My second practice and observation week was from May 23, 2011 to May 27, 2011. I went to “Técnica No. 73 Plutarco Elias Calles” High School, and I stayed at the school all the mornings of the week. This is my Permission Sheet.
The planning of the class
In this week, my work was to prepare six classes, three of them for second grade, with the topic “Simple Past”; and the rest for third grade with the topic “The future”. Here are my lesson plans.
The material
My Classes
Second Grade
I missed one class because of ENLACE exam, but I could give my other class of two hours. Students read a text in order to know the structure of Past Simple and then they identified the structure on another reading, and listened to a song, after that, they wrote a small paragraph about their activities the day before.
This group was a little hard too because they didn´t want to participate a lot, but they worked well. I used the communicative approach by contextualizing the language, they read the Avril Lavigne´s biography, and they liked very much, because they liked her music and I think they wanted to know more about her.
After this I used brainstorming technique in order to construct simple past sentences. But at this activity I think they received a lot of information for a very short time, so they couldn´t use it as well as I wished.
After that they identified simple past in a song they listened and read, at this activity I found good and bad things. I realized most of them didn´t identify complete sentences, they just identify verbs in past; but the song attracted their attention and they really liked, this made them to want about the meaning of the song and the story it was talking about. I think it is a good thing because makes them to get interested in English when they want to know about things they like such as music.
Finally students wrote about past activities, I was a little disappointed because they wrote so much simple sentences, and I think this is because they don´t have enough vocabulary for create more complicated ones.
Third Grade
At this group I could finish all my classes. I liked to work with this group a lot, the like to participate and they made a good job.
At the beginning of the class I asked them to write in Spanish about the things they want to be or do at their future. Then with a brainstorm students constructed and discovered structure of future simple. After this they identified some examples of the tense and wrote them on their notebooks. Then they wrote a small paragraph about their future.
At the second class I gave them imaginary situations and they must predict the future according to the situations.
They were group that participated a lot, they wrote some examples on the board about their own future and they helped each other when they wrote about future, also they create a very good job with their predictions about future, the made a big effort and used their creativity.
I confirmed how much students like to make drawings and cut and paste pictures, they like a lot to work with pictures and colors and they make a bigger effort when they work this way.
I also liked very much this class because I could practice with other kind of competences, not just the one of knowledge and abilities, but I could include the one of attitude, making them to reflect about their future and about what they want to be in their life plan.
Conclusion
Students like to learn English with topics they are interested in such as famous songs and artists.
Students work very well when they work in pair or teams, because this way they help each other.
Students like to draw, to use colorful images and pictures, and to make activities of movement and interaction. If we teachers apply these strategies, we will make easier the acquisition of a second language for our students.
We teachers must pay attention to everything in the class, how students pay attention to us, when they get distracted and everything, and we must be able to take quick decisions according to the behavior of the students and the rhythm of the class.
We teachers must pay more attention to the creation of complete and meaningful sentences in English.
