Apperception: Taking off before starting Your Lesson…

Apperception: Taking off before starting Your Lesson…

Once I came to class, I walked in lazily. Just like a half drunken man from a drinking bar, I wore my round head and dressed so ill-mannered… then I sat improperly in front of my class in Elementary… then I started talking.

The kids were so surprised; they kept in silent for a moment.  I bet they had million things in their head. They wanted to say something but they hold for them self…

Well… that was just my acting before I started my lesson. That day, I was about to teach manner and proper value in society.  Then I started to ask them personally. “What do you think of me?”and “Do you want me to teach you lads?”… and I acted so strange… just imagine as Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirate’s Caribbean movie comes to your class and teaching you. What comes in your mind though?

Today we know that school is the most boring activity for our kids. They prefer playing games to sitting in their classroom for studying anything.  So what we need as teacher is merely making a great start before lesson.  Take for an example; if you travel by air, for the first time especially, what is the exciting moment that could thrill your blood up and down? Is that taking off time? When you are on the air? Or even a moment before your plane land? I bet your answer will be at the moment I could call “The Take off”

So does happen when we want to teach our class, we have to make ourselves as the centre of all eyes, get students attention and many more. So I would like to call this apperception before teaching. And acting is only simple example. There are a lot of example we can do for making our class more interesting.

How do we do this?

First, we have to know what is the thematic unit or what will we talk about in the lesson. Next, we choose a filler or icebreaker that suits to our theme. Then, not to forget to involved the kids when doing this, grab their participation and interest for about 5 to 10 minutes times.

Besides acting, there are some ideas we can use for apperception.

Riddle

I like to use one or two riddles. One is very simple riddles and the second is rather hard where they should think deeper when answering the second.  There are a lot of fun and unpredictable riddles on the internet. It is a very good activity for teaching English. 

Take one example: 

How do you spell my name?.... I bet they will spell as what my name is but the true answer should be like this M – Y – N – A – M - E

How would you read this: YYUR YYUB ICUR YY4ME..

They should read as this… too wise you are, too wise you be, I see you are, too wise for me…

Funny and interesting picture.

Sometimes I bring a picture to the class. And ask the kids to tell what they do see.

What do you see in this picture?....

Are you sure?

Personal Story or incident.

We are not teaching our kid to spread a rumor or gossip. But we like them to have a reflection and learn cause and effect and solve the problem from our daily life. To be more interesting,  you can also ask one of them to share their life story.. as long as they are not in mind.

And teacher is not a perfect creature who never made any mistake, is it?...

Comparing the past and present of something.

We could talk about today technology, way of life, global issues and many things here.

Number and puzzle.

Like the one bellow…

To help them just give them the clue how they solve the puzzle…

 

The answer is add all section and you get the number as the answer. What is it? 6

 Brainstorming about what they like, world events or issue and many more…

One thing for sure, we should have a very good communication skills. We should use our intonation, body language or gesture and not to forget we should appreciate all their answer and thought. We should never judge them wrong but we should correct their thought and answer.

Try those and Good luck.