Second class, and the bad grades continue hahaha!!! July 28th, 2011...

Hi people this is the report of my second class… let me tell you that this time I had a some troubles when preparing my class because I was not so sure about the topics I need to cover.

It was supposed that I implemented some activities from the book, but it was impossible because students have not bought it yet.  What I did was to look for some activities by my own, and I also used the lesson plan teacher Rony designed.

I have to admit that I got 3 minutes later to the classroom, but fortunately just two students were in the classroom, so I had enough time to prepare everything. When all students got into the classroom I started with the warm-up activity which was called the “tube game”.  This game is similar to the popular game of the bottle in which people kiss each other when the bottle points to them. I did not use a bottle but a tube, and that is why I invented its name. The activity consisted in making students sitting down on the floor and forming a circle. I started rolling the tube, and the first people who were pointed out had to open the tube and pick up a piece of paper that said: “Simple present tense” what they did was that one of them created a question using the simple present tense and the other person answered it; for example: One said: Do you like pizza? , and the other answered: Yes, I like to eat pizza. The pieces of paper inside the tube had all the tenses the students were supposed to review.

I really like this activity because I could notice that my students had fun, and at the same time I reached the goal of making them review the tenses they learned in the basic level.

The next step was to make the students working in pairs for the second activity. For this activity I provided a picture for one student and a set of sentences for the other one. They were asked to sit back to back and the student with the sentences has to ask his/her partner about the people in the picture. The other person helped his/her partner by describing the content of the picture, and when they got the idea about certain character in the picture, they had to form sentences using the present continuous tense. For example: one student asked: What is mark doing? Is he playing? Is he dancing?, etc.

After they have finished, I asked all of them to look the people in the picture and try to memorize their names. Students did it very well because they remembered almost all the names. I did this as an introduction for a reading about tips to remember people`s names. After that, I made students work in pairs again. I divide the reading into four pieces and I assigned a piece of it to each pair. The students read the piece of information, and later on, they came to the front to explain their part of the reading.  This in particular encouraged students to talk more. At the end I felt pleased because the activity was successful.

Later, I explained some grammar points of the use of: “Look(s) and Looks (s) like”, but unfortunately I confused the information that I wrote in the charts. When I realized about this mistake I took them off, I wrote the right information on the board, and I apologized with the students for this awkward incident.

As a final task I just provided some flashcards for the students to practice the grammar I had just taught; for example: I presented a flashcard with a nurse, and the students had to say: she LOOKS LIKE a nurse.  

At the end I did not receive a good grade, but at least I did my best and that what really matters to me. 

And the journey continues classmates… once again the challenge of teaching starts over again... First Class of the 2nd Teaching Practice!

  In this opportunity I was assigned to teach the intermediate level at 09:00 a.m., and this is what happened in my fist class of the period…

Fortunately, I got on time to the classroom; imagine that I had to teach in the new building that is almost on the soccer field hahaha, so it was kind of difficult to get there. I had time to prepare everything for the class and introduce myself to the new group of students.

When I was about to start, I received an unexpected guest into my classroom, he was my tutor teacher who wanted to observe my class. At the beginning I felt a little bit nervous because I have never had him into my classroom before, but it was not a thing I could not control.

I started my class with a warm-up activity related with family members. The activity consisted in grouping the students into two teams and making them unscramble all the names I wrote on the board.  It took just 5 or 8 minutes, but it did not go in the way I wanted because some students were not in the mood for performing it. Later on, I realized that during this activity I blocked the view for one of the teams, so it is something I need to improve for next time I use it.

After that I asked my students to create a table in which they had to classify their family members into “Female and Male”; they also had to include real information about their families. For example: Male: uncle = Pedro. I used this activity in particular to introduce the new topic which was “The meaning of names”, so after that have finished, I started asking some questions like: Do you like your name? Do you know if your name has a special meaning?. The activity was nice because in the classroom I have two students with unusual names which helped even more during the discussion about the topic.

Later, I provided a listening activity which was a conversation between two people talking about their names and they way some people like to call them instead of using their real names. This activity was a “pre” action for the reading activity I provided later.

When I gave the reading to the students, I asked them to read it and pay special attention to new vocabulary. After they finished, I explained the meaning of the new vocabulary and we started reading for the second time, but this time we read the paragraphs together. As a final task I asked students to go through the reading to identify the different tenses the reading contains; for example: People are changing. = Present progressive.

By this time my class was over. At the end I felt disappointed because I did not receive what I was expecting, but I know I did a good job and what is what real matter. Hope next time will be better!!! Ciao…