuous with things like “take inventory” This is a group of 11 and 12 year olds that the school said has learned this before. They say they are very advanced. I have experience, and I know my grammar pretty well, but I’m looking for ideas.
Any one have any particularly good ideas for presenting this topic?
Thanks.
I’ve generally found that they’re more interested in how you interact with the kids than the meat of what you teach. If the kids respond positively to you then you’re more than halfway there. Teaching them something they already know is hardly going to get their enthusiasm, but those doing the judging are more likely just going to want to see whether you can engage the kids.
The last demo I did (I got the job) for that age group was 90% over by the time I had done my intro, set the ground rules, got a few names and ascertained the general level of the class for myself. Make it clear to your potential employers in advance that you’re going to be doing this before you do any actual teaching, and you’re covered. Just go in, make friends with the little 'orrors, and spend 5 minutes at the end going over the lesson.
If you’re going to be doing a lot of demos then it may be worth developing a little ‘standard’ intro lesson that you can tack the learning objectives for the day onto.
take inventory? for 11 year olds? have fun 
just a thought, make a list of verbs and ask Joe, have you been blah blahing lately, you could ask another kid has Joe been blah blahing lately, follow it up with how many times have you blahed in the last week, how long has it been since you blahed, etc
I just read the last post and remembered a good activity that I often use, but it’s late and I’ve just come back from the pub; don’t get offended, but I’m a bit too buggered to type the whole story.
If you have any probs, get in touch and I’ll try to recount the story to you.
Better yet, I have a lesson plan written for it at work, but you’d have to wait until Tuesday (when I return) for me to retrieve it…
Cheers… (hic!),
The Big Baou
Babou, where is it?