This was a bit of a tense hour. This was being observed and graded. We student-teachers needed to prepare a lesson that had both of us teaching in equal amounts.

Blocking off the time was easy, but thinking of a lesson that encompassed the advice our sponsor teacher gave us was bit of extra work.

Our first activity was Two Truths and a Lie. Students had to think about three statements that had to with culture: in particular sports and food. I did an example for the students, and they guessed it first try.

The students participated well. I had to remember to allow the students time to think. One of strengths is I can fill up “dead space” with improvised talk, but this becomes a weakness in teaching, as this is time for the students to be thinking. So, it took a couple minutes for the students to think of statements to use for the game. I had to hold myself back from trying to speak then. It is hard! The game ran a bit long, but it was important to get the students to all speak for this portion. It was our warm-up, and we wanted the students thinking and speaking going into the next activity.

We had some material left over from the previous week, which was discussing how sports can be both positive and negative for cultures. In our case, it had to do with how sports brings people together, but also divides people’s opinions. This was taught by my partner, so I watched the lesson. All the students had a chance to speak, so it worked well.

The last activity was about Marmite: a British food. Rather, the activity was about difficult to eat foods, and how these foods could be culturally important. Granted, I do not understand how foods that require an acquired taste are important, but the topic was something the students could bite into easily. We watched an entertaining video of Japanese people attempting to eat Marmite, and the horror these people experienced in the first tasting of it. We spoke for a couple minutes on eccentric foods the students’ own cultures had, and this was a minor hit.

We moved into a debate and discussion. Initially, we wanted to split the group into pairs, but a student had left (before our lesson started), and so we were left with three students, which forced us to change up how we were going to do this. We had two questions, but only enough time for one. “If people are served a food they don’t like, the person served the food can: accept the food or reject it”. I really like the students’ ability to respond to the discussion, and they all contributed here.

The lesson was successful, but it is a shame we did not have a full class. Hopefully, the rest of the students begin to show up.