Class 1
Topic presented: writing an E-mail
Skill: writing
Date: March 15th, 2013
To teach this class we
organized the lesson by skills. It was something new for me, teaching by skills
following a book as a guide is not easy. However, I enjoyed doing it and with
the help of my teammates and the guidance of the teacher the work does not seem
to be so tough. In this time I taught
writing skill, a 30 minutes length class.
I divided the class in three sections: presentation, practice and
production. In the presentation time I felt comfortable since I was not the
first one to start the class. Students felt a little bit shy when inferring
about the picture with two friends. In order to make this part more
participating I asked several questions to students to make them think. In the practice part I asked one
student to read the instructions, at that moment I realized that I did not know
the names of the students. Now I think that I should have used name tags with
the name of each student. Consequently, I asked one student to give me a number
from 1 to 5 and then count from him/her pointing each student until get to the
right number.
Another aspect I notice when I
was monitoring students ‘work was the desks arrangement. Students seemed to be
too far away from me. The best thing to do was to arrange the desks in an
appropriate distance so we can interact better. In the last part I ran out of
time. They only finished writing the E-mail, my objective was to have students
to write an E-mail and then reply to a new one and share as a class. It did not happen; I should have collected
the papers and the next class returns to each student with a feedback, so they
learn to be aware of their mistakes and how they can improve. 
Magaly, I would like to make a comment on what you have share about your first class. Indeed, as you say, having the first class can be somewhat difficult. One needs to understand that students would behave shy, talkative, speechless, etc. Therefore, the teachers need to be prepared to handle all this personalities. One can design different activities to “Break the ice.” This can help to get to know the students, and the students to know themselves. Moreover, you mentioned that run out of time at the end of the lesson. In fact, it happens a lot when one is a starting teacher. I, for example, have run out time in many occasions. Yet, what I do to hen such matter happens to me is to give them homework. Nevertheless, something that needs to be taken into account when one assigns homework, is that homework needs to be collected by the teacher. In other words, if the teacher does not collect homework assignments, students tend to be less motivated to do future assignments.
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