So about three years ago my family moved into our brand new apartment. It was one of the most exciting moments we have had as a family. Up until that point, we had always been renting. What a cool feeling it is to have a mortgage - to know that the monthly payments you make each month actually go towards something that belongs to you. Not to the pocket of your landlord.

So our first day in our spot, my son (handsome guy in the photo) and I got ready for our first breakfast in our new pad - only to discover (and much to our dismay) that amid all the boxes and crazy trips back and forth between our old spot and our new one, that we had forgotten to pack our silverware and plates!  What to do?

Well, we rooted around and found a few tupperware containers, and cooking utensils. (Why we brought this instead of the other stuff, I have no idea….) What a great time we had - totally reminded me of my camp days as a teenager when we’d have utensil meals. (Have you ever tried eating dinner with a spagetti server?)

But it was great fun, and a moment I will never foget with my son.

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So today I’ll be using this story to help my student work towards meeting a fluency goal - CEFR B1 Spoken Interaction - narrating a story while providing details and feelings.I’m going to show him the picture, and tell the story as I wrote it above. Then I’ll invite him to do the same. Tell me a story that has happened to you. Link it to a picture.

It’s so important to link classroom work with reality. I think the classes that impact the fluency development of my students the most are the ones that connect a student’s feelings and experiences to the language development process.

The more emotionally involved you become with a lesson you become, the more effective it will be. And that goes for both teacher and student!

Something to Think About:

• If you’re a teacher, what emotions could you pull out of yourself AND your students in your next lesson. Use those feelings to help you reach lesson goals.
• If you’re a student, when was the last time one of your classes made you really FEEL something with regards to the lesson?  (Hopefully it wasn’t boredom!)