Concluding "MY TEACHING EXPERIENCE"

On Friday 17th, I finished my teaching practicum experience. I was feeling so nervous by that moment since I really wanted to make a good class for my video recording.

The topic I was to present was “the modals”. This was a review for the students because the teacher had already explained the topic.

I started the class greeting students. As they seem sort of tired, I asked them about it and they told me they had a grammar exam. (I remember those days, so the least I wanted to do was to get into another boring class)

Since I already knew that the previous class was grammar, I wanted to start the class with the “hot potato game”, perhaps they were not used to do this type of activities, but they enjoyed and had a great time answering the questions that were, of course, matching the target structure.

Thanks to it, students got to feel more relaxed and more willing to receive the class.

Later, I started the grammar part by recalling their previous knowledge about modals. Students were given the chance to provide sentences, and construct the ideas all together.

Then, I used a controlled written practice for me to check their understanding. As in all the activities, I set the time to work on it. It was really nice when the checking time arrived because I could see they were analyzing each of the sentences as they were questioning some of the possible answers. This group has an excellent dynamic to work with. This always pushed me to be ready and study for each of the topics as they come up with possible questions. Somehow, it kept me active in my role.

After the practice, I asked them to make groups and discuss about some topics that were in it.

What they did not know was that at the end of their discussion moment, I was to choose two members per each group and make a panel forum, where they were to express their own ideas related to each of the topics to the rest of the class. 

I asked them to place 4 desks in the front for them to sit down. I set the rules for the panel forum and I also told them I was to choose the group with the strongest ideas. Students were really excited as they are very competitive and the rest was really attentive as their classmates were speaking their minds.

At the end of the activity, the winning team was chosen and students were happy about it.

To conclude my class, I thanked students for their cooperation and I provided them some candies. They clapped and that made me feel proud of everything I did in each of the classes. Believe me, it was a great sensation.

This was my last experience for this semester. I had a wonderful time and I enjoyed each little thing I had to faced because this made me realize even more that the teaching job is an ART.

Thanks for taking your time to read this entry and to comment it.

May God bless you all.

  

GRAMMAR :S a difficult but great experience

On Tuesday 7th, I had my second chance with the advanced II group. This time was even challenging for me since I did not have much time to prepare myself, and that was not all. The teacher indicate me that I had to prepare a class based on the book (as the previous one), but I had to add the grammar part.

This made me feel somehow nervous because the topic was “Type of Sentences”. I had some notion about them, but, indeed, I had to read to get familiarized with the topic; besides, I had to prepare the lesson (the way the class was to be developed)

Somehow is challenging, but I think we have to be able to work under pressure.

Since I knew I did not had the time to develop a 5 minute warm up, I just greet the students and I tried to activate their schema by pasting a quote that I love. “Give a man a fish and you’ll feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you will feed him for a life time”

I'm used to prepare more elaborate warm ups, but I consider this kind of groups are very communicative, an advantage I needed to take advantage of.

They enjoyed that moment because they could express their ideas freely. 

Then, I worked with the activities in the book (compound nouns). There were 5 exercises related to that topic. As I considered working only with the book kind of monotonous (it can be seen in students face), I took one activity from the book and make it sort of different. The activity was to discuss in pairs some of the compound nouns. What I did was to paste those compound nouns in some of the desks the students will sit later. (Of course I did it before they came to the class). They were surprised and nervous to see who were the ones to explain those nouns to the whole group.

I could see students enjoyed it. This made me feel good because I could add a touch of me in those activities. 

Later, we work on a listening which was not a complicated task for them.

Then, the part that was a challenge for me arrived, Grammar.  I said it was a challenge because I had to be really secure, confident, and even ready for any question that could appear; besides, this was a topic that was sort of confusing to me when I was taking grammar and composition.

The way I presented the sentences was through different charts since I had to explain the 4 types of sentences, simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex.

For me, it is important to add that funny sense to those critical moments. How come you may say….well, the sentences I prepared were related to soccer, different interest, and topics that students find appealing and meaningful. We were jocking during the class while we were making those sentences together.

It was a nice process because they helped me to add the adequate coordinated conjunction, to identify the subordinating sentence, and many other different things. Over all, I had fun and I enjoyed the moment as the 50 minutes passed so fast.

On the feedback, I was told that when students come late I should be more careful and make them part of any activity I am developing in that moment; besides, the fact of making the class interactive allow me to have students on my side, paying attention, and working with me. Some words pronunciations were corrected as well, which I consider important because we are not perfect and we have always something to be improved.

So many contents developed that day, and it is funny we could work them all.

This group is nice to work with…just one more class left and I don’t want to leave ehehehehehe.

Have a nice day guys!!!.

New Period, New Group!!!

On Friday 3rd I had my first experience with the advanced group.

The previous times, I was working with the basic groups; something that made me had the costume of working in an specific way. (a lot of TPR activities, dynamic classes, etc.) This was indeed, one of the most worrying weeks I have had in my teaching practicum. Knowing this group has a different English level, I had to approach them in a different way; besides, the topic they were studying contains a big difficulty to my point of view. The topic was participle clauses.

From the beginning, I greeted, and let them know the way we were to work. I also consider that calling students by their names is important, so I brought some pieces of paper in which they wrote their names.

In my class, what I wanted to do was to make them speak; for that reason, in the warm up I include a memory game. I wrote this phrase “ I am going to a picnic, and I am bringing…” I continue the phrase by saying apples. Students were supposed to say the phrase including what I say and add another item. This process was done with the majority of the students. Students liked the activity, and I enjoyed myself too because I could remember some of the names of the people there.

Later, as I was assigned, I worked in some exercises from the book in which they were asked to see the different collocations the word “mind” has, meanings, etc. I couldn’t develop the same exercises in a different way because most of them don’t have or bring the books to the class; ( I notice that in the observation time) for that reason, I kept them working in a “traditional way” , something I didn’t like as I like to do class more dynamic. Despite that feeling, I could see this group was not complicated to work with at all; in fact, they had no problem on working on the book.

Later, I continued with a listening which students had no problems again. Later, I presented a reading which contained the structured they were studying days before, participle clauses. The point for the activity was to identify the participles in the reading, a piece of cake for them. As you may know, when we work with this type of activities, we need a PRE, DURING, and POST time of the activity. Since the reading was related to be broke or running out money, we shared some thoughts related to it, and some funny stories. This made me feel even more comfortable because I realized students were very confident and fearless.

Because of time, I could not finish with the “Post” activity. I planned to have them making a circle with their desks and write a story with the participles of course. To my signal, they were to switch notebooks and continue writing, and so on. At the end, we were to read their master piece.

It is a shame not to have the enough time to develop everything you have planned, but people say that when you have fun time flies.

Hope to do it better next time.

2ND Period Done!!!.

My thrid and last class with this group

In this class something very different happened to me. My students arrived pretty late to classes, and some of them never showed up. Basically, I worked with the half of the students this group has. As you can imagine, this makes our planning execution very difficult because you planned for 50 mins, in my case, I had to adapt a 50mins class into a 40 mins. It was kind of complicated to do it so, and for that reason I had to eliminate one of the things I had planned for them.

As usual, I started the class greeting the students and developing the warm up. Since the topic the Irregular verbs, I wanted to call up the previous knowledge about the regular verbs. I divided the class and the board into two. I pasted the 3 different categories in which regular verbs are divided, endings in “d”, “ed”, “ied”. They had some strips of paper with verbs in the simple present. What they had to do was to paste the verbs in the right column according to their endings in the past.

The activity worked very well since they were practicing what they studied before, and when they realized about the mistakes they remember what they have learned.

 Later, I ask them what they knew about the irregular verbs. This to me was like to set an idea on how hard the class was going to be. They answered perfectly and establish the difference between the regular and irregular verbs.

So, what I did was to paste some charts with the classification of the irregular verbs. There were some examples of each category for them to see them and realize about them.

The teacher told me that it would be a nice idea to teach them about vocabulary, so I decided to put different verbs from the ones they were used to. With this I asked them “any new words?” and they were pointing out the ones they didn’t know, having me explaining to them using mimics.

Later, we worked with a reading. For sure we read it together and later they had to underline the verbs in the past. At the end, they were supposed to answer the questions about the reading.

The problem I had with this is the lack of vocabulary they seem to had, as well the difficulty of the pronunciation; besides that, they did not have any problem.

At the end, I made them work in trios and answer some questions I wrote on the board. Then, they had to retell some of the things their classmates just said.

To conclude the class I thanked them for be so kind and participative, and I gave to them some candies. That was how I closed this class and this 2^nd period.

2 CLASS!!! My Redemption time

On Friday 22nd, I had my second chance with the basic group. Even though the activities worked well in the same time there was something inside of me that made me feel I did not give my 100%.

So, trying to avoid that sensation again, I bet to bigger and better ideas. I knew by hand that this time grammar was not to be taught; for that reason, I looked for different activities that could make them practice and be motivated in the different areas (VAKT)

First, I establish a little chitchat with my students; reminding them that it was the last day of classes and that later they would be free. Indeed, to me this works because it breaks the ice with students, making in them the confidence to participate in a more confident manner.

Later, I played the game “broken telephone”, using sentences which contained adverbs of frequency. I consider it is always good to make a little competition between the students because they want to do their best.

After that, I wanted to do something one of my classmates did, to incorporate a video related to the topic. So, I brought a video which contained, again, people who were speaking using the adverbs of frequency. To work on that, I provided my students with a sheet of paper with they have to fulfill with the information the video provided to them. This made them to be focused on the lesson and as well practice the listening skill.

This to me was a big challenge because I had never set an LCD projector by myself before. That’s why I arrived early to the classroom to see how I was to plug everything. At the very moment, I couldn’t, there was no signal and it was almost time, but I started pushing some buttons and at the end I could!!!. Now, I can surely say I learned something new.

Continuing with the class, I worked with the learning center strategy. There were 5 areas.

• Which is wrong (10 sentences with some grammatical mistakes. They had to identify the wrong ones)
• Where does the adverb go?  (They had a sentence and an adverb on parenthesis. They had to insert it on the previous sentence)
• Interview (they were to make questions of how often do you do ……)
• Arranging sentence (they had sentences like “ am/always/ late/to/I/class”, which they had to put in the correct order)
• Arranging the adverbs (they had strips of paper with the different adverbs taught in class. They were needed to locate the adverbs according to the frequency they occur)

In here, I wanted them to practice as much as they could, approaching different areas on them. What was kind of hard of this was to monitor all the groups working because they were separated, but I felt they enjoyed the activity.

To conclude the session, I gave the students a sheet of paper with a reading. They were supposed to underline the adverbs of frequency they found there. (There was no problem in it)

Basically, this class was about practice and reviewing the topic, but to me, this was the chance to redeem myself and do a better job.