the first week of the second term*

-The first week-

                I started with observing the teacher and class again.  Teacher checked students’ homework. Then, there was a speaking activity. During this activity, the teacher checked students’ pronunciations. She focused on fluency.

                While making exercises, the students talked to each other too much about something not related to the course. The teacher warned them and cut the exercise. She passed the listening activity. It is from Unit 8 ‘Planet Earth’. The students are supposed to fill in the blanks according to the text they listened to. The teacher controlled the class while they are filling in the blanks. The students asked when they saw an unknown word. The teacher explained these words in English. When they didn’t understand the explanations, she translated them.

coming back

Hi everybody!

It has been a long time since I didn’t share any post. There are a lot of things to write! I will share my all experience during the second term.

First of all I would like to say that as a trainee teacher I am supposed to be more active, teach something or make activities in this term. I has done a lot of things so far! I hope you like them. Don’t miss my posts.

                                                                                                                             Sincerely

                                                                                                                             Büşra

! (:

Let your students acquire a second language. They should be active participants in your classes. They should make some mistakes and learn through those mistakes.

YAAAAAY!

Hi everybody from a snowy day!

At the beginning of the course, the teacher said that she was very appreciated of the students’ marks. She gave homework from their grammar book for the semester break. Additionally, she wanted them to read their storybooks. She warned them about the difficulties they would face with in next semester. I think sometimes warning is good because students may  need to be aware of difficulties in order to regulate their studies.

They had learnt the terms related with “sport types”.  After teacher pronounced the words, she wanted the students to repeat. Then, it was listening activity time. They listened to the some features and tried to find out which sport it is. In all the activities, the students studied individually. In my opinion, they sometimes need to study cooperatively since they tend to speak. At the end of the course, they revise the simple past tense.

By the way, it was my last week in this class for this semester. My duty was to observe both the students and the teacher, take some notes and improve myself in the field of ELT. I believe that I did my best and gained different point of views thanks to this observation experience. See you next semester when I am more active in my teaching career. 

                                                                                                 Sincerely

Girls With Arachnophobia

      Hi!

      This post is about two weeks ago. At the beginning of the lesson there was a listening activity. After listening, the students read the text and they answered reading comprehension questions. They said their answers one by one. A student from the class mispronounced a word and his error was corrected by the teacher.  Then, the teacher focused on unknown words. As I said before, she gives importance on vocabulary. They had another listening activity.

      The teacher makes them watch a video about nurdles. After watching for the first time, the students want to watch it again. They are always enthusiastic about watching videos. They watched the video for the second time. Then, it was speaking activity time and they discuss the video.

They learnt the terms of “fearful” and “fearless”. There was a test in their textbooks which measured their fear rate. They answered and discussed how much they were fearful or fearless. It was really funny to watch them while they are discussing. Most of the girls confessed that they are afraid of spiders and boys claimed that they are fearful :) We can say that the students become more assertive when they find the topic interesting.

      They also learnt “Gerund / Infinitive”. Actually, the teacher had focused on four skills in previous courses but this time she also taught a grammar rule. She said they would have to memorize some verbs in order to determine whether it takes gerund or infinitive. The course was good but the students were a little bit tired.

Last Post Of November

        Hi again!

        This is a post about last Friday! At the beginning of the class there was a pre-listening activity. The students and teacher talked about the same theme with the listening activity. Then, it was time to listening. After listening, they answered some comprehension questions and did exercises.

During the class, the teacher focused on the verbs of “to get sunburnt/ to get suntan/ sunbathe...etc.”.  She wrote them on the board and explained them.  

        They listened to a dialogue. Then, they are supposed to write another one by working in pairs. They had ten minutes. After writing their dialogues, each group read aloud. Other students sometimes corrected their friends’ mistakes. It was good. Reading aloud was also good to check students’ pronunciations.

        After that, there was a reading activity. When they read the passage about extinction, the teacher and class discussed this topic. Then, the students answered comprehension questions.

        At the end of the course, “because of” were taught. The teacher wrote the structure on the board again and explained the difference between “because” and “because of”. She made some students in Turkish and wanted the students to translate them by using “because of”.

        Teacher handed out some worksheets as homework. 

                                                                                                           See you next week! :)

It was "Cool!" :)

        Hi!

        It is time to share the post of last week.  I had observed the same teacher and class until that day yet I attended a different class and I observed a different teacher for an hour last week. Firstly, I want to share my observations about both class and teacher. I have to say that neither class nor teacher was energetic. Voice of teacher was really low. Additionally, I noticed that there were a lot of students who hadn’t done their homework and teacher didn’t react as I expected. My attendance was just for an hour so I want to believe that she is not every time like that.

         It was exam week so I learnt that there would be no teacher for three hours in the class I observed every week if I didn’t stay. As a result, I preferred teaching for three hours :) It was my second performance as you know. I have to confess that it was a little bit tiring this time because they prepared themselves for being free so it takes a couple of minutes to catch their attention. Apart from this, it was great for me. We did some exercises and listening activities. We focused on pronunciation and students had great fun while trying to pronounce some words. Additionally, we learnt some expressions such as “Cool!”, “What a shame!”. I also wanted them to say these expressions in a realistic way. They tried to say negative statements in a sad manner and positive ones in a good mood. I liked their performances :)