A lesson learned. Second Period.

I had to get up very early today; I had to start my class at 7:00. Last night I went to bed early because the lesson was kind of easy, so I did my planning in some minutes. I arrived to the classroom at 6:45 with enough time to prepare my material; I had to wait around half an hour for the teacher (she lives in Ahuachapan like me; however, I came earlier; I do not understand), so I had extra time to review what I had prepared.
The teacher arrived, and I started my class at 7:15. I started with a warm up I did the last period with teacher Yesenia; students had to tell their names and the title of their favorite movie. That was very helpful because the number of students is around 25, so I had the opportunity to get familiar with their names. After the warm up, we worked on a listening; I had a student read the description of what the reading was about and then we listen to a TV show in which the participants had to answer some questions about their partners. Then, the students answered some questions about the listening and work in pairs in the next exercise in which they had to identify the tenses of the verbs in some extracts from the listening I had pasted on the board; it was easy because they are very smart and got the idea very fast. The topic was past progressive vs simple past; later on, I had them write sentences using the past progressive based on some pictures I showed. They did it very fast and had few mistakes. My final activity was a reading; I learned a couple of good techniques to work with readings in the last period, so I made the students read parts of the story; I gave a student a soft ball and when I said "next", he/she had to stop reading and had to throw the ball to another classmate who had to continue with the reading (I like this activity because it makes the student pay attention to what is happening). Then I finished my participation and it was time for feedback.
The teacher showed me the paper and I just had some observations regarding to pronunciation; besides that, everything was apparently fine. My grade was acceptable; however, I know I did it very good.
In this subject, I have learned so far that not only our skills, but also our courage are being tested. I say this because in the peer observations I have made I have noticed that we prepare our classes in a nice and very creative way. Yesterday, I observed the class of "XYZ" (a teacher) and it was one of the worst classes I have observed; it was full of improvisation; also, that teacher almost always arrives late to the classroom (I confirmed that with the students). We are being evaluated rigurously by some of the teachers that never start with a warm up, that never use visual aids, that never stimulate the different macro skills and learning styles, etc.; and according to what I have learned so far (referring to didactics, pedagogy, and all that stuff), those teachers would not "survive" if I had to grade their performance according to the same criteria they use to evaluate ours. I just mention this as experience I have acquired throughout this process. At the end, this will be useful in one or another way.
I had to mention this; I could not help it. This has been my today's teaching report :-)

Whatta...????!!!!!

For this class I had to check a homework the students had. It was a reading, a long reading; the teacher told me that I had to prepare some activities to use with that reading, so I used my creativity last night and I prepared some cool activities to use. I arrived early to the classroom and I started to paste a lot of pieces of tape on the board. The students arrived and I started the class with a nice warm up; students had to make three groups and sit together; then, they had to send a representative to the front and that representative had to pick up a strip of paper with some instructions written on it (for example 5 sentences using verb+infinitive, 5 sentences using verb + gerund, etc.) they had to finish and the first group that finished had to shout stop! and the rest of the teams had to stop writing. If they had their sentences OK, they got a point; at the end there was a winner of course. That activity was for them to review the use of patterns in English. The teacher liked the warm up because all the students were involved in the activity. This group of advance 1 is very difficult; they know a lot but they are lazy; sometimes, they speak Spanish in class and that is something that annoys the teacher a lot.
After that, it was time to work with the reading. This time a prepared some very cool activities because I learned the lesson from my second class in this subject. First, I gave two paper strips to every student; those paper strips contained extracts from the reading; also, I included some distractors. The dynamic was simple but efficient. I read the paragraph and the students had to go to the front to paste on the board the paper strip they had, but they had to do so when they heard that specific part, so they had to pay strict attention  because at the end there was a penalty for the one who did not paste his/her strips. The teacher was surprised because all of them were paying attention to the reading. After that activity, it was time for them to read the same paragraph and practice their pronunciation. I gave a number to every student and number one started to read; after some sentences, I just told number two or another number and that student continued with the reading. After all of them read at least a part of the paragraph, I made them repeat those words that they had mispronounced. Once again, the teacher liked that activity. Well, I continue working with them in the post activity. They had to match some expressions with their meaning in formal English; it was easy, they had an idea so they did it fast. I finished my class by making them work in the next appendix of the handout they had.
Feedback time.
Well here comes the unbelievable part of my day. The teacher told me that she had liked the warm up because it was nice that the students were involved in the activity. Also, she told me that she really liked the activities I used for the reading; she even told me that she was going to "steal" that activity because she was surprised that the students were paying attention carefully when I was reading even though they are a big group. Some observations she did to my class were that I had made a mistake with the pronunciation of three words and that some of the students went out during the class and that affected my classroom management (they are 28 students and not even the teacher is able to manage the class, but she was expecting I did it); I said OK, that's true, they were mistakes. The thing that I consider incredible was that my grade was 7.5!!!!!! In other words, she told me "I really liked the activities you prepared for the class but your grade is 7.5". I said in my mind: "what a f... reak!!'" I still wonder why those comments about my class and why that grade. I'm totally disappointed.

Reivindication

As I mentioned in my last post, my previous class was not so good; actually, it sucked. Anyway, today I had the opportunity to do things better. The teacher told me that I had to make a review of the previous classes, so I started my lesson with a nice warm up. I had the students make three teams. I gave a set of words and they had to work as a team to order those words and form coherent sentences using the pattern verb + infinitive and verb + gerund. They had 2 minutes to write as many correct sentences as they could; then, they had to move to another desk and start working on another set of stripes; at the end, the team with more points (correct sentences) was the winner. The warm up took more than 10 minutes but the teacher liked it because the students were not only playing; they were learning something related to the previous class, also.

After that, it was time to check the homework. In the previous class the teacher had assigned them to complete two paragraphs with the correct form of the verbs. to check that homework in a different way, I gave a sheet of paper with one verb to each student (the verbs were written in the infinitive and in the gerund form); as they read the paragraph, they had to raise the papers with the correct answers. To check the second paragraph, I gave a soft ball to one of the students; he started to read, and when he got to the blank where they had to write the correct answer, he had to throw the ball to another student; that student had to tell the correct the answer and then continue with the reading. The activity was very nice because they had to read aloud and to pay attention, if not, they were in danger of receive a ball on their faces. After reading the paragraphs I made them repeat the words they had mispronounced. Later on, we worked on a practice in which they had to write the correct form of the verb in some sentences -a piece of cake for them, and for me- I feel I did it better this time. The teacher congratulated me at the end, and I improved my grade which was the best part.