My first teaching practice (1st period)
In this opportunity, August 20th 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 27th, 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 14th 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.
