My 3rd class in Basic English level

It was on Monday 18^th the day I taught my last class in the basic level. I felt I was prepared, and, this time, I felt I was comfortable. I had to develop two activities. One was a fill-in-the-blank activity, and the other one was a free practice in which they had to write a paragraph about themselves. The topic was Daily Routine activities.

As a warm up, I put some pieces of paper in a plastic bag which contained some daily routine activities. Voluntarily, every student was going to pass and performed what the piece of paper said. The warm up was successfully done since they were practicing the simple present, and at the same time we all were having fun with the mimics the students made. I spent 10 minutes in the warm up.

Once that they were familiarized with the topic, I put them to work in pairs. They were to complete a fill in the blank activity. I gave a reasonable amount of time for them to complete the exercise. Then, I checked along with the class. I did the first exercise, and they kept solving the rest. I asked individual questions. In this exercise I took around 15 minutes. I still had approximately 20 or 25 minutes to develop the second activity, which was about daily routine activities; however, (again) my tutor did not allow me to finish my class, so basically that was all I did in my third class. I think I did a good job. Nevertheless, I got like a disgusting feeling because I was not given the right time to develop the class. I think that that also affected my grade. Anyways, I tried to give my best when teaching and I know grades are just a parameter of what we do. Hope you all guys had better experiences.

2nd teaching practice

In my 2nd teaching practice, I was not confortamble with the first activity since ,under my view point, it was sort of complicated; furthermore, I knew it was going to take lots of time to be developed, and I did not understand it at all. I started the class with a general greeting asking about the things my students had done on the weekend. Then, I kept on developing the activity which was about family members. I told my students to work in pairs but then, because of the time I did not complete the activity. For sure that I knew that the teacher was going to notice that the activity was not achieved as it should  have been. I spent about 15 minutes on it. The next 15 minutes were spent in the presentation part. Here, the students had to used the book. There was a reading about the description of some people which matched with a picture of them, and the class had to inferred to which member of the family in the picture  was the descritption they  were reading. As I said, I was not comfortable since the beginning. I must say that my second experience on teaching was one of those that are good because of the mistakes that you obtained from it, so that next time you take them into account for  you to improve, modify or  totally change everything. Even bad things have positive points.

I will not give more minutiae of the lesson. What I can say is that there was not coordination of some points in regards with what I was supposed to teach due to the miscommunication that I had with the teacher. I also want to say that I did not have the time I was supposed to have to teach my lesson. I was given only 30 minutes. Sincerely, this was not a good experience at all since there was no flexibility or freedom to teach the lesson. I could not change anything in the lesson plan (this does not mean the lesson plan was wrong) and since that moment I had bad sensations about it. Anyways, it is done. I want to believe that next time will be totally different.

Voicethread vs Voxopop

Voxopop enables you to start an asynchronous discussion with other people using their onwn voices. You just send them the link to your created discussion.




Voicethread is similar to Voxopop, also good for a synchronous discussion, the difference is that this one allows videos reponses and also it automatically plays the whole sequence of speakers one after another.

Both of them are wonderful tools. Personally, I prefer to use Voicethread because I think it is more interactive than voxopop. You have the alternative of making a comment either recording your own voice, recording a video, or by simply texting. So there is flexibility in that sense since not everybody might have the equipment necessary for recording a video or recording their voice. So, in case this happens, you can perfectly type your comment which is something that is not possible in Voxopop.
Voxopop does not have that versatility. It gives you no choice, while Voicethread gives you more than one altternative. In Voicethread you can even upload an image,  a Power point Presentation and even sharing videos from youtube adding your personal opinion about it. I would say that both are useful, if we see, both provide the chance of  developing the speaking skill, and at the same time listening. Depending on your view point, conditions, and purposes you might make a choice between them. It's up to you.