With this class, I finished my practice with this nice group of students. This time, I was not nervous anymore because I had already gain confidence within the group. It is nice to hear students calling me “teacher” and to see the way they saw me as a guide for their new learning.

This time I was told to work with the book. I started the class only with 9 students, but it was enough to develop the warm up. I asked the students to work in trios and gave them some quotes that were in disorder. So, they had to put the quote in order to have the complete meaning of the quotes. All the students were engaged in the activity and they did a great job.

After the warm up activity, I started working in the book. I asked to work in unit three. Students worked in pairs and discussed the quotes. They had to talk about what attitude toward adversity do the quotes expressed. I can mention that students did a great job. Additionally, they shared information about if adversity can be a positive experience. 

After this activity, they worked in a reading/listening activity. This activity was nice because student were focused all the time because there was new vocabulary for them. As a result, students at the end of the listening were asking about some words. Therefore, I helped them with those words and they keep on working in the next activity.

Next, they had to read the conversation again and they had to say the statement that were in italic in another way. Before doing this activity, I gave them the meaning for the idioms that were in the statement. As a result, it was easier for them to create the statements. Later, I asked one by one the statements they created. They did a great job.

At the end of the class, students had to move around looking for a pair because they always work with the same partner. So, I tried to avoid students talking about irrelevant things or things not related with the class. For this last activity they had to talk about if they were stuck in an elevator what they would do? How they would feel? And why people get scared being in a stuck elevator? This time students had the opportunity to speak more and share their own ideas.

Finally, I finished my class thanking students for being such a nice group, for permitting me develop my classes without any problem and of course, for showing me that they can learn more if they struggle for achieving their goals. I really obtained good experiences with this group.

Based on what I observed, I could realize that students learn much better by seeing examples of how to use a term or a phrase instead of just explaining grammar structures that always make students think that is more difficult because the teacher has to explain some theory before the practice.

In future teaching experiences, I will include more examples about the topic that is being taught because I realized that is easier for the students to get the information to apply it in the practice.  

My second class was better for me because I arranged a set of activities that work better for the group. First, I used a horseshoe seating arrangement. Additionally, I prepared all the material I was supposed to use. Also, I wrote the agenda and some sentences on the board. Those sentences were used by the students for the warm up activity. I was told to work with reduced relative clauses. So, I worked on that topic and I used free activities with the group because we had already worked in most of the lesson plan. 

In the warm up activity I used some sentences which I wrote on the board before the class started. Students had to work in pairs and share information about the sentences. For example: there was a sentence that said: A place where you like to eat. They had to choose a place and create a relative clause. For Example, pizza hut. Pizza hut is a place where a like to eat. Students worked in the activity and share the information about the 8 sentences. During the activity I monitored all the time and I was ready to answer any question of the students about vocabulary.

After the warm up activity, I explained about how to reduce relative clauses. I noticed that was easier for them to work in reduced relative clauses because they already knew and understood about relative clauses. After that, I started with the practice. All the students worked pretty well in the activities that I presented. In fact, they finished the activities before the time I expected. So, it gave me the chance to check the answers individually asking one by one. I noticed that they had no problems to answer the statements. Also, I developed another activity in which the students answered in the moment I said the statement. All the students did a great job in the activities. It is important to mention that all the time I was monitoring and I was ready to price them and motivate them to keep working in that way.

In future teaching experiences, I will include activities that can be developed with the students moving around the classroom. We know that these kinds of activities are important for students because they forget stress and even these activities stimulate them to keep working hard. I will also have to pay more attention to the students who like to be speaking with other classmates about irrelevant things.

This was my first class for the semester, and my first time teaching in the English major. At the beginning of the class, I felt a little nervous, but I guess it is something normal when we as teachers face new groups; fortunately, I felt much better after introducing myself in a short speech. This has been an excellent experience in my life and for my growth as a teacher. It is so important to be well prepared to teach a class because it is the only support a teacher has to develop a nice class.

I observed three classes and I memorized all the students´ names. So, it helped me so much because students felt comfortable at the moment I was in the classroom. Also, I noticed that the students were able to participate and they felt great when I called them by their names. I always try to be friendly with the students and to give at least a nice impression by prizing them with short words which are so powerful that can change students’ mood and behavior. I noticed that students feel better and release something special from their insides when hearing a “good job” or something similar; they feel more comfortable in the class and of course they are able to keep speaking in the target language without being afraid of making mistakes.

I started the class with a warm up. I did a little review of the topic studied before which was about relative clauses. It was great to see all the students engaged with the activity. After I finished the warm up, I developed some activities which enrolled the students in order to use their speaking and writing skills. In addition, I have learned to use body language or to look for alternatives to give meanings when students ask for them. . Finally, I finished my class and fortunately, I clearly achieved my class goals because the students worked very well with the activities I provided.

In my future classes, I will try to develop the activities in more than one way. In fact, it was one of the teacher’s recommendations. Because at the moment I developed the exercises about relative clauses, I asked the students to work in pairs, but also it could have been developed individual.