Teaching my Second Class

Another Friday passed, and my second teaching opportunity arrived as well.

The same level, the same students, the same classroom, helped me somehow to feel more confident in my second class development.

The topic this time were various which made me feel kind of stressed since I didn’t know how to join them all. Some of them were like a review, and the other ones were topics not clear for the students.

I taught about how to make questions in the simple present (which means the usage of “Do” and “Does”), the family, and possessives.

The difference with my first class is that I arrived even earlier because I had plenty of material to be organized.

Before starting the class, I like to establish some kind of confidence with the students, so I started by greeting and asking them about their valentine’s day. Besides making them feel more comfortable, they started to practice the target language without notice it.

Later, I began with the warm up activity which I called “LET’S MAKE SENTENCES”. I don’t know if it exists, but I made it.

What I did is to cut several strips of paper which contains different word patterns (AM, NEIGHBOR, I, A, TEACHER, HE, SHE, IS, ARE,?,Etc.). What the students needed to do was to paste those strips of paper on the whiteboard and try to make as many sentences as possible. Students like competitions, so the idea of dividing the class was perfect one; besides, it adds some sort of challenge between the students.

The activity worked really well because all of the students could participate, and there was no problem of making any sentence.

At the end together with the students, the sentences were checked, and they even correct themselves which was rewarding to me because in those little moments you realize if they have understood what you have been teaching or not.

The topics I decided to join were the possessives and the family topic. Since this was a little review, I explained to them with some examples and I made them worked with a crossword related to the family.

The grammar part arrived, and I needed to explain to them how they can make questions in the simple present. I started making a sentence in the simple present, and I showed them the changes that occur when transforming them into questions. This was the base to make them familiar with the topic because, at the beginning, I asked them for some examples of sentences and I wrote them on the board, showing to them the changes on those examples. Later, I asked to some students to stand up and make some sentences by themselves.

At the end, I gave them the patter for the structure (Aux (Do/Does) +Subject + verb + c +question mark + .

I did this at the end because you can let yourself understood better if you start form the general things to the abstract things.

What I consider important is that we shouldn’t forget to let them copy the information you present to them; for that reason, I gave them some minutes to copy the same examples they provided to the class.

As a wrap up, I brought 3 dices of different colors. They were used in a game in which the student who got any of this dices needed to say a sentence depending on the color of the dice.

·         The pink dice was for family (they needed to include words like father, son, aunt, etc. in the sentence they will provide)

·         The blue dice was for question (they needed to come up with a question according to the topics seen in class)

·         The green dice was for possessive (they needed to say a sentence where the possessive case was shown.

Everything was done as it was planned to. Students had no problem answering each of the tasks.

What I could see in this class is that they were kind of talkative which made me call their attention, but somehow I took advantage of it and made those students participate.

The tips I can share today are:

·         Let you students construct their own knowledge. I guess is more significant to them to see the examples they provide, and work base on those.

·         Have them participate as much as they can because they need to develop that feeling of speaking English in a natural way.

·         Correct pronunciation every time you can, your students will appreciate it.

·         Don’t be afraid of adding new vocabulary in each topic you develop. This will increase your students vocabulary (remember that you can be understood through mimics, examples, etc.)