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.
Great! Cristel!! sometimes we don´t get great grades but i think the most important is that you can feel you are useful to your students, well i feel it like that.
ReplyDeleteI think it is a nice idea to use a variety of activities. That's the best thing we can do to have our students engaged in what we are teaching. We always have to be creative because every class is completely different although we have the same students.
ReplyDeleteCristel,
ReplyDeleteI always enjoy your posts. I think you are very creative and patient in your classes. I can see your impriovement in every post and hope you can notice as well.
I am looking forward to watching your video of the class. We will enjoy it a lot.
Mriss i played pictionary too jajajaja!! chokale!!! i am so thankful to you for being such a wonderful friend throughout this course, u are one of my closest friends whom i always trusted, i always admired ur sincerity, determinance and willigness in this major that is about to finish!! its crazy how time has flown by, i remember when we were making fun of others about el curso de ambientacion that we didnt complete jajjjaajaja we have gone through such wonderful and crazy experiences together and thats why i want to thank you and raul for... i just want u to know that u have an endless capacity to achieve ur goals, remember that impossible is nothing!! i will miss u and everybody else definetely but we will keep ourselves in touch definetely... God bless u
ReplyDeleteThanks Monita... you almost made me cry :( I will miss you a lot. You are a wonderful friend... Love you so much...
ReplyDelete