My third class at Advanced English!!

I liked this class because most of the students were speaking English in all the activities I developed. In this class, I did not use very controlled activities because my tutor teacher wants the student to develop fluency and to improve their pronunciation. That is why, in most of the classes, I develop different speaking activities in which the students are sharing their ideas. This is one of the reasons I have when I say that I like to work with this group. As you know, they are advanced students and when there is something interesting to talk about, they give their best!

The students were studying the conditional clauses, so I brought to the class the song “If I were a boy”. The students really liked this song because I created a discussing. In this discussion, girls were sharing some ideas about what they would/wouldn`t do if they were boys. On the other hand, boys were sharing the things they would/wouldn`t do if they were girls. As you can imagine, they were saying funny things, but what I like is that they shared their ideas.

These are some of the things they were saying:
BOYS: If I were a girl …
I would wear sexy clothes.
I would have a lot of boyfriends.
I would go out at night with my boyfriend.

GIRLS: If I were a boy….
I would be faithful.
I wouldn`t use drugs or drink beers.
I would go to parties at night.
Well, they were saying many other things, but I can`t write all of them. For me, this was the part of the class in which the students were more motivated to participate.

I also, pasted on the board some charts with some strophes from the song. In this case, girls were saying if what the song said about boys was true. Then, boys had the opportunity to explain the reasons why they do those things, and some other students said that they are not like that.
I think that the part of the class that was not so well was the warm-up activity because the students were cheating. I asked them to make two teams, and I gave them an object. They had to pass this object to the student that was behind them, but before passing the object, they had to do something else like: touch a desk that was in the center of the classroom, jump two times, etc. The last student was going to run to a desk I put in front of the class, and this student had the opportunity to take one piece of paper that had an incomplete sentence (If I were rich…….). If this person gave the complete sentence, his/her group had 1 point. I lost too much time because as I said before, they were cheating. Some students were not doing what I asked them to do before passing the object.

There was one activity that I noticed students liked a lot. I gave to each student a picture with a famous person (Hittler, Einstein, Brad pitt, JLo, etc). I asked them to write a question they would ask to this person if he/she were alive or if they could talk to this person. They were saying great ideas about what they would ask, and what I liked is that they were using the conditionals very well. In this way, I noticed that my directions were clear and that I had reached my objective.

If I teach that lesson again, I will assign more rules in order to play the game I developed in the warm-up activity. I just told them that they had two opportunities to say a correct sentence without help from their classmates in order to get the point. Now, I am thinking that if I use it again I will add some penalties to the people that do not do the troubles they have to do in order to pass the object. Another thing I would do is to give the group that was not cheating one point.

My Second Class at Advanced English I!

(This should be my third class, but you know that I could not teach one class because of the problem you already know!!)

In this class, the students did a great job working on a warm-up activity that I prepared to review the future tense. In this activity, the students played the role of fortune tellers. I wrote their names in small pieces of paper and I asked them to put them in a bag. Then, they took one name from the bag and I asked them to make a prediction for that person. They were predicting funny things.

Some predictions were:
-That they were going to be great teacher.
-That they were going to marry a wealthy person.
-That they were going to have 5 children.
-That they were going to have a relation with a married person.

I think that the part that did not go so well was the grammar explanation stage. My tutor teacher told me that I had talked too much in that part. He suggested me to teach that stage in a more communicative way in order to give students the opportunity to discover the new structure by themselves. I would like to know some ways in which I can teach grammar using a communicative strategy!!!

I asked the students to work in pairs to develop the warm-up activity. Then, they worked individually in order to read a paragraph about predictions related with technology that experts have done. The students liked this reading because it had many things that called their attention. There is a prediction that says that malls will disappear because people will shop at electronic virtual reality stores. Experts also said that in the future, people will plant “knowledge chips” in their brains. These chips will enable people to speak French, to repair the TV, to play any sport, etc. These fortune tellers describe some other things that could happen. Finally, the students worked in groups because I asked them to talk about some other things that will change in the future. They were discussing advantages and disadvantages of the changes the world could have.

I think that I reached my objective because the students were using the future tense and they were giving nice predictions. They were also shaing some plans and goals they have. I just can say that they used the structure very well!!

If I teach that lesson again, I will take into account my tutor`s suggestion about how to teach the grammar stage. I will try to give students as many opportunities as possible to speak because some of them really need to practice this skill.

My First Class at Advanced English I!

The part of the lesson that went well was the Grammar explanation phase because I explained the present perfect tense. It was easy for me because I have a lot of activities related with that structure and I also have experience teaching it. Something really important is that the students already know this tense because they studied it when they were taking Intermediate English II. This means that I was just making a review of the tense.

My class was much better that what I expected that is why, I do not have exactly a part of the lesson that had gone not so well. I developed a reading activity which let me tell you that its content is really interesting because it describes some questions that scientists can´t answer; just look at the title “The Questions That Stump the Scientists”. I used this reading to introduce the grammar structure because it has many sentences in the present perfect tense. My tutor teacher gave me a new idea that I can use in the post-reading stage. He told me that after asking the students to underline all the sentences that have the structure to be studied, I can ask them to write the sentences on the board in that way, the students get more involved in the activity.
I don´t have problems giving directions to the students because their level of English permits them understand perfectly what I say.
I noticed that the activity in which they were very involved was in some sentence strips I asked them to order and to write them in their notebooks. I made four groups and I gave each group an envelope which contained two long sentences cut into pieces.
This time, I had no problems with the timing because this group of students worked very well and they do it as fast as they can. That is something I love from advanced English students.
I liked the warm-up activity and I observed that the students enjoyed it a lot. I asked them to make two lines, one in front of the other so that, they had to have one classmate in front of them. I asked them to look carefully at the student that was in front of them. Then, they had to turn in order to be back to back. At this time, I asked them to change two things (an earring, ring, wallet, etc). When they said “ready” they turned again to be face to face in order to guess what the classmate had changed. The students were using the present perfect tense without noticing it, and they were having fun because later, I asked them to change more things, at the end, they were kind of worried because they did not know what to change.
In conclusion, I just can say that I liked this class and that my first experience at Advanced English was really nice!!!
(Sorry if I made you read a lot. It was for you to remember when you were taking literature!).