During my second chance teaching to
this particular group, I can share with you that I really like them. It doesn´t
matter the first impression we got from them, by this time they have worked
with us in every single activity we asked them to, and that attitude set them
in different perspective.
As we know, the grammar part is the
most challenging and difficult for the teacher, it doesn´t matter how prepared
you think you are, there always will be a detail that will make you hesitate.
This time I started my class playing
with them the famous hot potato but with a BIG DICE, this dice was prepared
with adverbs of frequency like : always, almost always, never, usually, etc.
they had to pass the dice while the music was playing, once it stopped, the ss
with the dice on her hands had to throw it on the floor, and according with the
adverb she/he had to say a sentence using it.
After that, I pasted a chart with a
dialogue including the famous adverbs of frequency, this time it didn´t work as
I wanted and I will share with you why. Even though it was not my first idea, I
have to give an advice. In first place
we must be careful with the words we are going to work with, remember that for
us can sound easy, manageable, known, etc, but I felt really worried when I started
reading the dialogue and the girls couldn´t pronounce words such as “once and
twice” another girl didn´t know the meaning of snack, and things like those. What
at the beginning was a simple and funny activity, at the end was a headache
because most of them had serious problems with pronunciation and vocabulary in
general.
Another disadvantage is that we have
everything planned and timed, and if you have to slow down your own pace in the
class, will have a cost at the end, specially with the grammar explanation
related with how to create WH Questions using the adverbs of frequency. Because
of my personal experience, I really enjoy working the grammar part development
with everybody`s help. I consider that including the whole class during the most
“difficult” part will help you a lot in two main key parts, the first one you
will catch the ss attention and everybody will want to know how to deal with
the structure, and on the other hand asking for help and making mistakes all
together, will reinforce the ss self esteem because the entire group will help at
the same time to build or construct the sentences.
At the end everything went well and
I felt really satisfied, because most of
them knew how to work creating wh questions using the adverbs, and that`s what makes
the teacher happy…
hello Sarita!! I know we prepared activities according to the caractheristics of the group. I see you had some problems; however, you dealt well with them. These sort of experiences are the ones whuch help us for the following ones. I know we have limited time to teach, but I think our tutor must understand that sometimes we have to slow the pace to make something clear or enhance the explanation. I see you worked hard, and that is good. Kee up the good work Sarita!!
ResponderEliminarDepending on the group, you will prepare activities that might work for them. Having problems is something that we must deal with, but cheer up :D. Do not see this in the bad way; instead, seeing it as a new experience that will help you improve day by day :). Cheers.
ResponderEliminarSince this is not our full time group of students, we have to be alert in any difficulty they could probably have, and try somehow to overcome that problem with serenity and confidence.
ResponderEliminarThe activities you planned were pretty well developed, but as you mention time is a big issue in our cases as we can face some problems with our students.
Little by little we learn how to cope with those situations. We may not become experts but at least we know how to face them.
Nice class Sarix
I've experienced that Jarita....and I know how difficult this is.....because as you said...for us it seems to be a piece of cake, the vocabulary, grammar, structures and we use that material thinking that ss won't have problems with it, but when we develope the activity, problems show up!! It is really important to be awared of this situation and try to over come it during the class. What I thought whe it happened to me was: "I'm still a practitioner....this will help me when being a teacher!" Because we have to learn how to know or mesure ss knowledge.....but well done Jarita, nice warm up, I can see you're using audio-visual materials...good point!
ResponderEliminar