My progress in the teaching field

Fifth class
Class date: April 12th, 2013
Topic: What a mess!
Skill: Listening

In the fifth lesson, I had to teach listening with some vocabulary using this is and that's plus the possessive form. First, what I wanted to do was to develop the lesson using three different listening activities and try not to get confused. What I did was to design my lessson in three different parts, even though it was the same lesson. I decided to do it in that way because I considered that since they were three different listening activities it was going to be easier for me to create three different PDP activities for each of them. Besides, as you can see in the lesson above each activity introduced something different as well as each activity produce something else or different; I am not sure yet if that is the way how we should design it, but it works for me to understand it and follow it better.

In the first PRE activity where I had to write the topic what a mess! and ask my students to think about its meaning looking at the pictures posted on the board, was really difficult for them to understand it even I used body language and I threw some things trying to show the meaning of "mess"; so at the end I had to say it in Spanish since it was impossible for them to figure it out. Maybe what I should have done was to try to give them more examples, or showing them two different pictures one showing a well organized room and the other one showing a mess. 

Furthermore, another activity where I think that I should have done something different was in the POST activity where Students had to check their answers in trios  to  practice and role play a dialogue. The problem was that I had planned to ask them to check their answers, practice the dialogue and say it aloud; but I what I did was to asked them to stand up so it was difficult for them to write and correct their answers. And that is not all, because I found that most of them did not have filled in the gaps; so at the moment of asking them to say it aloud was really difficult for them to produce and for me to assess their listening.

Sixth class
Class date: April 19th, 2013
Topic: Where is it?
Skill: Reading

The topic that I had to develop during this reading lesson was where is it? using the prepositions of place. At the beginig what I wanted to do was to have students relate the meaning of some vocabulary words with its correct graphic represenation in a meaningful way, so they could  encounter them in the reading.

What I did was to asked students to pass on the board and have them guess the correct meaning by matching the picture with the word; surprisingly they did a realy good job, because I only had to use body language for a word they did not know. After that, they were prepared for the during activities, so they started reading the text using the reading strategy scanning to answer some questions from the reading. 

Then, suring the post activity I divided the class in two groups so they could paste some tiny pictures on a picture of a tree house. The aim of the activity was to have studenst to remember what they have read using short and simple sentences like "The goldfish is under the window"; however this did not work eventhough I was constantly asking, some of them use the whole sentence to answer me but they did not exchange ideas in the target language. So what I would have done different, is the final post activity since students could just memorize the reading and the picture; but not the structure of the sentence using the prepositions of place.

Seventh class
Class date: April 26th, 2013
Topic: Language check
Skill: Grammar

In this time I had the opportunity to teach a grammar lesson for the fisrt time, which was something interesting and a little bit challenging for me because I was thinking in the bst way to present to my students the language focus in easy and appealing way. First of all the objectve of my lesson was By the end of the lesson SWBAT identify and express names of places, and locations when listening, reading and writing about different places using preposition of places and the questions Are you...? Is it...? and giving its correct answer, so what I wanted to do was to present the different questions in two different charts so students could undesrtand the difference between  Are you...? and Is it...? with its correct answers so they could put them in practice and at the end produce by themselves their own text messages using those questions, prepositions of place and answers. 

What I did was to give them as many examples as possible using different pieces of paper conataing the different parts of a question using Are you? and Is it?, and what I had planned for that part of the lesson was to ask students help to tell me just the order of the words; but in the moment I thought that there were too many sentences and it was going to be so teacher centered, so I decided to ask them to pass on the board and try to find the different parts to form different sentences following the first example that I had already given to them. And I  think that it was really helpful for them, because I ghange a presentation activity to a practice activty so they could encounter and practice the correct order of the sentences (and most of them were correct).

At the end, I presented a text message which had different mistales so they could correct them and whichin my opinion was something new for them but they did it well. However, because of the time we did it among the class and the last activity which was to create a text message with a partnerusing the language focus studied before, I asked them to take it as a homework so tehy could bring it in the next class. Unfortunately, this was an obstackle for me to check if I had reach my objective, because only two of them bring it back but with a good job. 

Eighth class
Class date: May 17th, 2013
Topic: My family
Skill: Listening

This was the last class that I had to teach and at the same time one of the most chalenging, and this was due the fact that I had a different group of students, with a different behavior, different ineterests and so on. First, I had prepared a lesson and materials for 20 students so I was really nervous and prepared for the worst. Then what I wanted to do was to teach this listening class in a different way from the previous ones, since some of my classmates gave me some advices for the type of activities and the number of activities, which I really appreciate beacuse I feel that it helped me a lot. My big concern was to reach my objective, so I wanted to do evrething possible to reach it but I knen that it was going to be a chalenge.

What I did was to have students closer since there were only 6 of them, and have them to work in pairs. I started by trying to call their attention, since most of them were busy with their own things. Also, I had them to participate as much as they could so they could practice the topic to be studied. Something I think it was difficult for them and for me was at the moment of the listening part, even though I let them have a free listening so they could report whatever they listened to, at the moment of the second listening none of them understood the audio so I decide to put it one more time.Then, I asked them to practice a short dialogue so they could check their answers, but my surprise was that none of them had the correct answers so at the moment I decided to use my backup plan which was tio provide them the differnt vocabulary wordsin order to have them practice in an oral way the conversation. After asking one by one, having them practicing and practicing among them and in pairs,  I think that most of them could reach the aim of the activity which was Students can ask and answer about the number of family members they and others have using the question how many brothers do you have? And its answer I have one brother/ I have no brothers, as we can see in the last activity that on  the worksheet gave students the oportunity to chieve the aim of the activity in a n oral way.

Finally, what I should have done different is the presentation of the vocabulary words and the use of materials since most of the students did not understand the audio I had to give the meaning of three words with the help of some of them in Spanish; but I had a picture of a family  (the same as in the worksheet) pasted on the board, so I should have use it more to ask students the family members that they heard on the recording. Maybe in that way they could have been more capable of understand and acquire the meaning of the different vocabulary words about family members. 

Nonetheless, I feel happy and thankful for all this experience due the fact that it was a new for me to work with teenagers. I think that I have learned a lot from my teacher, my classmates and from the students as well and which something rewarding for me.