Hello everybody, I am glad to tell you that my teaching mission is finally done. It is difficult to believe that I have just finished something I thought was never going to end. At the beginning I was afraid of teaching to students from the major because it was a new experience for me, and I did not want to do it. However, you will never know what you are able to do until you try. From this experience, I learnt that I have all the potential to work as a teacher. I could also discover a part of my creativity that I did not know I had. I must confess you that I really enjoy this teaching mission. I had the good luck to work with very nice people, and I learnt a lot from them. However, not everything was perfect, and I even faced some unpleasant situations which help me to notice that I can get what I want if I want to.
Today, I was asked to work in the grammar part which I have already said I really like to do. In this case I had to teach the “present progressive” tense.
As normal I began with the warm up which in this opportunity was to review vocabulary from the previous class (clothing) so I decided to used a nice activity I had used in the first period with another group of students (dress the model). Students made teams and chose a representative (the model, a girl from one team and a boy from the other one), and I gave them some realia (clothing items) for the teams to dress their model. I gave the same time for the two teams, and they had to compete and show which one was the fastest. Then, they had to label the clothing items by pasting some pieces of paper I gave them with their corresponding names. This activity turned very funny since the models even went around the classroom modeling the clothes.
Then, with the use of some clothing flashcards, we reviewed the target vocabulary. Students were brainstorming about all the clothing items they had already studied.
After that, I continued with the most important part of the class which was the explanation of the grammar part. In this part I always try to be creative and use different materials so I can get the students attention. This time I used a song that was in the lesson. I gave the lyric to the students and asked them to check if there were new words. After explaining the meaning of some words, I played the song for them to get familiar with it. Then, I played it again; but this time they had to write some notes about the song. I continued asking some of them what they remember from the lyric, and they started to use the target structure without noting it. I also asked them to tell me if they had noticed something particular in the song. To my surprise one person said: “the use of -ing” so I paste on the board a little chart with the name of the tense, and I asked if they knew something about it. Almost all of them knew a little bit of it so I asked them to underline all the sentences they could from the lyric. After that, I paste on the board a chart with the patterns to form the affirmative, negative and interrogative form of the present progressive, and in the wall I had pasted before the class many words in different colors to make the sentences (the subjects in one color, the verbs in another, and so on) so at the moment of explaining I did not have to write and waste time. I think it was a colorful way to explain a topic; however you need to be very organized so you do not do a mess with all the papers.
I could not continue with the practice since time was already gone.
Finally, I said good bye to my students, and I thanked them for being so nice with me. They said good bye too and gave me a huge clap.
I will miss them :(…
My final feedback was nice, I did not have too many pronunciation mistakes, and I had some good comments of my work throughout the period.
Thanks God, I’m done………
5/17/2011
5/12/2011
My video...
OMG! It's so weird the way you behave when you have a camera in front of you, and you know everybody is going to see it later. You think and worry about people's comments. It is curious because I do not feel nervous with my students anymore, but yesterday because of the camera, things changed a little bit.
Since last week, I have been teaching "countable and uncountable nouns". Yesterday I had to continue with the same topic, but this time I was free to choose all the activities which for me was nice because I did not liked the lesson's activities at all.
Last period, I also taught the same topic in Intermediate so I had a nice reading that I had used since I keep everything I make so I can use it later. I looked for other activities to make my class a little bit interesting, and I did not find anything so I had to create my own activities.
I arrived around an hour earlier to the classroom so I could arrange everything, but as always there was another class before mine, and again I had to fly to finish on time.
I began with the expected warm up. They had to stand up, make a circle and I had to throw a die to one of them as I mentioned a category, the person with the die had to
pass the die to the next person and say ten words belonging to that category before the die reaches him. This time I did not like it at all because there were too many students and the warm up was more suitable for a smaller group: however I could see they liked it.
After that, I continued with the presentation (reading). First, I showed them a drawing of a guy in the supermarket, and I told them it was the picture of one of my friends, and I even called him Henry. I asked them to tell me things they thought Henry was going to buy. They mention many things (countable and uncountable nouns which was the purpose). Then, I told them we were going to check if their predictions were ok, and I gave a piece of paper with parts of the reading to all of them. I read the passage for them to identify the part they had. Then, I read it again but this time they had to stand up when they listen to the part they got, and they had to paste it on the board. After that I read it for them to check if they had pasted everything on the right way (this time was also for them to check pronunciation). I also asked for new vocabulary, but the reading was kind of easy and just one person asked for a word. Then, they repeat after me; and finally, they read the passage alone, girls one part and boys the other one (I had separated the passage and small pieces, one piece green, one piece blue, and so on). After that, I asked them to identify and write down all the countable and uncountable nouns they found in the reading which they did very good.
Finally, I asked them to make three groups, and I gave them a food collage to each group. I wrote on the boar "$5.oo" and I asked them to look at the collage and look for things they could buy with that money. Then, I asked them to think about a special dish they would like to prepare and which things they would buy with only $5.oo. At the end they chose a representative to tell the other teams what they were going to buy.
After my class, they had a nice activity. They had to prepare some food and explain the procedure to the rest of the class. I liked that activity because I ate delicious things... yummy :}
The feedback part was not as bad as I though. My tutor told me just to be careful with the time and the rest was good.
I hope you do not get bored with my video...
See ya!
Note: sorry guys, I tried to upload the video but it is not possible. You will have to wait... :(
Since last week, I have been teaching "countable and uncountable nouns". Yesterday I had to continue with the same topic, but this time I was free to choose all the activities which for me was nice because I did not liked the lesson's activities at all.
Last period, I also taught the same topic in Intermediate so I had a nice reading that I had used since I keep everything I make so I can use it later. I looked for other activities to make my class a little bit interesting, and I did not find anything so I had to create my own activities.
I arrived around an hour earlier to the classroom so I could arrange everything, but as always there was another class before mine, and again I had to fly to finish on time.
I began with the expected warm up. They had to stand up, make a circle and I had to throw a die to one of them as I mentioned a category, the person with the die had to
pass the die to the next person and say ten words belonging to that category before the die reaches him. This time I did not like it at all because there were too many students and the warm up was more suitable for a smaller group: however I could see they liked it.
After that, I continued with the presentation (reading). First, I showed them a drawing of a guy in the supermarket, and I told them it was the picture of one of my friends, and I even called him Henry. I asked them to tell me things they thought Henry was going to buy. They mention many things (countable and uncountable nouns which was the purpose). Then, I told them we were going to check if their predictions were ok, and I gave a piece of paper with parts of the reading to all of them. I read the passage for them to identify the part they had. Then, I read it again but this time they had to stand up when they listen to the part they got, and they had to paste it on the board. After that I read it for them to check if they had pasted everything on the right way (this time was also for them to check pronunciation). I also asked for new vocabulary, but the reading was kind of easy and just one person asked for a word. Then, they repeat after me; and finally, they read the passage alone, girls one part and boys the other one (I had separated the passage and small pieces, one piece green, one piece blue, and so on). After that, I asked them to identify and write down all the countable and uncountable nouns they found in the reading which they did very good.
Finally, I asked them to make three groups, and I gave them a food collage to each group. I wrote on the boar "$5.oo" and I asked them to look at the collage and look for things they could buy with that money. Then, I asked them to think about a special dish they would like to prepare and which things they would buy with only $5.oo. At the end they chose a representative to tell the other teams what they were going to buy.
After my class, they had a nice activity. They had to prepare some food and explain the procedure to the rest of the class. I liked that activity because I ate delicious things... yummy :}
The feedback part was not as bad as I though. My tutor told me just to be careful with the time and the rest was good.
I hope you do not get bored with my video...
See ya!
Note: sorry guys, I tried to upload the video but it is not possible. You will have to wait... :(
5/03/2011
Second chance...
Hello everybody! Here I am once again...
This time I feel happier than ever in this teaching mission because today I got a very good grade. I knew I could do it, but I know I can do it even better.
In this occasion I had to teach "countable and uncountable nouns" (grammar again, yeah!), but I was worried because I wanted to use very dynamic activities since my new students are very energetic so I wanted them to enjoy what they were going to do. After looking in the internet, I got disappointed since all of the activities I found were kind of passive. Then I decided to use "the pictionary game" as a warm up, but I adapted it to the topic by using the appropriate vocabulary (food and drinks). After that, I continued reviewing more food vocabulary by using some food flashcards. They knew the names of all the food I had on my flashcards. (they are very smart, I just checked the pronunciation of some words). Before the grammar explanation, I used another activity in which I gave some pieces of paper with countable and uncountable nouns to the students. They had to work in teams, decide if the nouns were countable or uncountable, choose a representative and paste the words in the correct categories on the board. They finished very fast, and they did it perfectly. That was surprisingly since until that point I had not teach the grammar part in a direct way; however, they had gotten it. The words they pasted on the board, I used them to explain the grammar phase. I explained all the differences between countable and uncountable nouns by using the flashcards and also examples they provided.
Finally, the teacher gave me some feedback. She told me I need to work on classroom management since there still are some girls that do not participate.
To tell you the truth, I thought today was not going to be so good in my teaching practice since I was kind of tired, and I did not want to teach at all; however, it was better than all the other days.
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