Posts

SOAR Day 1

Today I got to sit in on Mr. Spencer's 4 th grade summer reading class. This was an interesting experience for quite a few reasons: 1 st the class times were  short, 2 nd the classes varied in number of students, 3 rd it was the first day so the majority of class was introductions, 4 th most of the students already had a firm grasp on English, while others had very low proficiency, and 5 th Mr. Spencer was not an elementary teacher, and today was his first time ever teaching elementary. This last point was fun to observe, because Mr. Spencer was trying to adapt his registrar and lesson plans to appeal to a younger learner. He told me that he had trouble coming up with a lesson plan since he had no idea what a 4 th grader actually found enjoyable to do. Unfortunately I did not get to see some of his lesson plans since today was focused on administrative thing, and getting to know one another. But, from what was done in class they seemed very effective. Most of the...
1 comment
Read more

Practicum Day 4

My last day of the practicum was quite successful because I got to attempt a lesson plan I created using techniques learned in our workshop. Class was divided up into two sections, the first half delegated to a listening test and the second half was mine to review grammar structures. Earlier that day I did the microteaching plan using the same activity and it went poorly. I was unable to explain the objective of the activity clearly, thus leaving the students lost and unable to follow along. I reflected during the day about what I could have done better, asking myself what went wrong during the practice, and feeling worried that I will make the same mistakes again during the practicum class. I figured that what needed to happen the most was better communication between me and my students, by exemplifying the notion that I actually understand the objective of the activity well enough for them to follow confidently. Therefore, during class when it was my turn to lead th...
1 comment
Read more

Practicum Day 3

Today I had the opportunity to teach a portion of the class. Our topic was on pronoun reductions. Kim had mentioned I would be doing this lesson, however, I did not realize it was going to be Wednesday. It was okay though, because it put me on the spot and tested what I have been learning in class. The first thing I did was start with the morning announcements, and then right after I dove straight into the topic at hand. I was nervous for sure, but I tried to stay collected. Although, during an example, I misspelled the word 'school' I was shocked when I realized I wrote ‘schoo’ instead. Besides the point, I tried providing the students with real-world applications when using the reductions, explaining that it makes speech not only easier to understand for the listener, but also easier to say for the speaker. I suggested that they should think of reductions as something positive because now they can say less and get away with more. I gave an example for the Sp...
1 comment
Read more