The last practice of the last period of the last year of the major!

This is the last time that I tell you hello bloggers. I have reached my last practice and I feel proud of what I have done. The last class was pretty nice for me. I arrived early to the classroom and wrote the agenda that I could develop completely. To start, I just greeted the group. Then, I told them in a please way to use the desks I wanted them to use as I needed the class to be sitting in front of me for the warm up. I divided them in 2. After that, they chose a representative of each group. Those two representatives had to draw parts of the body that I told them. The first group who guessed the word scored a point. The students enjoyed this a lot. Getting in matter with the session, I started to speak about adjectives to describe our faces. In order to do it I asked them to take out their books and work on certain pages. They did that quickly but well. Later on, I passed to the next activity which was the explanation of certain adjectives to describe hairstyles, parts of our face and eyes. I pasted a chart with some drawings to do that and started to release the data I have about the adjectives. I also used drills and provided real examples.}

The next point in the agenda, was an activity of the book called “optimistic or pessimist?” what I liked about this was that all students participated.  The last activity I did by that time was a fill-in-the blank practice on the use of “for” and “since”. It was the last one. I gave each student a page and they did it faster than I thought.

To finish, I just elicited responses and corrected the mistakes that eventually came up. so, people we can say that we are done with this. Now we have to wait for the best to come. Teachers a congratulate you and I do wish you the best. Blesings.

One more and done!

Hello dear bloggers! Thank you for reading. Well, as you already know I’m working with intermediate I time. Let me tell you that for this second class, I was eager to teach. I had prepared some good activities and I knew the students were going to enjoy them. To begin, I greeted the group and gave them pieces of paper that I had already folded for them to write their names and put them on theirs desks, so that I could call students by their names.

As the warm up, I developed the activity “can’t say yes/no”. I gave them pieces of paper and they had to draw a heart; then, they went and asked around questions to one another and the people who said “yes/no” as a reply, they lost. I saw students really enjoyed the game. Once that I had set the mood, I went on. The first activity was about dynamic and stative verbs. The exercise was about sorting. They (the students) did really well this exercise. Afterwards, I had a speaking activity in which the students worked in groups.  It was unfortunate that I had only 9 students, but I still enjoyed it. They discussed some situations as the target structure was modal verbs. Once that they had discussed, I did a TPR activity called “do this, do that”; if I said “do this” they had to follow my movement, and if I said “do that” they did not have to follow what I did. Whenever someone did what they did not have to, there was a penalty and I asked that person to respond me what they had discussed in groups. I really liked that.

As the next point, there was a little practice on subject and object questions. They had already seen that, so it was a review basically. To finish, I developed “moving papers”. This last activity was about modals. I pasted papers on the walls around the classroom. In each of them, there was a situation and they had to write pieces of advice according to the modal they saw above the situation. All the group participated and really enjoyed when I was checking. In that way, I had concluded my second class. It was a very good experience. Hope you all feel the same by this time. Blessings bloggers.

The last period thank God

Once again, hello bloggers; it’s great that we had started the second period; hopefully everything will be going on ok. First let me tell you that I developed my first class with the group of English of intermediate I. Generally, it is a nice group; the students are very participative and it’s pretty easy to manage them.

To start the class, I developed a warm up activity called “ping pong words”. I could see that the students really enjoyed it and that helped me to set a nice mood and to give time for the late comers. After that, I started with the first activity. The practice and target structure I had to develop was about dynamic and stative verbs, an about subject and object questions. I began with some questions to activate the students’ schema. The majority was used to the topic; thus I gave copies in which they had to sort some verbs. 

The next exercise was about identifying the verbs in those two categories (either stative or dynamic) but this time, students had context. The only thing they had to do was to write “correct” “incorrect”.  Here’s a sample.

1. Are they having a good time?              _______________ 

2. I am thinking you are a nice person.                  _______________

 It was nice that students did not have any problem with this, so they really knew the difference between them.  Having done that, I moved on to the next part of the class. This was developed individually and it was about subject and object questions. The purpose here was to identify the right questions as possible answers to certain sentences. Here’s an example.

I bought a newspaper this morning.
    What bought you this morning?
    What did you buy this morning?
    What you did buy this morning?

Ø  Being done with that, I worked out with the last activity. The idea here was for students to put the words in the right order to make a question. It was like this: he/who/visit/last week/

I wrote some of them in the board and dictated the rest of them. However, in the feedback my tutor told me that I had to make sure that the students write correctly and I did not do it. It is worth to mention that if it is true that I did not check that, the students did well in this activity. In that way, I had finished my first class. By the way, something else that the teacher told me when giving me feedback was the fact of calling the students by their names; so, people don’t commit the same mistake. Have a nice day, and thank you for reading.

Last class in advanced I

Well, the second period is done people. Let me tell you that this time I felt comfortable with my job in the classroom. The communication with my tutor was better than the last time, much better. This time, I was only in charge of the practicing part about narrative tenses; nevertheless, I had to study the topic again since I just remembered a little and I wanted to be sure and, mostly, prepared in case that a student came up with a question. Fortunately, everything went on well.  The last class, I had had problems with discipline. So this time, I was very clear with the class and told them to please respect me. I told them that the fact that I was doing my practices did not give them the right to disrespect me.

I got into the classroom and as I know my tutor, as a warm up, I just asked questions about narrative tenses to which the students responded me wisely.  Right away, I started the class checking a homework they had in the book. To solve this took me like 15 minutes. Afterwards, I developed a fill-in-the-blank activity (all of the activities were written as they had already been practicing speaking). For this, I gave the class 15 minutes as the page contained several exercises. Right after, I started to check. I did the first one and then, I tried to include everyone in the class so that each of them could tell me his/her answer. By the moment a student was telling me the last answer, I had spent 50 minutes of my time, so I knew that it was time to finish. I decided to start the last activity that I had for them which was a reading. I gave directions and they started to work. The rest of the activity was developed by my tutor, hopefully. It was in this way that I developed my last practice of the second period. It’s been a tough period with the practices and I’m hoping to have a better one next time. Thank you for reading. Blessings.

2nd practice! Advanced English I

Hello guys!!  Almost done with the 2^nd period!

Let me tell you that I did not have a good experience in this opportunity. I can say that the communication with my tutor was the problem. However, that does not mean that I blame him for what it happened. I will share with you the difficulty I had. First, I had prepared some points of the lesson plan I had. Then, I looked for an extra activity. What I did not know was that my partner had already taught what I was supposed to teach that day. Even worse, I did not realize that till I get to the university minutes before teaching my class. I waited for the teacher and explained to him what it was happening. He told me that I could developed some pages of the book. I accepted the challenge; nevertheless, I must say that I was not comfortable with the class. It was like if I was improvising. I felt that I had not prepared anything and it was not because I did not work but for any reason this happened. Plus, the group did not collaborate in my class. I really got annoyed because of that. I started the class with the activity that was supposed to be extra. For sure that before, I developed a warm up.

As you can see the class was not developed the way I expected to do it. I felt everything it was wrong. When giving me feedback the teacher told me that not everything had been bad at all. The positive side of this was that I learned that things are not always the way we expect them to be. It can happen to anybody and we have to be prepared for everything.

I close for this time, and I would like you to share with me some comments about what you do when people are not with a good disposition or attitude in the classroom. I have tried some things and some of them have worked and some others have not. I tried to do my best but this time I could not do it. I had never faced a situation like this but still I learned something good from something bad. I hope that you did not have any difficulty people. Keep calm and teach nice!!

First experiencie, second period!!

How are you doing bloggers?  I hope everything’s fine! Well, this time I want to share with you my first experience of the second period. I taught to the Advanced English I group. I think that I did it well; however, I have to say that I could have done something better; I think that the class was too simple; to be sincere, I did not follow the lesson plan because I considered the time of some activities was going to “steal” me some time. I prepared exactly the 50 minutes on my own; for sure, I prepared something about the topic, which was the future continuous and future perfect.

For starting the class, I wrote on the board a quote saying something about the future as I was going to talk about that. I told the class that, to some extent, we can predict our future. Afterwards, I wrote on the board “what will you be doing tomorrow in this time tomorrow?” they responded me with simple future, and I wrote that on the board. In that way I had introduced the topic as I made the contrast with future continuous tense. Then, I explained the grammar part in a very general but clear way. After that, I asked them to give me some examples to see if they had gotten it, and I could see that most of them did it. As I noticed that, I developed this activity called predictable future.

Predictable future

Have each person in your class write down what he was doing each hour of the day yesterday. Then have students exchange papers and rewrite their classmates’ schedules assuming tomorrow will be the same as yesterday.

Later on, I developed another activity which consisted on rolling a dice. Once that I have developed it, I could see that the students enjoyed it. The next step in the agenda was the future perfect. I did almost the same that I did with future continuous; I explained in a general way; I provided examples and then I made a comparison between the two tenses.

I told them that the future continuous was like the equivalent of what the past continuous is for the simple present.

After explaining all those points and giving the students some practice, I finished and thanked the students for their collaboration and I was done with the first class of the period.

English Access last entry!

Hello again dear bloggers!! I hope everything is going on well with you. I’ll be brief this last time. I was teaching in the English Access program. My last class there was on Monday 12^th. The class was divided into 4 principal parts. The warm up. A reading activity. A speaking activity (Group work) and, finally, a “find someone who” activity. All of them about modals which was the target language.

The warm up

In this class, I developed the popular “rabbit wall and arrow” warm up. It was just to set the mood of the class and give a little bit more time for the late comers. I saw the students felt better and had fun when doing it.

Reading

The main objective of it was to identify and underline the modals. Before developing that, I showed these images to the class so that they started using the modals. “He might be sad; they must be angry” and so on.

 It worked very well under my view point. To finish this, I elicited some of the students’ responses and I read along with the class in case that there were new words or a problem with pronunciation.  

Discussion (speaking activity, group work)

This activity was successfully achieved. In groups of 4, they discussed questions about real-life situations. Questions such as: “Should marijuana be legalized? What must you do in your country to obtain a driver’s license” among others. In this way, I think the students practiced consciously and unconsciously the modals. Plus, it was a thought provoking activity. To close this, I elicited some responses to see what they thought about and to see if they used the modals for sure.

“Find someone who”

This is a popular and common activity. I noticed that the students enjoyed this as it contained interesting questions. This was for using the modal “can” only. To close this, again, I elicited some of the students’ responses.

The class was very good, I think. However, one of the things that went wrong was the fact that not all the students were there. Also, I forgot to write the objective thought I did it in the middle of the class. Then, I think that I did maybe not a great job but a good one.

2nd English Access Class (Great experience)

Hello everybody! I hope everything is fine with you all. Sorry for the delay of this second entry, but there were some inconvenients and I could not teach before.  

To start, I can say that I was sort of tired that day (Friday 9^th) it was a very busy day; however, when being there in the class with the students I forgot all those stuff. I started the class like 3 minutes later. I greeted my students and asked them how everything was to which everybody said “fine” and “nice”; after that, I encouraged the class to participate in the session by saying that the class was going to be a nice experience. Later on, I started with a warm up called “Emotional Mirror”. Here I leave you what this consists on in case you want to put it in practice:  players in pairs, facing each other. One starts talking in gibberish, with a specific emotion (angry, happy, in love, you name it). The other instantly copies the emotion of the first player, and speaks in his own gibberish. No need to try and copy the other player`s gibberish, and both players keep talking, no pausing allowed. After about 10 seconds, the second player changes emotion, and the first one immediately follows her. I saw that my students really enjoyed this activity. They had a lot of fun and that was a great beginning for the class.

Afterwards, I started the class by showing a collage which contained many images of actors and singers who at the same are also actors. I asked the class to tell me who of the actors they knew. They knew some of them, so they started to remember some movies and share some opinions about them, and that was the idea as the class was going to be developed about vocabulary related to movies. It was a great and thought-provoking way to begin with the first activity. The first activity was a series of questions. It was a discussion, so I asked the class to work in pairs.

These are the questions I gave to them.

Honestly, I noticed that my students were working with motivation and were discussing the questions excitedly. After some minutes, I elicited some responses in general so that some of them could share their ideas with the wholes classroom. I did that to close the activity.

The next activity was a conversation about movies which contains some phrasal verbs. I put my students to read the conversation; boys and girls participated, so everyone were included. Afterwards, I clarified the meaning of some of the words they found there. I gave examples and the meaning of some of them. A good way to clarify the meaning of the words is to say the opposite such as: “succeed” “failure” and so on, and, it was with that activity that I finished the class.  

What went wrong? When giving me feedback the teacher told me some of the aspects that I could improve; the classroom arrangement is one of those aspects. Also, my concern about the time that I had, and the necessity of having an objective. Even though he told me the things that I could had done better, he also told me the positives aspects too, and that is great. So, generally I can say that it was one of the classes that I have liked and enjoyed the most because I know that my students enjoyed it as much as I did as well. I hope to keep improving and doing my best and hope you all guys too. Any comment, suggestion or recommendation regarding the class is welcomed guys.

By the way people, I owe you the pictures again ;( ... hopefully, I upload images for the next time.. Blessings!!

English Access class

Once again bloggers, HELLOOO! It is nice to know that we are in our last semester. We almost finish the major, and I am happy because of that. Let me tell you that for this first class, I prepared only two activities. For this period I was assigned the English Access program. I can say that the group is really nice. I could notice that they are willing to learn English, and when you have a good attitude from your students, and to that you add the fact that you really want to do your best, I think everything works better. 

To start the class, I developed a warm up called “throw the ball”. I gave my students a little ball, and the one who caught the ball had to say a verb in simple present and then throw the ball to another classmate. The other student had to say the verb that the person who previously threw him/her the ball had said, and so forth. I saw my students enjoyed the activity (BTW the topic was a review of the simple past tense). As I said, I only prepared 2 activities. The first one I developed was a famous “find someone who”.

 As the topic was the past tense, I gave my students a piece of paper which had some situations which, at the same time, had to make students form questions with the target language and also respond them. Everybody interacted with each other, and that is what I wanted. I got involved with them and I saw they enjoyed going around and speaking with all their classmates. Then, I elicited some of the answers that the students had given. It was nice. Once I was done with that activity, I developed the second one which was called “Tell me about…” 

For this, I asked my students to form groups. I told them to count from one to four, so that at the end the “ones” work together, the “twos” the same, and so on. Afterwards, I gave each group a set of cards which contained some topics.  I told them to put them face down. As they were a lot of cards, I asked them to take turns to speak about the topic they got. I think this was successfully achieved. I see my students speaking a lot; also, I clarified many doubts since they are pretty curios about many words, and that made feel cool as I had no problem to cope with that.

To close, I must say that the TTT was perhaps a %15 or %20 of the class; hence, the STT was like %80 or %85. I saw that you have to put them to work, so that you give the majority of participation to them. It was nice. It is very different to work with adults than children. You have to be prepared for everything with them. To finish the class, I just elicited some of the opinions that the class had been discussing with the cards. I thanked them for their collaboration, and that was it. A truly nice experience. (I owe you pictures btw).

6 months using technology!!

A)Knowledge gained. 

Hello bloggers! After having finished this subject, I can say that there are plenty of things I have learned; however, I think I’m not able to say “Hey I learned this much”. These six months have been pretty cool for me. I love technology. I really liked to be knowing and trying new things; that’s what we need. A different class, different activities, different ways to reach a certain objective. Basically, it was nice for me the fact of changing things that might be boring in traditional way into attractive and meaningful ones. I think that there is a wide range of tools on the internet, but it is up to us to look for them and try something new.  I can say that the tools we’ve seen this cycle have been useful. If you chose them teacher, CONGRATS. I know you’re a pretty smart person. I think that the more the student acquires participation, the greater the learning experience. All the tools are nice. Voxopop, Voicethread, delicious and the rest that I don’t remember but I know that sooner or later I’m going to use them.

B) What attitude must be needed to work with online tools.

The attitude is almost everything in life. In this case, we must take first a positive attitude. I consider that if we have a good attitude, then we will have patience. First we learn to walk and in a couple of months we´re able to run. It is the same with technology. In order to work with technology, you have to be aware that you have to go step by step till you get to work well with any website or tool. Trying something new is always challenging, so if you don’t like challenges you will probably quit with trying some technologies. Also, perseverance is important. The fact of being trying something till you get it and perfect it is key.  I think that technology is sometimes a challenging but creative way to face today’s students. We have to know when, how to, and how much the use of technology is beneficial for us. We have to be careful when making use of it.

C) How these tools can be implemented in other subjects. Give specific examples, please.

There are many ways in which these tools can be implemented. For example; blogger can be used in any subject you want. If it is English, grammar, literature, or any other, you can perfectly tell your students to write an essay; use it for reflective learning, etc.

Voicethread can be implemented in a literature activity. The fact of giving your opinion about a certain book with images, videos or simply writing is cool. It gives that flexibility we sometimes need as students.

Also pandamian is a good tool if you want your students to create pieces of writing. It might be used in any subject but especially to develop the writing skill.

Edcanvas is good not only for students, but also for teachers. If you are a teacher then, here you can create a virtual class. It might be cool for making websites or any other activity that you think it would be meaningful for your students. I think with technology there are no limits.

Also, for literature, any level of English or grammar, Slide.ly is perfect to make students practice the writing or compositional skill.

Finally, I really liked delicious as it a nice tool for students to store only the websites that they might find useful and helpful. It would be nice to use it in an investigation which would require many information from the web, in that way, SS would be able to keep a register of every website they find meaningful.

D) What are some things that should be added or left out in a future course

Well, all of the tools that help to make the acquisition of any content easier, creative and attractive should be added.  I think if we look for meaningful and useful tools, there might be numerous; we will certainly find many tools; however, more than adding or leaving out, teachers should look for ways to incorporate those tools and technologies in the classroom, more specifically in the teaching learning process. We’re walking on a technological path, so teachers should be able to make use of it. They must be updated since students are modernized with many apps which day by day are emerging.

E) Suggestions

My suggestion is simple. Try to use technology as much as possible or at least try to mix it with traditional methods. Every day, people spend hours and hours in front of a processor, so teachers must know how to work with students who are totally in contact with many devices. They must take advantage of that orientating and focusing that time in something which can be pretty useful and helpful in learning anything. I consider that here in our country, we are sort of immature implementing technologies and it seems that humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons. Let’s change bit by bit that.

Ideas

Try to include apps to develop certain contents. Technology tells you “the world is yours”. Transmit that to the students.

Try to look for ways to explain the use of e-tools easier; make your students go and look for tutorials or make them investigate even more at home so that they don’t remain with the knowledge gained in a classroom.

Make “technological sessions” in which your students show any app or software they know how to use. Make them associate those apps or tools with the fact of teaching anything.

Try to enhance motivation when using technology and try to be updated with what is happening around the world with the use of technology.

Last teaching on basic... The farewell

Hello dear bloggers! First of all, let me congratulate you because you have also finished your practices. I think we all have done our best. I’m proud and glad of being with a group like you (Teaching practicum I).

Well, getting in matter, in this last practice of the last period, I had to make a review on the use of There is/ there are, and also the use of some, and any. To start, I developed a warm up activity called “hangman”, which everybody knows what it consists on. I took into account the previous topic, which was furniture, to develop this warm up. After developing this, I began to ask my students what they remembered about the last week and the themes they had been seeing. Some of them said “there is/ there are”, and at that time I pasted the same chart I had used in my second practice, so that they remembered even more. (This is the chart I used)

Later on, I asked my students when was that we used those words, and at the same time, I asked for some examples. They gave me many examples; nevertheless, I only used 3. With those same examples, I invited them to form the negative and interrogative form. I saw they had no problem, and since it was a review I did not provide a huge explanation, but I made emphasis on the usage of each of them. The following point to be developed was a review of “some and any”. For this, I made use of the same dynamic of asking my students when was that we used “some” or “any” (I asked this, because, again, it was a review so they already knew). I pasted a little chart with very concise information so that they could remember well (this is the chart)

They provided me some examples, and, in this part, I wrote on the board my own example with a mistake to see if they noticed it. I realized some of them did and some others hesitated about it. I had spent like 20 minutes of my class by that time. Afterwards, I “passed the ball” to my students so that they could practice. For the practice of there is/ there are, I pasted on the board the image of the house I had used in the previous class, and ask the class to elaborate 4 sentences using  “there is” and 4 using “there are”. This is the image.

 After having done that, I asked them to pass the sentences to the negative and to the interrogative form. I monitored the class all the time. As they had developed a written activity I varied in the next one, being this a speaking activity. For this, I gave some copies to my students with some questions, so that they used the target structure.

 I asked these questions
1.   how many rooms are there in your house?

2.       Is there a TV in the dining room?

3.       Is there an LCD screen in the living room?

4.       How many chairs are there in your house?

5.       Is there a second floor in your house?

6.       Is there garage in your house?

7.       How many bathrooms are there in your house?

The activity was a success, and I was very satisfied with what I had done. All the things worked the way I had planned them. I had some other activities that I could not developed because of the time, and also the SS had to present homework later. So, to finish my class, I just thanked them and talked about the good characteristics that they have as a group. I left the class clapped.

Special thanks guys to all you who were following my blog and were commenting it during these 6 months. Your comments are highly appreciated. Thanks for everything, and, again, congratulations for you too. Undoubtedly, you all are great teachers, and I wish you the best as always. Blessings!!

Grammar is not always boring!

Hello everyone! Hope everything’s good. It was on Monday 6^th that I taught my second class in Basic English. Let me tell you that before performing, I felt excited because I had put a lot of effort in this class. The content to be taught was there is/ there are, and also prepositions of place. Though the class I developed was just about grammar, I did my best to make it simple, nice and varied. I did not do it in a traditional way.

To start the session, because it was Monday I started with a warm up called “rabbit, arrow, wall” in which the teacher asks students to stand up and make two lines in front of the board; in this opportunity, each team had to choose the character they wanted to be; they could either be a rabbit or arrow or wall. All the team members had to be the same character. Both teams were given 10 seconds to decide what they wanted to be. After 10 seconds both team faced each other and do the respective action. Students really got animated. I really enjoyed the activity. Everybody got fun. I prized the winner group again. To get in matter with the topic, I asked the class a couple of questions so that they got familiarized with a reading called “The house of the future” which was like an introduction to the topic. Here it is the image.

 I proceeded to read the image and made emphasis on the words “there is/there are”. I underlined them and extracted some others examples from the same text. After giving some examples, I continued explaining the negative, and the interrogative form. I could see that students did not have any problems understanding this. I kept on giving even more examples using realia. After giving examples with realia, I projected an image of a house. (This house specifically) 

This image helped me a lot to keep on providing even more examples. Examples such as : There is a tv in the living room. (Affirmative form)

There isn’t a tv in the bathroom. (Negative form)

Is there a tv in the living room? (Interrogative form)

I gave and asked many questions like these above mentioned; thus, the whole class was involved in the explanation (They are clever).

In order to introduce prepositions, I did it along with there is/ there are. I said that if we say that there is something, we have to say where that something is located. “There is a marker” Where? I said and put the marker “on” a desk, so they said “the marker is on the desk”; then, I put it under the desk, and then in my pocket so that they follow the same pattern; I did this just to prepare them to see the preposition. Afterwards, I showed an image containing the majority of prepositions.

I used this image.

 To explain each of them, I used realia again; Even, I put myself as example for prepositions like “in front of”, “next to”, “behind”, and also I put some students, if it was the case, to make the examples even clearer. I noticed the students got the meaning and use of the preposition quickly and with no problem. This made feel satisfied and happy. To make even clearer the use of prepositions, I did use ,again, of the image of the house (the one which is above) to checked if students had gotten what I said; I put an emoticon called “Tiburcio” on that image in different places; then, I located Tiburcio above the roof and asked my class “Where is Tiburcio?” Tiburcio is on the roof, they said. Is Tiburcio on the floor? (With Tiburcio still being on the roof) No, he’s not. He’s on the roof. I did that using all the prepositions as the image allowed me to do it. To close, I showed a video in which all of the prepositions were depicted; I could see the students really enjoyed it. Here I leave the video in case you want to see it. 

In this way, I consider that though it was a grammar explanation class, it allowed me to do develop it in an interactive and creative way. It took me a lot of time to prepare this, but now I can say it was worthy. I am really happy with what I did.