Third class, second period

Well, this was my last class form this second period, and I can say this practice was very nice. I really liked the group with which I worked. In this third class, I made many activities for students to learn the present continuous. As a warm up, I made an activity called “charades”. I divided the class in two groups. Each group had to choose a representative who was the one that had to be sitting guessing the words and the rest of the students had to mimic the verbs that I wrote on the board.

Then, I showed some flashcards for students to say what the person is doing in the picture. Then, I asked to one student to come to the front to mimic some sentences written in a cheat of paper, and the rest of the students had to guess what he was doing. Then, I came up with the verbs that show state but not action, and I told the students that these verbs cannot be used in present continuous. I also told them that in some cases we can use them, but the meaning of the sentence changes completely. At first, they did not understand, but when I applied some examples, they got how the meaning changes.

Then, I taught present continuous in negative form, and I also taught how it goes in the contractive form. Then, I gave a flashcard to each student, and I asked them to write a sentence according to the picture. They had to write it in affirmative and negative form. Then, when they finished doing this, I asked them to change flashcards and create another one. At the end when all of them had finished creating the sentences, I asked them to write on the board for checking the sentences all together. They did it in a correct way.

What I really liked from this class is that I developed the activities in a correct way. Students understood my directions and did what I asked them to do.

What I did not like is that it was 8:40 am, and just some students were in the classroom, and I had t developed some activities. So I did it just with the ones that were there. They were four students.

In the feedback the teacher told met that the explanations of the verbs that we can not use in present continuous was good and that at first they did not understand, but then they got what I was trying to say. She also congratulated me for the setting arrangement and she also told me that I did an excellent job.

Second class, second period

I think that as time goes on, we are getting more and more experiences of what to do inside the classrooms. We are also learning things that we never expected. In this teaching practicum, I had to teach some new vocabulary to the students but let me tell you that I also learned these new words, as well.

The teacher told me to work on a reading and do some activities that were on the book, but first I taught new vocabulary for they to understand better the article. So, before starting doing this I made a warm up in which they had to read some sentences that I pasted outside the classroom, but before doing this they had to choose a representative for writing on the board the sentences that the group is going to transmit.

Then, I gave them some pieces of papers which contain new words about food, and they had to organize them on the board with the respective meaning. They had some problems with getting them. So we did it all together.

After doing this, I divided the board in two parts. In one part I wrote healthy food and in the other part I wrote unhealthy food. Students had to tell me what healthy and unhealthy food they knew.

Then, I came up with the article that I mentioned before. This reading was about food. So I played the audio for students to follow the speaker, and then I asked them to read it all together. Well, after this, I asked some questions according to the reading, and they were answering what I was asking for. It was easy for them because of the vocabulary that I taught.

After doing this I asked them to work on a matching activity related to the vocabulary studied. They did it, and we checked all together if the answers were well done.  Then, they worked on another matching activity in which they have to match the healthy and unhealthy foods that were illustrated on the book.

Then, when we finished working on selecting the healthy and unhealthy food that was illustrated on their books, I asked them to stand up and discuss in couples why they considered those foods selected are healthy or unhealthy. I really liked this activity because I could see that they were very happy discussing their choices and giving their opinions about it.

What I did not like is that when I asked to some students to take out their books for reading, just some of them did it, and the others had it on their desk, but they did not want to open it. So I asked them politely to open the book because we were going to work on this.

As a feedback, the teacher told me to be careful with the auxiliaries because I was asking questions without using them. I did not notice this until she told me; perhaps, I was nervous, and I did not notice.  I think that when you are teaching, you do not notice those details until someone tells you.

 

First teaching practicum, second period

I already made my first teaching practicum from this second period, and I think that this time everything was different. As I promised to myself, I gave brief explanations, and I tried to make gestures in order to be understood, and it worked. This is what I really liked from this class that everything was clear enough, and I could do my job in an excellent way.

Well, my topic was about quantifiers. As a review, I started my class with a “Hot potatoes activity” in which students have to pass it, and when I paused the song, the one who got the hot potatoes had to say a sentence using there is and there are. Then, I divided the board in two parts.  In one part I wrote countable nouns, and in the other part I wrote uncountable nouns. I gave a brief explanation about it. Then, I gave them a piece of paper with a word on it. In these pieces of paper I had some countable and uncountable nouns, and what they had to do is to classify which were countable nouns and which were uncountable nouns.

Unfortunately, they did it well, and I did not have problems with it. Then, I started to explain the different quantifiers, and how to use them.  What I really liked from this is that after every example, I asked to different students some sentences, and they were doing it in an excellent way. I could see that my explanations about this were good enough, and I did not need to go back and explain again.

When I finished explaining this, I asked questions using “any”, and they were giving me examples. I did reach my objective in this class, and this is one of the other things that I really liked. I did my best, and I got what I expected.

What I really did not like is that when I was teaching the topic, I asked to one student to give me a sentence using certain quantifier, and this student did not know how to say “refrigerator”. So the student said the word in the way she could. She did not do it in the correct way.  So everybody started to laugh, and what I did is, to tell them that all of them were learning even me and get fun of their classmates’ mistakes is not a good action. I asked to respect their classmates’ participation, and pay attention to what others were saying.

In the feedback, the teacher just told me that I did not tell a definition of what a quantifier is. He suggested me that if I am going to teach a specific topic, I have to give a definition of it. So this was what really happened in this classroom, and let me tell you that it was one of my good experiences that I had had.