First Class (Second Semester)

Hello my blogger’s friends, welcome to my site again!

On Thursday, August 8^th I taught my fist class of this semester and thanks God it was a pretty nice experience; I only got nervous the day before but not the main day neither during the class, I guess the previous experiences helped me to feel more confident and it was also a good day for me.

This period I’m teaching Intermediate II and they are a large group of students; most of them are boys and it seems they like to joke around, but they also like to work in class.

In regard with the lesson, I didn’t spend too much time creating it because I only added a song, “You’re beautiful” by James Blunt, as a warm-up and I took the rest of the activities from the teacher’s lesson; the activities were from the controlled practice and they were nice, easy and quick to develop.

At the beginning of the class, I thought that only a few students were going to be in class because only a few of them were there on time, the rest of them were late.

While I was introducing myself, some of the students were not paying attention to me and they were kind of noisy, that never happened to me before; it wasn’t that bad, but it was rare.

During the development of the first activity a few students were with their cellphones so I asked them to keep them, that either happened to me in the previous classes. Nevertheless, after checking the first activity, I felt they started changing their attitude; they were paying attention to me and to the activities, they behave and were participative. Thus, by the end of the class, I could feel the connection I usually feel with my students; something that can be described as mutual sympathy, and that was nice  :).  

My LAST Class!!!

HELLO and welcome to my blog!!!

OMG this is my final entry of this semester because I’m done with the teaching practices and it feels So great, isn’t it guys?

Thanks to my lovely God, I didn’t get nervous in this class which was amazing because I could enjoy it more and I record it too. However, in comparison with my previous lessons this one was not so good as the other ones because it wasn’t so interactive and dynamic; I had to teach grammar and make sure ss understand the topic with a controlled practice and that reduced the time for me to do more active and fun activities.

Nevertheless, I began the class with TPR; we played a game that many of you may already know it by this moment because some of us have done it in our previous classes, the game is called: “Rabbits to your house, Houses to your rabbit and Earthquake!”. It was kind of difficult to explain so I had to explain it twice, but at the end we all had fun. I took advantage of the activity to elicit some vocabulary about furniture, which was the target vocabulary and “Some and any” the target grammar.

The other game that I could do was “The Chinese Whisper” in which the class was split in two groups and each team did a vertical line in front of the board so that the participant of each group who was in front of the board could write the sentence which was sent it orally and secretly by their group. The sentence was given by me to the last two participants of each group at the same time so that they could say it to the person who was in front of them, and this person could say it to the next person and so on till the message could get to the person who was in front of the board. The team who did it faster and without any grammar or spelling mistakes got a point and the team with more points got the prize!!

Well, that was my class and as I told you what I liked the most was the fact that I didn’t get nervous, and that I could enjoy it more, especially the first and the last activity. It was also nice to see the students’ good attitude in this and in the previous class because in the first one they were like not cooperating, so it makes me think that, in that area, I could do a good job too because I motivated them with my enthusiasm, good attitude and also many gummies! Ha-ha…But it worked!! He-he

To finalized, it comes from my heart this beautiful feeling of thankfulness with God and my family because they helped me to have this opportunity and supported me in the “Ups and Downs”. And I’m also thankful with my co-worker for her support and help as well as with my tutors for their pieces of advice and patient and with you my commenters’ friends who have cheered me up with your positive comments, thanks for your time. God bless you all, love ya. <3

My 2nd Class with the Basic Group!!

Monday, May 6^th 2013

こんにちは！

Thanks God this class was better than the previous one because my students got fun and I could enjoy it too!

Most of the things went well; it helped me a lot the fact that I just had to develop activities during the class, which means no grammar. In addition, I put into practice all the pieces of advice that the teacher gave me the last time, which were more related with the kind of activities; he asked me to include more TPR and more speaking activities and that was what I did.

I prepared three competition games with the aim of motivating students to participate; in each game, each group got points, but the group with more points at the end of the class got “the gummies”. The first game was called “Listen to and go to get it!”; for this one, I pasted 18 irregular verbs around the classroom so that one participant peer each group could go to get the verb, which I have mentioned in present tense, and paste it on the board. 

My second activity and game was a Bingo of adjectives, in which winning depended on luck. Taking advantage of the Bingo’s vocabulary, I focused students on the adjectives of appearance and their opposites, and I also provided them a copy with extra vocabulary that had some pictures. Then, I took advantage of the flashcards that I used in my previous class, flashcards of dead famous people, to describe them using sentences in past tense. It was great to see my students participating this time!

Next...


I asked students to make groups of four in order to describe a picture of a dead famous person, this time the flashcards were not the same. Each group wrote 5 sentences and they chose a member of their team to read them aloud.

Finally, we enjoyed the last game, it was a writing game; I pasted a picture of Selena for one team and a picture of Princess Diana for the other team so that each team could write as many sentences as they could in three minutes. The students’ adrenaline was high at that moment, and each group just wanted to win so the girls who had more fluent ideas took the control of the marker and they wrote most of the sentences! It was difficult for me to control that because they were so excited, they just wanted to win, I mean, it was fun, but I didn’t expect that. So, next time, I’ll try to give each student some pieces of color paper which serve as a participation ticket to make sure everyone participate and to avoid having the same students participating J

Well, this was my class and I feel very satisfy of having reached my goal which was: Have fun and learn at the same time, which is great!

私のブログを読んでくれてありがとう。^J^

(Thank you for reading my blog)

1st Class at Basic English (3rd Period)

Monday, April 29th 2013

Salutations everyone!!

Hope you being doing great.

This period I am teaching Basic with a totally different group of students from the ones that I had taught before inasmuch as this group doesn’t like to participate in the speaking activities; I guess, it is because they are still in a receptive stage in which the listening and the reading activities are easier for them in comparison with the activities that require production such as: the speaking and the writing activities. In addition, there’s something particular about this group; most of these students have failed at least once and actually most of them are about to fail, so this contributes to have a demotivating environment, increasing the lack of confidence in the students by the time of speaking or writing on the board. But thanks God, I have noticed that they definitely enjoy playing games that involve TPR as well as music, so I’ll try to go for that way in my next class.

About my class:

In my opinion, I planned a nice lesson. I used flashcards of dead famous people to have students talking about the past as a warm-up. Next, I split the class in two and had both groups collecting the verbs mentioned in a song (Don’t you worry child – by Swedish House Mafia) 

Then, I explained the grammar with the help of a video which provided many examples and one practice that I developed in general. Next, I gave each student a copy with some exercises to solve: a short reading with some blanks that they had to fill in, some comprehension questions, sentences which they had write in negative, and some unscramble questions. I provided instructions and examples for each exercise as well as I checked them orally. Finally, I did a speaking activity with the unscrambled questions in which ss stood up and interviewed a classmate for one minute. After that minute, they changed roles; they did it three times and my time there was over, so I couldn’t do the last activity which was a TPR game.

All in all, I liked my class despite of the mishaps I had with the projector, the students’ attitude by the time of speaking, and my nerves because I got nervous like in my first :S Anyways, I’m happy and satisfy of having this experience which will help me to better. Learning and Improvement is my goal in my professional life ;) J

Third class in Intermediate II (Second Period)

                                                                                                    Thursday, April 4th 2013

Greetings!!

Thanks God, my third experience with this group of students was very good and I enjoyed it.

What went well?

Most of the activities turned out the way I expected and students were very participative this time. Among the activities that the teacher liked the most were: The warm-up because I started the class by activating schema/prior knowledge, the presentation because I used a song in which ss had to paste the most relevant lyrics for the topic, which was about “Countable and uncountable food”, and finally, the teacher liked the fact that I used a PowerPoint presentation to explain the grammar.
In the next link is the PowerPoint presentation, in case you want to check it.

https://powerpoint.office.live.com/p/PowerPointView.aspx?FBsrc=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fdownload%2Ffile_preview.php%3Fid%3D505139276218351%26time%3D1365610861%26metadata&access_token=100000164512276%3AAVKtfnPpAa1HWcB-2QMQyatydidFJHoBpJormyQZQmqtfw&title=COUNTABLE+AND+UNCOUNTABLE+NOUN_+presentation.pptx

What didn’t go so well?

Well, I had troubles with the equipment; the projector wasn’t able to show the presentation that I had in my computer so I had to use the teacher’s computer. Nevertheless, once we could see the PowerPoint presentation everything was good and actually helped me to save time since I didn’t have to write too much on the board or spend time pasting charts.

At the end of the class I thanked the students for their participation inasmuch as I wasn’t expecting their good behavior, I didn’t tell them that, but I did thank them for their behavior since the first class and they applauded me, so I felt very happy because I know they did it with their heart :3

All in all, I’m really thankful for all the experience that I have gained during my teaching practicum till now because I have learned many good things from all people around me; I have learned from their good attitudes, how to present the activities better, how to manage the class better, and many other things that helped me to be better not only as a professional, but also as a person.

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

First class at Intermediate II (Second Period)

Thursday, March 14^th 2013

Kind greetings!!!

First of all, I’d like to thank God in public too because He’s the one who has helped me to overcome obstacles, to learn from my failures, to move forward and to have such a nice experiences teaching at UNICAES.

Planning this class took me a lot of time because I honestly didn’t remember too much about the target grammar, which was about phrasal verbs, so I had to study it again; nevertheless, all the time spent on it was worth it because the class was very, very productive.

What went well?

Well, I feel bless because all the activities that I developed turned out well, the way that I expected, and I this time I felt less, less, less nervous than the other times. I guess that’s because the result of previous experiences helped me to gain confidence when teaching as well as the fact that this group of students is very kind, they participate, they work and they respect you as a teacher; in addition, the teacher is very kind and supportive too.

What didn’t go so well?

I had troubles with the time, I didn’t measure the time for each activity correctly; thus, I had to omit one activity of my lesson and I also took more time than I should. Nevertheless, that happened too because the teacher allowed me to do it, and he did it because he really liked what I was doing, so at the end of the day the troubles with the time didn’t become a big deal; however, the teacher advised me to measure the time for each activity appropriately.

This is the way that I developed my class:

For the warm-up, I did a mimic game in which some ss acted out some phrasal verbs whereas the rest guessed them.

For the presentation, I provided a reading for which ss underlined the phrasal verbs that were in it; then, I gave ss a worksheet containing the phrasal verbs that were in the reading and their possible meanings, ss just had to underline one of the three options (the possible meanings) for each phrasal verb. Once ss finished, I checked it orally. Finally, ss discussed some questions in which they had to provide their personal information/experience.

For the grammar, I presented a chart and I also gave ss a copy with the same information of the chart so that they didn’t waste time writing it. I provided the grammar explanation, I asked ss if they had any doubt, I clarified doubts and I finally CCQ ss.

For the practice, I used the same worksheet that had the phrasal verbs and their meaning. This worksheet also had a sentence from the reading per each phrasal verb, so for the activity, I provided the next instructions: “Find out if the phrasal verbs are transitive or intransitive and write “T” or “I” in the blanks; if they are transitive, circle their object. Then, write “S” for the separable phrasal verbs and “N” for the non-separable phrasal verbs, according to each sentence.” Finally, I checked and discussed the answers orally and in general. Some ss question the correct answers, they weren’t convince that those answers were correct, so I explained them why those answers were correct and that was amazing because I didn’t hesitate in the explanation, I knew the grammar, it was easy for me to clarify doubts and I felt as a real teacher who really knows. It was really amazing to see that they were really learning and interacting with me. I really liked it!

To finalize my lesson, I split the class in two and I asked ss to do a horizontal line in front of the board in order to do a TPR and listening game in which one student per each team had to go and pick a phrasal verb up from the wall and paste it on the board as fast as he/she could. Before the class began, I had pasted all the phrasal verbs on the wall and around the classroom in order to make the task funnier and difficult. The mechanic of the game: I just gave the meaning of each phrasal verb and ss had to remember/analyze the phrasal verb to go and get it. All the phrasal verbs were separable and were seeing in class. At the end of the game, both teams won because both teams got the same number of points, each phrasal verb were equivalent to a point.

I really enjoyed this class!!