Second class in Intermediate II (Second Period)

                                                               Thursday, March 21st 2013

Salutations once again my dear peers!!

Thanks God, my second experience with this group of students was very, very good despite of the fact that the lesson that I did and developed was kind of simple since I didn’t include any visual aids or copies, but I developed meaningful activities which were  helpful for the students’ learning.

What went well?

Thanks God, most of the activities went well. My class was based on a brief grammar review about the verbs “make” and “do”, and speaking activities that allowed me to make it more student-centered, which was good!

Among the activities that the teacher and students enjoyed the most were: the famous “Hot potato”, which I used to do a quick grammar review, the role-play and a TPR game “Swap place if you…” in which I said a sentence, for example: “Swap place if you usually make your bed”, and the students who “usually make their bed” changed their sits with another student; students had fun as the same time that they learned with these activities.

What didn’t go so well?

Well, I conducted a debate and there was a problem with the students because before the debate some of them were reluctant to expose their ideas and get in agreement with the rest of their team, and during the debate just a few students participated, which was also because of the time. This doesn’t feel good because you as teacher notice their attitude and try to do something about it, for example, I got close to those students, who didn’t want to work,  in order to motivate them to participate by telling them: "Come on guys, let's work!! :D"  And they immediately did what they had to do in my presence, but when I went to monitor the rest of them, they were just not doing anything; thus, I pushed them to work by reminding them about the short time they had, for example: "You just have one more minute, so let's work guys!" So, this was not likeable, but at the end of the day, it was a good debate and I gained experience on how to manage these kinds of situations since the teacher gave me some tips:

-  In order to push students to do something, change your tone of voice, like showing authoritarianism, and/or tell them that if they don’t work they will get a penalty.

-  In order to make all students participate in a debate, deliver a piece of color paper to each student and take it back when they speak; this will avoided them to speak more than once as well as it will help you to monitor and make sure that all of them participate.  

All in all, despite of the inconvenient in the debate, everything was cool, students participate in the rest of the activities and they were supportive; they are nice guys, what I think that happened for the debate was that the groups were too big, fourteen and fourteen, so I guess that some of them were thinking that their opinions were not necessary, and as you know in every group there are people who really like to express their opinions, so the quietest/shiest guys let the more talkative speak, which is not good in an English class and we as teachers most use strategies to avoid that happen/continue happening.

Well, this was my experience and I am happy and satisfy of have had the opportunity of lived it and acquired it as always. J