First teaching practicum of the 3rd period- Basic level

Hello bloggers! Thanks for reading my blog. In my first experience with this group (basic level), I taught a little bit about adjectives of feelings and the other part about the past tense which was my main aim. In the observation I had done, I could notice the group was pretty active and participative, so I did not have any problems with their participation and collaboration. As it was the first class, I started it by introducing myself and, again, 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. 

To get in matter, I began the session by asking my students how they were feeling by that moment (as the first part of the class was about adjectives of feelings) and then, I developed  a warm up activity called “barnyard” in which each person is given the name of an animal with approximately three-five people having the same animal. I spread the group across the room and no one was allowed to tell which animal he or she was. At my signal, each person had to make the noise of the animal that he or she had been given. The first group that found all of their animals and sit down were the winners. I rewarded the winner group by giving them some candies.

Having done this activity, I, again, asked them how they felt when making the noise of the animals they had. Some of them said they felt nervous, some of them embarrassed; some others were happy, and so on. When telling me their answers, I pasted different emoticons which showed those emotions (here’s a picture of that moment so that you get a better idea).

Keeping on with that part, I asked my students how they usually felt when being in different situations as for example, when someone passes away. I asked them how they felt when they watched Real Madrid and Barcelona lost in the champions’ league, so that I could get their emotions; in fact, some of them said they were disappointed; some others were sad, angry and so forth. Afterwards, I asked them to take their books out since I worked with a speaking activity. It was pair work.

After finishing that activity, I asked my students some questions. I asked them what kind of music they liked; who their favorite singer was, and if they liked Michael Jackson (MJ) music. After listening to different opinions, I gave some copies with a reading containing general data about MJ. The purpose here was that they identified the verbs in past tense. Then, I read along with them and they told me the verbs they had found. I wrote them on the board, and also I wrote some words which were mispronounced. The next step of the activity was for them to respond some questions with the information of the reading.

They had to use the target structure. I must say that I did not explained any grammar point; however they got the message as the teacher told me when giving me feedback. At last, I checked the answers and some other aspects, and I could see they had done everything and that they had not had any problem. It was in that way that I finished my first class. It was nice. It was a communicative class. They are pretty active and we as teacher must turn that energy into our own favor.