you reap what you sow

This last class  in the advanced group made me remember myself when I was still studying grammar points.
I started with a small review to please my tutor. I just made some questions about fronting and inversions and I gave the students who participated a lollipop; then, I started the presentation I had prepared to teach hedging where what marked my experience was the insistence of this student in asking something I was not really sure about.

I was explaining everything when I asked students to create some examples using hedging, and this particular student gave me a kind of weird example. At the beginning I felt a little unconfident, but then I came up with an explanation which made me doubt a little bit, so I stopped that part and kept on explaining; surpisingly, the same student came up again with a similar situation like to set me in Jake again. In that moment, I remember I liked to do the same and that sometimes teachers even told me " you know,  I don't think I have the right answer." but somehow I couldn't say that, so I replied him saying him that I thought that I was telling him was the right thing, yet implying that I was not really sure; obviously, that affected my grade, so I decided that next time I face a similar situation I will directly say I don't know the right answer. The rest of the class was just me explaining and the students asking and providing examples.

I don't see this as a bad experience because I learned a great lesson, and I didn't get a bad grade anyways. I think I was too nervous to recognize my error, but hopefully that won't happen again; moreover, I suggest you to take note of it before it happens to you. I hope you had been a good student. You know what they say "you reap what you sow."

My second time

It is definitely not the same experience when you do it for the second time. I felt more confident before my second practicum, especially because the teacher had already given me all the stuff I was supposed to use. The first time I had to prepare my own presentation  my own exercises, and my own explanation about the topic. This time I was given all the material I was supposed to cover and here I share how it went.

I started with a joyful greeting and since students had had grammar class before mine, I established a  small conversation about grammar in order to increase my score in the rapport criteria; then, I developed a Tic-Tac-Toe warm up which included words that were related to  Unit 3. I spent just like 5 minutes in the warm up because my tutor told me to be fast in warm ups and to put emphasis on speaking activities, so I  presented a quote to all my students and I asked for their analysis and comments; moreover I  also had them  working in groups of four and I assigned each group a quote from Alvin Toffler to be discussed for some minutes according to my tutor’s instructions; after some minutes, I asked one representative of each group to give a summary of what was discussed in the group.

Everything went very well because students participated and did what they were supposed to do; however, I forgot to write my students’ mistakes while they were presenting, so when I received feedback, the teacher told me I should always correct my students at the end when developing activities like such. Please never forget to correct your students, cheers! 

Fronting my first experience

I had already gone through the experience of teaching kids and teenagers, but it was until this past February 9 that I had the privilige of teaching university students. I could notice the great difference when teaching those twenty five advanced 2 students. I taught them about FRONTING, so this entry is about how I fronted teaching fronting.

Everything started right after the short greeting I gave them, I developed a warm up which consisted of making 2 groups and sticking papers with target vocabulary on the whiteboard, I was supposed to read a definition and the first student to identify it was supposed to stand up and grab the word defined, the group with more words was the winner. I chose this warm up because in my observation I perceived that students seemed sleepy and bored, so I planned to activate their energy with my warm up; surprisingly, I saw how the group turned from really passive to kind of messy , that or the fact that it is an advaced group might be the reason for which the teacher does not develop this kind of activities as they even tried to trick me, but I still think that they are necessary no matter the case. I fronted their attitude directing it to my objective and in the end we all had fun.

After that, I started my prezi presentation which I invite you to check out:
http://prezi.com/t8ztdvzl9jy2/julios-first-teaching-practicum/  
It was really motivating to watch most of the students colaborating; however, I still regret I could not notice that some students were not paying attention and that affected my grade. I think it was because I was really concentrated on explaining well the grammar points and pronouncing accurately all the words, but I am planning to be more aware of my students next time.

The practice time came, and everything seemed all right. Students were doing well in the exercises I gave them in a separate page, but I had to finish before the time because the teacher asked me to give them some time due to the reading comprehension exam they were to have.

In the end,  I found out that I should be aware of the students all the time, that I like teaching grammar, and that teaching fronting to university students is the easiest practicum I have fronted.