Class observation from Saturday September 10th

 In this class I felt more confident and relaxed, this time I had the opportunity to meet my mentor teacher Ingrid Girón as it was going to be the first time with her I was not assigned to teach any stage of the lesson but I was asked to monitor students.

She started the class by asking what students did in the previous class some students gave their opinion and then she introduced the topic “The comparative”; she explained the rules and exceptions to form the comparison after, the explanation, she asked some students to go to the board and do some exercises.

After, the last exercise students did a listening activity about physical appearance when they finished, teacher Ingrid asked for a volunteer to stand up in front of the class and she asked students to describe their classmate. In my personal opinion that was a good activity before to do next one because then, pupils were asked to describe the physical appearance of one of their classmates so that, using that example was easier for students to describe their classmates.

For the next activity teacher Ingrid gave students a blank page because they were going to draw a monster. She gave instructions and said that she was going to describe a monster and Students had to listen to the teacher a draw it. I could notice that students enjoyed this activity and they were laughing a lot when they were comparing their drawings.

In the next activity students work in pairs and they write 5 questions about preferences when they finished, they were asked to go outside and ask 5 different teachers those questions; when they came back to the classroom they shared the answers. Finally, it was time for students to do the oral test students were in pairs and they had around one hour to study and prepared the conversation.

Class observation from Saturday, September 3^rd

During this class I was really excited and nervous about what it was going to happen, because it was my first day as a TA (teacher assistant) and also, the first time that I had to work with teenagers. So I felt a little bit nervous but positive and with many expectations about the class. Sadly my mentor teacher was not in the university that day that is why I did not have the opportunity to meet her and explain the reason of why I was there, but another teacher came instead of her. 
Before the class started I introduced myself with the teacher and the students, I told them that I was going to be with them helping the teacher and helping them in the whole module. In that moment I could notice that some students were surprised about me but then, they were kind with me and I started asking them their names.

The class began and as it was the first time that teacher Karla was in that classroom, she asked the name of the eight students that were that day, after that she asked to her Ss if they were good with verbs some of them said yes and others said no. Teacher Karla wrote on the board some verbs in the base form and she asked students to pass the marker and the student who got the marker had to go to the board and write the verb in the past form, after all students passed to the board she checked the answers, teacher Karla was surprised because all verbs were in the correct form. When T Karla was developing this activity I could see that students were excited to pass to the board because they knew all the verbs, in that moment I thought that it was a good activity to check the background knowledge of students.

For the next activity T Karla asked students to work in page 24 from the book American More 2. They were asked to fill a chart with some information in the book, after that activity, she introduced for questions: Where did you go on vacations? When did you go to the mall? What did you do on vacations? And How long did you stay there?. She asked one by one the questions and students answered and gave their opinion. In the next activity students worked in the book, they had to put in order some questions students work individually and when they finished I checked student’s answers I asked them to compare the answer with the people that were next to them; then I selected some students to read the sentences out loud to compare with the whole class.

In the next activity students were asked to stand up and ask 4 different classmates what they did last vacation using the 4 questions that were introduced when they finish the activity all students shared their answers.

One of the activities that I liked in this class was Sharks are coming because students were bored and when they played this game they enjoyed it and they felt more relaxed for the next activity because it was going to be a reading task and sometimes some students might find really stressful and boring this kind of activities so as teacher I must find the way to have my students focus on the class by doing activities that they enjoy.