PRACTICE 22!

My second experience teaching Intermediate English I was really glad; I was asked to teach four modal verbs to express obligations, permissions in the past, advice and strong obligation. It was a really fun class; I designed reinforcement for the grammar part because my tutor teacher has already explained briefly the use of these modal verbs. I designed a warm up that introduced obligations. They really enjoyed assigning a penalty for their classmates. I proceeded with the explanation of each modal verb and later, I had them develop an exercise in which they showed the understanding of the explanation. I tried to make work some students that were disrupting the class somehow. They were speaking Spanish and I asked them to practice English instead.

The relation I have established with this group of students is amazing. They seem to enjoy what I teach and the activities I prepare for them. They are very smart, and though there are some of them that are quiet or timid, I ask them questions so that they can have a chance of practicing. When I teach them, I keep monitoring the class so I can identify the students that need more help.

I usually develop speaking activities related to the topic because I consider crucial that students can practice orally. I catch their attention by asking them discussable questions and having them discuss in pairs or trios. My tutor told me that I did a good work and that I just had to apply more error correction techniques. I really liked my class.

First class with Intermediate I

In my first class with Intermediate I, I didn’t have the chance of observing a class before starting my practice. I just got ready for my practice and I pitched in. I tried to teach a really nice class. I knew the students were going to feel surprised with my sudden presence in the classroom, so I started the class with an ice breaker. Students really love the warm up I developed and even the tutor started to participate in the warm up. They had to guess the action written in pieces of paper but the activity was quite complex because they are Intermediate English students. They, for example, had to mime: to jump “from a bridge.” The game was related to the topic because I was going to teach stative and dynamic verbs. I explained the main use and difference of these verbs and then I asked a couple of CCQ questions. After that I had them practice making sentences and filling in the blanks so that they could differentiate stative from dynamic verbs. They had oral practice by discussing a couple of questions: how do you like to look when you meet someone? I wrote a couple of verbs they were going to use as they spoke.

The practice and the activities were a success and the tutor told me the class was good. She only required me to re-s tart explaining an issue when a student doesn’t understand.

This is my fourth class with Intermediate English I

I prepared a class in which they were going to have practice with phrasal verbs. This topic is very wide and requires the students to have lots of practice due to the large quantity of phrasal verbs. I tried to develop activities addressing the most common phrasal verbs.

I started my class with a warm up in which the students had to guess the phrasal verbs that their classmates mimed. They really had fun doing this and some of them got easily the phrasal verbs I showed.

There are some students that really feel frustrated when studying phrasal verbs because they are hard to memorize. However, I used context and discussions so they can use them in conversations.

I have them use the verbs turn down and ask out when discussing the reasons why women turn down somebody’s invitation when he asks them out. They discussed this and shared their opinion with the whole class.My last class ended well because they could construct sentences using many phrasal verbs.

We also talked about stress and the ways to avoid it. They read sixteen ways to avoid it and in each, there was a phrasal verb included. They also added some more suggestions and discovered the meaning of each verb by reading each suggestion. The class went quite well but my students were not paying attention too much. I called their attention and I they finally worked well.