Along this week I have been worried about many things I have to do but when the time to teach came, I tried to concentrate in my teaching. Today I had my second practice with this nice group. They are always enthusiastic about teaching.
I got ready to teach them about direct and indirect object. I had them develop a speaking activity as I think that they all need to practice English. The class was kind of uncertain because my tutor told me that he had already taught that topic but I had to be prepared for questions from them. He also asked me to teach about transitive and intransitive verbs which he had not taught. I assumed that students had clear understanding of direct and indirect object because he told me to engage them into practice, but when I explained the characteristic of transitive and transitive verbs, I got stuck a little because they seemed confused. What I did next is to resume what the teacher had taught the previous day.
The experience I had is that when two teachers explain a single topic, it necessary that the second is conscious about the points he must continue teaching.
The point is that I had to improvise some explanations but I used examples so they could understand properly. When I taught about both kinds of objects, I told them that a very easy way to identify them is by considering the following: an indirect object usually comes first and it refers to people whereas a direct object usually is placed after the indirect object and it refers to things.
Some students asked me to solve some exercises I had provided for them because they found them quit hard to solve. I did it using the board so all of them could see how to do it. When I finished explaining some points, some students asked me a couple of questions. For example, “if a sentence has only one object and it refers to people, it is indirect object since you told us that indirect objects refer only to people,” a student stated. The point is that if we only have one object, it must be direct object since indirect objects cannot exist without a direct object. Thank god I still remember something about grammar.
Students developed a couple of exercises in which they were identifying both direct and indirect object; I could notice that they did it well and this makes me feel good. As they shared the exercises solved, I recognized that they are very smart.
At the end I had them dance and compete seating on the musical chair. The ones that remained stood solved a problem orally. They did it great! They are a nice group.