Activities in the classroom.

  😃Hello over there.😃

This has been a new week before vacations, and now we are here to learn about the activities we have in a classroom and all the points that it takes to deliver a very good class. We have group activities, measure time, check participation, and make sounds. There are other important details such as warm-up activities and how different they may be. 

In the warm-up activities, we have different approaches where we can vary that are lead-in, activation, icebreaker, or a community build activity.

Lead-in: Here you introduce a bit of what the topic of the day is and even if they do not know deeply about it so it will be normal to make mistakes since they know nothing about that.

Activation: This can be a review of the last topic and students are able to remember the information previously acquired.

Ice breaker: Fun activities that help students to get confidence and have some energy in the class and can also be a method for learning. Just make it fun with learning.

These need to be dynamic, short, and engaging.

By the way, this is a to-be-continued activity because we will have some insights next class. 😎

Now we have the types of activities we have in the classroom. On the first hand, when lesson planning it is very important that when starting the class the teacher is clear with the objectives of the class. This will help students to know what the class goals are. 

Group activities. It is essential that the teacher pays attention to know the group and how they behave thanks to the behaviorism method. There are always students that gather with the same group and they get into a comfort zone to study the idea is to get to know people and learn together and from them. We can be creative and make some activities to split those forever groups and still make them feel comfortable with the learning environment. As for some activities, you can make grupos by the color of their clothing, shoes, backpack, etc, and some other activities that you can come up with.

Measure time activities. Measuring time is unforgettable in good lesson planning since it is part of your class. We do not expect to have perfect timing or perfect class but to have a good class without taking that long and making it boring. Some activities can be displaying a timer on the screen or counting out loud so it helps to create an environment where the students feel pressure but they are learning and active.

Check on participation activity. It turns out to be significant that all students participate. We will have many students that are shy and will never participate by themselves so they need some motivation to do so. Added to the discussion topic, here we make sure that all students work equally in the classroom and part of the activities can be listing the students on the whiteboard, giving them a sort of reward for participation, and up to your creativity.

Activities to make sounds. Some days students will feel sluggish or bored, that is the moment when we can be creative and keep students focused on activities and they have that energy from you and create a great class environment. You can play some background music, counting out loud also counts, clapping, etc. 

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In addition, we are able to feel free of having different resources to use in class, it may be a teddy bear, a ball, a dice, etc. Objects are useful in a classroom so the class itself engages in the learning method.

The next participant could be you

To finish our class we sang the birthday song for Miriam whose birthday was this class day, and besides congratulating her we learn how important is to connect with the class and make it a community-building activity. 

It will do it for this entry. I will see you after this short vacation period. Hope you enjoy and rest enough because the best is on its way to start this semester. 👋👽

Lesson Planning

 👀This week has been a little bit different since we went one day to the university, so, all classes have been online. Throughout this week we are focusing on Lesson Planning and how important it is. 

To carry out lesson planning there is a variety of important points to consider such as the duration of the class, the activities that are effective for the lesson, the aids I am using, etc. 

Having all this into account we can avoid the class turning boring, students being distracted, not achieving the class objective, and so on 😴. All these can be omitted when we have a good lesson planned that also requires us to know what the students know and the knowledge they have about a topic before we start developing a class as if they knew.

We are able to make use of the teaching methods, which will help enormously for us to develop a class. I encourage them to use materials such as cards, pictures, or anything that helps all the students to learn. I know that we can get excellence in class by having good lesson planning. 🙀

CCQ and ICQ can help us to have better interactions with the class. Something we can do is not assume that they know everything. Meaning, we are taught that not everyone learns in the same way, there are people who will need other ways to do so. And by practicing ICQ or CCQ we can have a different approach to students, this is my opinion because it will mostly help to check what they are learning and to have a good pace in the class. 

CCQ stands for Concept Checking Questions. Here students are asked for giving a concept as such, it may be about the kind of food, animals, etc. It is to have longer answers to make sure they understood the topic. 

ICQ stands for Instruction Checking Questions. Students are asked specific questions such as What is the color of the bus? Did she go to school? or any questions that let you know they got the instructions and paying attention of course. 

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This should do it for this week. I hope you are learning with me about Lesson Planning and getting ready to deliver classes soon 😎

First Last Day.

hi there everyone! I hope you are doing terrific. So yes, this is the first day of our last semester at the University. We are all excited about what is coming next and this day was full of surprises too, I will tell you why...

In the class, the teacher Orlando had a surprise test from previous courses that he had even SEMESTERS ago! I honestly did not remember any of it but it was very refreshing after our break we could review each of the questions and we were able to discuss and so. I scored 4 out of 15 questions. I will not show you my test but I tell you that it was not applicable to the semester's grades, gladly. 

During the first period, we will have theory classes but in the last two, we are going to be teaching finally. It will be very exciting after a long time without teaching for me. We need to get at least twenty students for this class, meanwhile, it is time to plan our classes. 

Ready to teach and continue learning.

See you in the coming entries.

Demonstrations

 Hello Everyone! This may sound nice for some and sad at the same time for all but this is the last Entry of this first-year semester

 and to close it the best way we had demonstrations of the teaching skills (speaking, writing, listening, and reading). There were four groups total and let me share some pictures of them and how it was as the final activity in English Didactics I.

How did they do?

Listening 

There were two groups presenting the Listening into a class demonstration and now it was our time to SHINE! The activities we picked were simple. The first activity was about a single listening where students needed to grab as many verbs as they could, but what they did not really know is that we had a Kahoot game right after the activity which was surprising somehow. 😄 Then we played a piece of Twenty-One Pilots - Ride where a group of students was asked to pile the right lyrics in the order it was sung, adding that it was a fast part of the song, and the rest of students had to write at least two sentences and identify what grammar tense it was. 

The second listening group had some entertaining activities such as Telephone where 2 groups had to pass the message by whispering it and the last person in the raw had to say aloud the sentence received, nobody transmitted the full message. 😂 And, they played a song and we had a group of words so we needed to listen and circle the word we caught from the lyrics. It was challenging I got to say. 

 

Speaking

All the speaking activities were really interesting since they involved a large group of the class and the activities carried out were creating a story out of an image but the story would be shared in the group and had to make sense. The same group developed the use of modal verbs with which students had 15 seconds to give advice about a situation given and so. They also developed a spelling contest, it was fun to see. 

The second group based their activity on an opinion, here we were given the question *what age is too young or too old to get a tattoo?* and as usual I was asked to answer 😁

Writing
For writing demonstrations we had some activities that involved organizing words in a sentence and writing an invitation letter where mine was about a life party planned by spider-man 😅 

The next group asked us to write a sentence out our names spelling, example> F- future, E - extrovert, and so on. I would lie to you if I tell you what I wrote 😇 neither I took a picture of it, sorry. but it was a good activity. 

Reading
So, many of us like reading, and some others do not. Although that brings me a conflict when comes to reading since I really like reading and I consider I have good comprehension, nonetheless, when reading is something demanded and I do not feel like reading I do not get any idea, not like that but I do not really focus on the lecture. These groups came with some texts to read, the first group provided us a text about cybersecurity and then answer some questions, I did not do that well though. Later, we completed a puzzle about the same topic. 

The second group included a text along a Hot Potato game whereinto the ball there were questions about the reading which I had and needed to answer, and I did not pass it 😅 I am telling you when I need to learn from the reading I need to be alone and focused 100% into the text to better comprehend what it is written. But, it was challenging and I liked it. 

THAT IS IT!

We finished one more semester and with this, we count nine already! We are about to be graduates and I did not believe I would be this far hehe 😅😌 I am very glad of how much I learned these few months but it is guaranteed that there will be more knowledge around the corner in order to have the teacher knowledge. 

I got to thank teacher Orlando for being really kind and supportive with the class and let him know that he is a great teacher and I can see how passionate he is about it. 

See you next semester. TIME FOR SOME REST!! 😊

Teaching Receptive Skills

             Welcome back to a new blog Entry! This time we learn about teaching receptive skills.

                                                   What does teaching receptive skills mean?

You will probably remember in your first years of learning that your English teacher always brings their tape recorder everywhere for listening activities in the classroom. This is so important for the student to develop their comprehension through listening, it also can be by podcasts, music, movies, etc. 

Same as reading, students need to read so that they are able to improve their comprehension and their vocabulary, and others like communication skills. It is important that they know the differentiated instructions to meet the need of the students and in this way, you will have an impact on the learning of the students.

In each of these approaches, you will need materials, for listening the well-mentioned tape recorder, podcasts, videos, etc, and for reading you may have an easy reading, something short for better timing and comprehension, and information that can be productive and easy to soak by the student depending on their level. 

And that is a bit of what the receptive skills are about. I am pretty sure that this will help anybody to understand better and do a good job as teachers because the way you measure the success of teacher is by the progress of their students. 

Have a good time and I will see you in the upcoming Entries where we are going to develop all these activities in the classroom.

See you in a bit!!

Teaching Speaking

 Hi Guys! It has been a heavy week since I did not post anything. To be honest, I have involved myself in many responsibilities that I could not foresee the impact on a daily basis. But anyways, here I am to explain a bit about Teaching Speaking.

As natural speakers, we have three dimensions at the time of it for instance:

- Transactional or Interpersonal

- Interactive or Non-interactive

-  Planned or Unplanned

The speaking will be influenced by our environment and that is the conversation type we will have. For example, when I find my friend on the street it will not be a transactional o formal conversation, all the opposite. It will be the same as speaking with the President, it will not be a friend-to-friend conversation. Now, how is it in the classroom?

In a Classroom will be more common to make use of Role-plays. Not the only one but it is practical for students and easy to recreate by the teacher, and easy to understand by the students. Here students can practice their pronunciation and confidence in speaking with a friend or many of them. We can add other approaches such as grammar or vocabulary by speaking about something specific, it means, I can ask a simple question such as "What types of cars can you see on the street?" by asking this question we are asked to answer with a specific vocabulary and subsequently practicing the pronunciation for car brands. 

A new technique we learned was Jazz Chants, have you ever heard about it? 

It was created by Carolyn Graham who had the inspiration after listening to people on the streets playing jazz and practicing a bit herself. 

If you are curious about it I suggest you get more info but... In a nutshell, it is about following a certain rhythm, the rhythm of Jazz, and explaining that the English language follows these 4-period rhythms where you practice your pronunciation and I dare to say your intonation too. 

As part of the activities, we created a Chant by giving a sentence. It was fun and interesting to apply in future classes. So, it will be all so far and I hope we keep on track for the last weeks of classes. 

See you next Entry!

Body language & coordination, and improvisation

This class was another day of practice and how to become a better teacher by knowing what they are willing to do in order to be great in their field. 

We started with a keeping focus activity. For this, we did two rows where we had a classmate face-to-face so we could be serious for a minute. It was very hard, especially with that friend of yours, but I did it. Following that activity we did something similar and we walked around without losing eye contact with the person. 

Next. We had to express emotions. I can say it was a really good activity to get out of their comfort zone, especially for those who are very shy and afraid of being in front of others. 

Here we walked and pretended to be models and kind of flirted with our mates using our faces. Unfortunately, I did not have videos or pictures of it, because you would have liked too much. Well, just the following...

In the last part of the class we acted out a movie scene that another group chose for us, and so did we. It was a challenge. I had watched Shreck many times but I have never memorized dialogues from the movie. But I can say it ended very well. 

All my classmates participated in it. Also, there was another where we acted in silence. At that moment we had to improvise a scene depending on the background music we had given by our classmates. I believe ours was the best, far from reality but still nice!!. I will share one of our classmate's scenes for you to have an idea of what it was about.

And finally, I will share a Jonathan of Luck for the next class>

See you in the next ENTRY!!