My first teaching practice (1st period)

In this opportunity, August 20^th 2017, I had to teach to my group of intermediate English I the present perfect tense. I felt a little bit nervous this day since it was the first time I taught to this group, but I think I could do a good job. In this class, I was in charge of teaching a new topic for my students. Of course the teacher had explained a few things regarding the topic, but I was going to go deep. To warm up the class, I started with a song called “baby shark” and as I could notice it was the first time they sang it, so I tried to be as clear as possible with them, I also exemplified the way we were supposed to conduct the warm up; however, some students were still lost when I asked them to sing the song. After this, I moved to the grammar explanation, which was based on the usage of “since and for.” 

For this, I brought a chart with a brief explanation and some exercises in which they were going to prove they had understood the topic. During this part, students had some problems with the usage of since and for, but I tried to explain one more time and at the end they succeed with the sentences they were asked to do. Later on, we moved to another activity in which students had to take a page from their notebooks and write at least five verbs in the past, then they had to make a ball and throw it to the front so that they could pick up one that was not theirs and transform the verbs into the past participial form.  Unfortunately, the time flied and as I tried students to understand the usage of the grammar notes I could not finish the last activity in which they were going to work on their textbooks. However, I felt pleased because my students acquired new knowledge even though the time was not enough to clarify every single doubt they had.

My second teaching practice (1st period)

It was August 27^th, and I had to teach my second class. Today again I had to teach the present perfect, but this time it was way much easier for me and for my students because they already managed the topic. 

I started the class with an activity called pass the marker. Students did a great job with this warm up activity because any of the ones who participated hesitated too much when they passed to write their sentence on the board. For the first activity of this day I brought some flashcards for students to create some sentences, but the student who passed was asked to throw a big dice, which I had brought, and was going to create the sentence according to the mood they got. I could notice that students enjoyed this activity because they were paying attention to the way other students said their sentences. 

As soon as we finished this activity, we moved to a reading in which students were working in trios in order to read a passage, but while one student was reading the other two were taking notes about the mispronounced words their classmates read so that at the end we all could check the words they had pronunciation problems with. At the end, we had a listening practice based on the present perfect as well, and students also did a good job with this since they did not struggle when answering the questions. In fact, I can say I enjoyed this class because I achieved what I had expected and students participated really cool during each of the activities.

  

 My third teaching practice (1st period)

Today, August 14^th 2017, I had the chance to teach my last class to my group of students. This time the teacher asked me to reinforce the usage of the present perfect tense, so I prepared the activities based on some suggestions he shared with me. First of all, I started the class with a warm-up called “spiderweb” in which students had to answer a question when they got a wool ball, previously thrown by another classmate, and I could notice students enjoyed to throw the ball to the person they decided. Therefore, as the teacher also told me to bring a practice on the usage of the present perfect, I brought one he provided to me. For this activity, students had to select from the simple past or present perfect tense to complete the fill in the blank exercise, and they did it successfully since they did not hesitate too much at the moment of doing it. 

After this activity, we also had a review on the creating of WH-questions, which was something the teacher asked me to so that I prepared some material in order to have students brainstorm some ideas according to the images. Students were struggling to find the correct structure to make questions, but with a little help they remembered it all. Hence, I asked them to work in trios in order to create three WH-questions using the present perfect tense, and they did a good job as well. Lastly, I had prepared a listening practice, but unfortunately the time was not enough to complete all the steps of the listening, so the teacher told me to work only with the pre and during part of it. Thankfully, students worked somehow hard and fast to complete the task, in which they succeed as well. At the very end, I said goodbye to my students because I taught them for the last time, and I gave each of them a candy in gratitude to their help and participation during my classes. 

My Third Teaching Practice (2^nd Period)

Sometimes it is difficult to start a process which is a requirement in our teaching area, but it feels good to see others succeed thank to your work and effort. In my case, every time I finish something that has been not a challenge but a rewarding task, I feel happy because I know that some people learned something new that is going to be useful in their lives. This day, April 3^rd, 2017, I had the chance to finish a process that started without knowing anybody the way my new group of students were going to work since they did not know me beforehand.

At the very beginning of today’s class, I felt worried since the bell had not rang, and my mentor had not arrived to the classroom. However, when I started the class I tried to keep positive and relaxed so that I could transmit my positivism to my students. First of all, as the focus of my class was going to be a review on what my students had been studying since days before, I had them write a sentence on a page, which later they threw to the front of the classroom in form of a stone. When they all had gotten one that was not theirs, they transformed it to the indirect speech form.

Consequently, I had them stand up in order to have them all talk about sources of internet, which was a review of the studied topics. As I had to be creative with today’s class, I asked them to make two groups, one inside the other one, because in that way they could discuss the questions I brought for them. They were discussing the questions for some minutes and later I told them to sit down again. Later on, I had to move to the next activity in which they had to create some sentences, but I think it did not work really well since most of my students had some problems to do it, so I reduced their work to facilitate it. As a result I saw that it helped them with the next step of the activity which was to guess whether what their peer had written was true or false.  

Lastly, I had them play a board game, which was created by myself. For this last activity, I had them work in groups of five to discuss the statements or perform the challenges presented there. I could see their enthusiasm while talking and taking turns to see what the rest of their classmates were about to do or talk about. To sum up, I can say that the development of my class was good since I had my students using the target language while interacting with each other during the my whole teaching time. 

My Second Teaching Practice (2^nd period)

This day I had the opportunity to teach my second class. In this case I consider everything worked really well because I could start the class on time and with the majority of my students’ attendance. For this day, I prepared the warm up activity “hot potato” in order to have students remember about the last class. What I can say about the beginning of my class is that it is difficult to deal with late comers since this happened to me today when I had already started the class and I had to explain the directions for the warm up three times in order not to have anybody lost during the performance of it, yet the objective of the warm up was achieved for my students.

Today’s class was mostly going to be focused on speaking so that I started the class giving my students a short reading comprehension which they read and discussed in pairs for some minutes. After a while, I asked some of them to share with the whole class what they thought about the text. Furthermore, I could see their enthusiasm during this activity and I think it was because they were discussing about something such as internet, which has a big impact in our society. Likewise, the next activity was as successful as expected since I could have them talk with their classmates one more time. During this step, I was asked in different opportunities for the meaning of new words which were somehow confusing for students.

The class continued with a line up questions activity, and for this students were still working in pairs answering the questions in the oral form. For this activity, they had some minutes to discuss the questions with one classmate and later they had to change classmate to get new points of view. Later on, I asked some of them what they had understood from some of the questions provided, and they gave me their opinions. Finally, as a concluding activity, I brought some quotes on how trustful internet sources were. During this part, students were walking around the classroom and talking about the quotes while asking for the meaning of new words. However, during the last minutes I asked directly to some students what they thought about the quotes they read, and they were giving me their opinion so that I also gave them my point of view for each quote they read. Thank God everything was okay this day as I could have students talk all my class time while learning the good and bad aspects of relying information from the internet. 

My First Teaching Practice (2^nd Period)

It was March 22^nd 2017 and I was teaching my first class in the English Access Program. I was not nervous this time since I knew beforehand the way students worked. As it was late and the bell had not rang, I was afraid the remaining time for my development of the class was not going to be enough. The class started around 3:06 in the afternoon, so what I did first was to share with students my expectations and the way I was going to work with them. As soon as I did such thing, I spread some pieces of paper for students could write their names on them. After some minutes of being in the classroom, I took students to the basketball field in order to perform the warm up activity called “group link”. I could see their good attitude toward the warm up activity, and their refusing attitude to go back to the classroom. Besides, I could notice that they enjoyed to have a funny moment before the beginning of the class.

Similarly, I really admire my students' willingness to participate in every activity and the good attitude they have all the time. The focus of the topic started when I asked students to discuss in pairs a question I had brought. They were talking about this for a while, and later on, I asked some of them what some ideas about the question were.

Following the course of the class, I tried to get my students involved in the next activity, which was the grammar explanation of the topic. For this step, I brought to the class a puppet which was going to help me out with the explanation of the reported speech. I noticed students were engaged during this part of the class since I could see them carefully listening to what the puppet and I were saying. Students understood the usage of the topic very fast so that I asked them to work on their book in order to complete some exercises on reported speech; however, they had some problems while working on it because they found these exercises harder than the ones I explained to them. On the other hand, I consider that not having the exercises students were going to develop beforehand was something that hindered my success of the class since I got a bit confused when I actually saw the difficulty of them. Furthermore, the remaining time for the last activity was not enough as the bell rang and they all had to leave. In brief, I can say that it was a very enriching experience which is going to help me do a better job in further classes.  

My third teaching practicum

It was February 20th and I had my last teaching practicum with my students from advanced English II. First of all, this day I started the class with a warm up activity called “red elbow” for which students were willing to perform it; however, I think that it becomes difficult when the rest of students are still arriving to the classroom because one has to explain again to them what the activity consists of, so it happened to me today and I wasted more minutes in this activity than I expected, hopefully I can say it is rewarding to know that my students liked the activity.

Secondly, during the beginning of the main focus of the class, I was checking with my students the exercises they had as homework and I could realize that some of them hadn’t done the homework yet, but they were helped by their classmates when I asked them to read their sentences. As I could notice during this part, students had some problems with the expressions they were supposed to include on the exercises, but I helped them out with the best answer. Later on, we moved to the next activity in which they had to complete a listening for details part in which they did a great job, too. After this, I had them working in pairs and discussing about some statements they had on their books, so they were asking me for some ways to say some expressions.

 Finally, I had them discussing with their partner one topic they wanted to talk about for the last part of the class, and while they were doing this they were asking me for some unknown words they found, so at the end I asked for volunteers to pass to the front to share the ideas that they had and some students passed to the front. Thank God everything worked well during my last teaching practicum with this group that provided me with a lot of knowledge to put into practice in further classes. 

My second teaching practicum 

Today, February 14^th 2017, I was teaching my second class. In this opportunity, I thought that everything was going to be better than the first time, yet I felt more nervous this time and I think it was because there were more students.

This day I prepared the warm up hot potato, but I only had few people when the teacher told me to start the class. I started the class with the students I had, and the rest of students were incorporating to the game as they were entering the classroom. I think that some students in this level feel ashamed when speaking in English. I could notice the problems they had when talking about something as they had some grammar mistakes.

As the class moved on, I continued with a brief review on the topic they had been studying for some days, so they could refresh their knowledge about it and it worked well because students still remembered the main points of the grammar part. I knew that students needed more practice on the relative clauses, so I brought for them a practice so that they could put into practice their previous knowledge. I could notice during this step that students were learning a lot because they did the exercises very fast and they didn’t make any mistake. In order to continue with the class, I asked students to work on their book and answer some statements that it had based on a writing activity. I could see that some of them had some ideas written on that part because they said they did it during their free time, but I waited until the rest of students had finished to start asking for ideas, and I continue noticing the problems they had when speaking, but I was helping them on what I could so that they could feel more confident.

At the end, the final activity was a debate in which they were ashamed again to start talking, so I decided to choose someone in order to start the ideas about the topic to be discussed, and I can say that after some minutes they got engaged with the activity as they were many volunteers when they wanted to share their ideas. In general, I think that everything worked well because my students participate every time I ask them to do it.

My first teaching practice

It was February 7^th  2017 and I was teaching my first class to advanced English II section “B”. At the beginning, I was nervous because I didn’t have idea about what way my class was going to take. As it was time to start the class, the teacher suggested me to start it with the students that were in the classroom in that moment; nevertheless, I told him that I needed more students to start the class. After at least the half of the students of the section arrived, I started the class. I can say it was nice to know how other people whom I just had shared some moments with, were going to respond to the class someone knew was about to start.

At the beginning of the class, everybody was paying attention, and I know that they liked the first activity I did which was “broken telephone”. For this activity, I decided to make two groups and even though some of them were cheating in order to pass the message, they enjoyed the game as some students were asking me to see again the proverbs they were writing on the board.

During the next activity, I felt worried because I was going to introduce the grammatical part; however, I tried to involve my students because it was necessary that they could understand the grammatical part of the topic I was teaching. After some minutes, I felt comfortable because I tried to clarify every doubt students could have at that moment. I can say that I tried to explain to them as clear and concise as I could in order to have them use the target language in the following activity.

 At the end, it was cool to have my students write and talk about a famous person because I noticed how engaged the rest of their classmates were when trying to guess who their classmates were talking about. In conclusion, I felt really nice to be there with a group of students that worked and behaved properly during my whole class.