The third one!!! February 17th, 2011.

Hi everyone this is the report of my third class… This time I was asked to teach the grammar part, and let me tell you that it was a little bit harder than the previous classes I taught. I had to cover the negative and interrogative form of the simple present, so it was kind of complicated because when teaching grammar you must think a lot about a way to make it enjoyable for the students. I began my class performing a warm-up activity named “Forbidden say YES or NOT”, and I asked my students to use yes-no questions as: Do you like English? Do you live with your family? But I did not tell them that they were actually using the target structure in the game.  It was a really nice activity because they were walking around the classroom interacting with their peers, and they actually got the idea about making questions using the simple present.

When the warm-up was over, was the part for explaining and teaching the grammar part. I used a song containing the structure of the simple present in the negative form, and I implemented the PDP framework in this section. I also brought some chats to the class containing important points of the topic, but I did not use those charts until the PDP framework was over.

 The song was pretty old, but fortunately the students liked it. The first time I played it I asked students to pay attention to it and think about a question I had provided previously, but when the song finished playing I asked them about the answer and the only thing I listened from them was: I did not understand anything! At that moment I felt worried because I was thinking that my class would become a total failure, but when I provided the lyrics of the song everything changed because students could read as the song was playing, and they actually got the idea.

Provide a song was a clever idea because in that way students did not feel they were actually learning a grammar structure. My tutor teacher told me that he liked that idea, but the only thing I forgot was to ask to the students for new vocabulary or any doubts they might had about the song´s lyrics.  He explained to me that I should be aware of that next time I use it because he said that some students might have a doubt about the meaning of a word but they would never ask, so they will have that doubt forever.

At the end I felt satisfied with the work I did in this class because students could reach the goal I was expecting them to reach. Teaching grammar is not an easy task because if students do not get the idea in this part, they will not be able to do a good job in the practice part. I think it was a challenge for me, but fortunately it had a good ending. ;-)