On April 26th,
the third class was taught. I wanted to do something really different because I
think monotony is a key factor to fall into things boredom. This time I wanted
to focus on writing, and I prepared many activities to do something fun and
meaningful.
At the very start I greeted all my
students and asked them some questions in order to create a warm environment,
not only the cold relationship teacher- students. I consider the beginning of a
class as a really important stage because it can tell us how motivated or
enthusiastic students are, and depending on the results, it is up to us to
control the situation.
Later I decided to take some
pictures in a power point presentation to show my students. The idea was to
make them aware about how the adjectives work in a sentence. The showed
pictures were really famous, and as it was expected they were attentive, and
entertained. In the way I see it, I took advantage as much as I could of those
elements. I tried to make them give their opinions and so on. They are very
clever so they understood all the given instructions.
After, I decided to make them use
their vocabulary and some expressions already seen. They received a paper in
which everyone had to write the same starting point. They were going to write a
kind of collective story. They were
timed, so they had to be careful and think quickly. Additionally, they couldn’t
read what the first person wrote, so they had to make up something alike to what
the last person wrote. That activity was at the start kind of confusing because
they did not understand how to fold the paper, and other aspects. However,
after the first round, the instructions were internalized and followed.
The activity was entertained, and
they were under pressure which is very good especially when they are in areal
situation to know how to react, and cope with it. When everyone had their own
paper they had to read the collective story and to come up with some
conclusions from the exercise.
In my original lesson plan I had
another activity which included a work in pairs. They had to modify their stories
in order to make sense. However, they could choose just one of those stories or
use them both. As a result I could notice how well they used the adjectives and
how their writing was going on. Nevertheless, I ran out of time and I could not
do that activity, but I believe the activity was enough, and maybe for future
lesson plans, I will try to adjust the time, and control it better.
thinking on making the class fun and meaningful is most of the time a hard task. Or the love the activity or they reject to be cooperative but according to what you worte it seems that it was a great success.
ResponderBorrarEncouraging students through places and things they already know somewhat awake their motivation to work and participate and the "ME TEACHER, CHOSE ME!" start, which is the sign of a great class in process.
And about the last activity... I think all of us as new teachers have this problem managing time so try to do shorter the activities you will apply or just make one but with different stages. It is easier to manage the activity time using that strategie.