My second experience with the group of intermediate II was nice. Though the weather was very hot, students collaborated with all the activities I developed. Thank God, I did not have to explain any grammar point. If I mention this, it’s because the weather would have not been in my favor to do it; it would have been a difficult session in that sense. However; the class was just about practicing the future forms “will” and “going to”.

To start the class, I greeted the group and asked some questions about the future forms they had been recently seeing. I used those questions as a warm up. I took around 4 or 5 minutes to do it. Afterwards, I put the students to work in pairs; it was a speaking activity. Every 2 or 3 minutes I provided a question so that they could discuss with their partner. The development of this activity took around 15 minutes. I monitored what they were doing all the time, and, at the same time, I got involved with them by interacting with one another. I really like to monitor in that way as you become, to some extent, part of the group of students and the role of being the teacher is not so remarked in the classroom. You take a more passive role so the class becomes student-center. Here's a video of me monitoring and interacting with my students.

As the period of vacation is about to begin, the next activity was a single question. I asked them if they were going to do anything special for these holidays. This was done working in groups; I provided some ideas of what they would probably do. I spent over 10 minutes for these as some of my students share their thoughts and opinions with everybody.

 The next point in the agenda, and the last one, was some role plays. I divided the class in 4 groups and a representative of each group passed to pick up a piece of paper which contained the topic they were meant to develop in the role play. This activity took around 25 minutes as I gave 10 to prepare the conversation and 15 for the groups to pass to the front and perform their work. Some of the topics were planning the next vacation trip, planning a trip to another country, planning a birthday party, among others. All of them using the future forms. While developing their role plays, I took some notes in regards with the mistakes they had committed. At the end, I wrote them on the board and it was in this way that I finished my second class with this group. I think students did not get bored as they all were involved and participating all the time as well as me. Here’s a video of my students developing this activity (the role plays). Sorry for the audio.  

Intermediate English II (First practice)

This time I’m teaching intermediate English II, and I can say that I really like this group. They are pretty active and that makes the teaching-learning process easier, at least for me. In this opportunity, I taught phrasal verbs which is quite a bit challenging for everybody (under my view point). When I was about to begin the class, I found out that a part of what I was supposed to teach was already done; nevertheless, I had an extra activity which anyways I did not use it at the end due to the time.

 To start the session, as I did in the previous group, I introduced myself, and I also made clear 3 important points for a class to be developed with no difficulty. I briefly talked about discipline, respect, and participation. I tried to give confidence to my students so that they felt comfortable with me. After that introduction, I formally began the class with a matching activity which was the warm up just to see how familiarized they were with the topic. Afterwards, I moved onto the next activity. For this, the students used their books. They worked on the grammar and vocabulary part. I gave a reasonable amount of time for them to solve the difficulties, and some minutes later I checked along with them. 

As the next point, I made some copies for my students since they had to practice phrasal verbs in the written form. They had to complete some sentences; it was a fill-in-the-blank activity. The exercise was sort of challenging as we know that phrasal verbs tend to change the meaning in some contexts. This activity took around 15 minutes since I had to make clear why it is that we used certain verbs; basically, I explained the meaning of some of them. Once that this activity was finished, I put the class to work in pairs; this time, it was a speaking activity about New Year’s celebration. It was the last activity I was going to develop along with a listening. To monitored this activity (the speaking one), I did the same the teacher does. I got closer to the students and started to interact with them making comments about the celebration and what they did. It was pretty cool.

Finally, I had reached the listening part. At first, I just gave some tips for them to get concentrated on the dialogue they were going to listen to. They were already familiarized with the listening since the previous activity (the speaking one) was part of the listening. Then I just solved to questions, and it was in that way that I finished my first teaching practicum with this group. I really felt comfortable, and since I like the teacher’s style, it is not difficult for me to teach there. I think playing is not necessary to make a class active and dynamic though this is something which might depend on the characteristics of the group. I really enjoyed this experience.