Third class of the period!!! March 24th, 2011.

Hey people once again I´m here to share with you my teaching experiences. The first thing I want to do this time is to thank my classmates for making such a great work with the lesson plan of this unit. It was so useful and helped me a lot by the time of preparing my class.  

Let me tell you that today I had an excellent class because I could feel that my students enjoy my class. I started with a warm-up activity that was perfect to introduce the topic I was going to teach: “Technology and Gadgets.” To perform this activity, students were running and walking around the classroom, and by the time I touched one of them s/he had 10 seconds to say the name of an innovating gadget many people use nowadays; for example: Cell phones, computers, etc.  I guess this was one of the parts I liked the most because I could introduce the topic in a way they had fun. Students were willing to participate, and at the end they did not feel bored at all. The warm-up activity took 10 minutes of my class, but it helped me to get my students attention.

For the next activity I grouped my students into four groups, and I provided each group with a piece of paper containing specific information about a gadget that was really innovating. The purpose of this was to make them think about the technological advances of these modern times and share ideas with the whole class. Students did an excellent job, and when they finish discussing I asked them to make a circle with the desks. We made a round-table discussion about how technology has developed and improved humans´ lives. This part was meaningful because all students were willing to participate because it is a topic really interesting for them.

When I finished with the round-table discussion, I knew it was time for doing something different in order to make them feel pleasant. I divided the class into two groups and I asked them to choose a representative for each group, and for the rest of the people in the groups I provided one dice. For this activity the representatives had to draw the gadgets on the board, and the rest of the people had to guess the name of it as quickly as possible, but the group which guessed first did not get a point as usually; instead they had the opportunity of rolling the dice and get the points randomly. My tutor told me that she liked the way I decided to assign the points because in that way students had no the chance to complain as it was decided by fate.

The last thing I did in my class was to ask students to work in pairs, and to design a gadget they thought would make our lives easier. At the end they pretended to be employees form T.V Offer, and they tried to sell their inventions to the rest of the people. It was interesting to see how creative students are.

Today I got up and suddenly I knew this day would be meaningful for my life in many ways. Today I felt proud of myself because as I said before I could notice that I´m improving day after day. I will be giving my best every time I can, and I hope everything continues just right.

Well people thank you very much for reading this… Hope you liked it!!! SEE YA…

Second class of the period! March 17th, 2011

Hello people this is a new week of university which means that I have to teach again.  This time was kind of difficult for me because I felt a little bit sick the previous day of my practicum, so I did not sleep well. In general my class was nice because this time I tried to follow all the recommendations my tutor gave to me the previous class, and I guess I got a better interaction with my students this time.  I implemented a strategy for group the students and made them work with the people they are not use to work because this was a problem I could notice in the previous class that students just like to work with the same people all the time and that makes them reduce their attention span toward the class.

The part I liked the most was the part in which I taught grammar because I did not teach it at all but students did it for me. I had to cover the part of teaching the English articles “the, a, and an”, so I made two groups and I gave each group a piece of information with the purpose for them to teach each other after some minutes. The idea was great because at the end they got the idea and did not feel pressured for learning it at all.

At the end I could feel satisfied with the work I did, but as anything is perfect I received some observations from my tutor teacher. She explained to me some things I thought were ok, but actually needed some improvements. I will take them into consideration, and I hope next time will be even better than this one!!!

t.A.T.u. PROSTYE DVIZHENIYA (SIMPLE MOVES)

T.A.T.U., PROSTYE DVIZHENIYA (SIMPLE MOVES) Letras de Canciones

SECOND PERIOD!!!! First Class: March 10th, 2011. Advanced group.

Hello people! I want to share with you my first experience teaching in the English advanced level…

This time I started with the lesson plan, so I had to teach the introduction of the unit and some vocabulary related with shopping.  The first thing I did was to introduce myself to the new group of students, and then I started my class with an activity in which they had to work in small groups. This activity did not take too much time because it was a matching activity in which they had to order the meanings with the corresponding words.  After every group finished, we checked the answers together, and almost all the students got the meaning of every word I provided, which was excellent because I was going to be using that vocabulary throughout my whole class.  

My second activity was based on cartoons pasted on the wall. I asked students to stand up and walk around the classroom in order to see the pictures and label them with any of the words we have studied earlier. I gave them 3 or 4 minutes to do this, and when they finished I asked them to tell me their guesses about the pictures, but at the same time they had to justify their answers and defend their personal point of view. It was a nice activity because I got most of the students speaking and interacting with others.

To make my class interesting, I brought some printed funny cartoons and I gave one to each student. What they did was to look carefully to the cartoon and find the joke. After that, they had to go to the front and share the joke with everybody, and the other students were allowed to ask questions to that person; for example: have you ever been in a situation like that? It was a great moment because they had a good time. My original plan was to get everybody in front of the class speaking and sharing their joke, but unfortunately, I did not pay attention to the time and when I noticed my time was already over and just half of the students did it.

At the beginning of my class I pasted a chat on the wall with the title: “New Vocabulary” and I put some markers next to it. I explained my students that the chart was for them to write every new word they did not know, and that at the end of my tutor´s class I was going to give them the meaning of the words. Just two words were written on it, and during my tutor´s class I make little charts explaining the words and I pasted them on the wall. At the end, my tutor gave some minutes to explain the vocabulary to the students. My tutor told me that she really liked this because it was an excellent way to teach new vocabulary.

I enjoyed this new experience because students were so clever and they did not need too much time to understand directions. I guess the only bad thing I can mention about this is that I got accustom to teach in the basic level, so I talked to much and my tutor teacher told me that in this level I needed to let them perform the activities by themselves. This is it… Thanks!