Today I taught my 3rd class; as always, I arrived early to the classroom and I started to prepare my material. I must admit that I did not feel well prepared for this class; yesterday I went to bed late, so today I did not feel OK; I felt very tired. The teacher arrived at 7:10, so I started my class at that time.The topic was not difficult; it was about direct and indirect objects, and also about verb patterns. I got a copy of the lesson plan yesterday, but the problem was that I confused the teacher's instructions. I thought I had to make a review of verb patterns and an introduction to the other topic, but it was the opposite. Anyway, I started my class with a warm up to review verb patterns (which was a topic they did not know about), but it was useful to introduce one of the lesson's topics. I had the students make three lines in front of the board; I gave some scrambled sentences to the ones at the beginning of the lines and they have to write the sentences correctly on the board; the one that finished first had to yell: "next" and the rest of the students had to stop writing and give the marker to the next student on the line; they had to continue doing the same until all of them participated. It was a nice warm up because some of them wrote correctly although they had not studied verb patterns before. Well, after that I made them work on a handout they had. It was about direct and indirect objects; they had to identify and underline those parts of the sentences; for some of them it was difficult at the beginning, but after some 2 or 3 sentences they were able to do it. I monitored the activity and some of the students asked for help to me; it was nice because that is a sign that they trust me as a teacher. After that I introduce the other topic, verb patterns; I made them work in their books. It was very easy because they had a list of verbs they could use to fill in some blanks to complete a conversation. After that I had to play that conversation on the CD player but the teacher told me that there was no more time. Well, she arrived late and took 10 minutes from my time. Anyway, I'm just a practitioner, so I finished my class.
What did I learn? Well, I learn that I must pay more attention to my tutor; yesterday she told me what to do for today's class, but I forgot it and I did it in a different way; second, I learned that using a warm up about a new topic is not a bad idea at all; students may work with new things using their cleverness. It is a good idea to expose them to unknown things (obviously you have to explain later); and third, the time for a practitioner's class is not 50 minutes, it is the minutes they have available until it is time for the second part of the class. Good night.
Chulada I agree with you, our tutors give us until 7:50 a.m It doesn´t matter if they took our time! That affects our grades because we have to run to cover all the assignations by them. Also, many tutors say that they don´t want to have practitioners on their classes maybe that´s why they stop us even if we haven´t covered the 50 minutes class.
ResponderEliminarYour warm up was nice. I have introduced a new topic with a warm up and it works very nice.
hehehe as I say in Spanish ¨lokito¨. The good thing for all this is that you already know the things that you have to improve. That means that you´re learning. As you said, you have to pay more attention on your tutor though in some ways, they told us to do something and then they change their ideas, but anyway, we have go give our best, and I know that next time, you will do it much better.
ResponderEliminarhi Raul, you did a good work. You know that every experience helps us to be better.
ResponderEliminarRaul,
ResponderEliminarI always appreciate your honesty. I know sometimes teachers give you a hard time, especially whtn they arrive late and do not give you enough time to finish your activities. But I do think that you can always get the best out of any situation.