Such a great experience and opportunity, the fact of being teaching to the Basic English group with teacher Karina Carranza. Definitely , as long as you teach the same group day after day, you form a connection with them, and will give your best in order to make them understand what you want to teach.

For me, the last day of class with them was really rewarding.  In first place, for the warm up activity I decided to play de famous hot potato game, but in a different way. My version was to fold eight different sheets of paper as in a ball shape, one over the other until you have a medium size ball. The purpose of the game is that while you play some music, the Ss are passing my version "the onion ball",  and when the music stops, the ss with the ball in his/her hand has to unwrap the ball and perform the task required. This game can be used with many different topics, but this time I implemented topics seen by them in previous classes, such giving sentences in present tense, or a question using Do or Does, a profession, or a family member. I`m really convinced that the use of music in the classroom, will cheer up the Ss willingness towards the class development. And that wasn`t the exception in mine, because they had fun, they helped each other when constructing the different sentences, and enjoyed the music as well.

For the main topic I decided to include a song for them to practice not only the listening skill, but also to have fun and sing along with me!! My topic was the Simple present in the three forms : Affirmative, Negative and Interrogative. And I though why don´t include a song using the simple present tense. For that activity I chose the song JUST THE WAY YOU ARE by Bruno Mars, it is a nice song, easy to understand even for basic`s SS`, and very catchy with the nice rhythm it has.

They are a really nice group, very collaborative and eager to learn every single thing you bring for them. I gave them a copy of the lyric with some missing words, and asked them to fill in the blank according with the development of the song. As in every single group of Ss`, there were some that caught the meaning of many words since the first time I played it. For some others, it was a really hard time to figure out which word was missing. After the second time I played it, we started all together to answer the missing words and all of them were able to share the answers, at the end every single ss got the complete lyric and was the right time to Sing all together…we really enjoyed it!!!

The last activity I performed was a participative one,  I pasted 10 flashcards on the board with images of activities in simple present. I also brought 10 sentence strips in relation with every single flashcard. I really enjoy asking the Ss to participate as much as possible in the activities, and this wasn`t the exception, I asked their help and one by one had to stand up and come to the front, choose a strip, and paste it next to the corresponding flashcard. That part was a piece of cake for them, the second round was to write the negative form of every single sentence, and the third round was to write the interrogative form. As long as the practice was growing, the mistakes were appearing, but also the self correction from them was present too. At the end, they reinforced the previous knowledge  they had and reinforced the use of the auxiliaries…really nice!!!

Unfortunately, time is our worst enemy and when I realized it was time to go home, I couldn´t finish my lesson plan, but I felt really satisfied because I know that they will remember the information when taking their exam, and finishing the lesson plan is not at the end, the main goal of teaching.  Instead of that,  is the fact of transmitting the knowledge.

Good luck for the Second period my dear friends!!!

W

hen teaching, you are so full of ideas, plans and expectations about the topic you will develop with your respective group…but what a terrible feeling when you see on the Ss `s face a big QUESTION MARK???? Jajaja lots of things come to your mind while teaching and it is really demanding,  because if you are like me perfectionist ,  you will want that everything works on your own pace…

After reading many of your blogs my dear friends,  I can tell you that since I know which topic has been assigned  to me, I started thinking over and over what can I do, how do I want to develop the topic in the classroom and a brainstorming comes  to my mind.

During my second class, the main topic was the Family members and the Possessive case it means two topics for one hour class…maybe for us the information can be a “piece of cake” , but when we face the fact that some of the Ss will get the idea very quickly, but others are with a question mark on their faces….ouuchhhh what a terrible feeling…

I`m going to share with you how was my second experience and what I did to overcome that bad feeling…well my class started with a warm up in which I asked them to divide the class into two groups. I put two desks in front of the board, but looking to the front. One representative of each group must sit in front of them, the rest of the classmates were stand up in front of the student, and they were waiting for a word that I wrote on the board…the objective of the activity was that I wrote a profession on the board, and they had to give clues to their classmates in order to figure out which profession was…as I said in my previous blog, they are really nice, they cooperate with you in the different activities, and they did it. Unfortunately, some of them were cheating, and said the profession without any sound…and the other group was angry…but anyways it was funny.

In order to present the first topic which was THE FAMILY MEMBERS, I brought a big Tree made of cardboard and some flashcards representing some family members like : mother, father, sister, brother, etc.

After I pasted the big tree on the board without  any explanation or clue about the next topic, I started asking them as in a brainstorming, what comes to their minds when looking at the big tree. Some of them said fruits, birds, leaves, nest, etc. and I presented  the topic by saying that in a certain way we  have our own tree, when I said that, they immediately said that the topic was the family, and that gave me the chance to present the family members. They helped me identifying each member with some strips that I brought , and which they were asked to paste next to each one.

after that, I gave them a practice sheet to evaluate if they understood and recognize the family members. And they did!!!

 That practice gave me the chance to introduce  the second topic.  Which  was the possessive case, and I was sure that with the help of the family members the information will be more accurate…but my surprise was that during the grammar explanation, some of they were like ??????WHAT????? …ouchhh that was the exact moment when I was what can I do now?  What I can tell you is that bringing the grammar explanation on charts helps you a lot, immediately I gave them real examples with their own names, and which were related with the examples given on the chart.

At the end, they were in the same level and I felt really nice that most of them understood the explanation and were able to work with the practice sheets.

As Roger mentioned in his blog, time is our worst enemy, and it is not because you are not well prepared in time management, but you can´t force or stop the Ss`s participation when they want to comment or give their opinions.

Let´s continue working my dear friends, we have to reach our dreams and to kill our own fears!!! Please comment on my ideas…and share yours with me!!!!

Basic English (Class 1)

The last Monday was my first day as teacher... I have to recognize that I was nervous, and a little bit afraid of the group, even though I had the chance to observe them first. The teacher was really kind when introducing me with them and they were really kind too.

Being observed is something really different, because you feel a lot of eyes on you and you have to be very careful whit your behavior, gestures, movements, etc. at the same time.   But the moment was there, and I had to take the control of the class. I started by greeting them and presenting myself with some details for them to know about me and the reason why I was there.

To break the ice, I asked them to stand up and divide the group into 2 teams A and B, what I asked them to do was to follow the ladder with words that begins with the last letter of my first word and the next student has to continue with another word and so on....



 Like : Apple
                          a
                          r
and so on....
It was really nice, because they were practicing vocabulary that they already knew, also practiced the correct way of writing them,  at the end there was a winner and they received a prize for that!!!!

After the warm up time, I presented the use of the determiners with a reading practice in which I included  several examples of their use, and without noticing they were  involved with the new information.  What I  found interesting, is the fact that we can include a lot of things that are in their same interest or  famous cartoons or  any material that they are related with. And in this way we will reach two important things at the same time : 1) Will catch their attention , and 2) Will present an interesting class leaving behind the myth of a boring class, which is without no doubt one of our terrible fears.

Is so nice to realize that the new groups in the major are really eager to learn, to cooperate and participate with you in the explanation, the practice, and the development of the topic without any pressure from you which is really important.

 In general, I can share with you that I really liked the experience and there is no doubt that I really want to do this every time I can!!!!