The Fukuoka Study Group meeting held recently was exciting with many enthusiastic teachers. The topic for this meeting was “How to do a complete lesson with the MAT METHOD”. We usually show how to do parts of a lesson at our meetings, however, some teachers wanted to know how to put it all together in one 50-minute lesson. The teachers were the students and were able to experience how students feel and learn.
The lesson was based on the premise that the children were in the third to fifth grades and had been learning for about 6-7 months. The lesson was based on Let’s Go Level 1, Unit 6, teaching the prepositions. Using the MAT Pie Chart for lesson progression. The following is how the lesson flowed:
1. Warm-up with the song, Seven Steps, using numbers 11-17 instead of 1-7.
MAT VERBS with Q&A patterns using can, everyday, like to
2. Greetings were done with a Leader who asked Review questions to his classmates.
3. Expressions were covered with the IIEEC Expression Cards in a Role Play as
students talked about themselves (name, age, grade, etc.) and used expressions
such as, I’m sorry/That’s all right.
4. Review is like using sub-main sentences, and usually it is done from Lesson One.
However, as the lessons progress, it is difficult to review everything, so lessons that
the students have problems with are focus on. There were comments that teachers
cannot spend time on Review, however, this is a crucial point in reinforcing the
lessons and must be done in each lesson to get students to learn it well.
5. The Main Lesson covered the prepositions, in, on, under, by, behind using
gestures. Then they were practiced with the picture cards. The patterns used were,
Where is ~? and It’s (on) ~.
Teaching with the MAT techniques made this lesson easy to teach and easy for the
students to learn. The CD was used next, and tips on using it were given.
6. MAT Reading & Writing. The MAT Vowels were taught with gestures and
combined with the MAT Phonics Consonants to get students reading 3-letter
words.
7. One-minute Review covered what was learned in today’s lesson. This should be
done in every lesson to reinforce their memory.
8. Farewell is brief but make comments on how well the students did and other announcements.
A sample lesson plan was handed to the participants for their reference, and they could revise it to suit their own lessons.
Later, everyone was divided into groups and each group was conducted according to how well they know the MAT METHOD. New teachers learned how to shuffle the cards correctly and others tried doing the lesson. The neck was how to do the MAT 6-second DRILL Games efficiently and correctly.
The next Fukuoka Study Group Meeting will be held in July.
“Seeing is believing!” Come and find out for yourself!