Friday, October 3rd, 2017.

This day we had dour closing ceremony. We went to Colegio Don Bosco as usual and we enjoyed playing some games with our student. We eat pizza and cake. It was a nice experience working with kids I learned a lot from them.

I hope I can have another opportunity like this again!

Friday, October 20th, 2017.

This day we had the great opportunity of meeting an English Fellow from The US Embassy. I think it was a nice experience because the teaching career hardly ever has these kind of opportunities! Kati Casto presented how we can improve our classes, and she gave some tips too.

1) Be excited about your class content: I think this one is one of the keys to have a succesful class!
You should look happy, enthusiastic about your topic even if you do not like the topic. This is in order to project you excitement to your students and to show them that English is not boring.

2) Create a Lesson Plan that works for you. You cannot have different activities in your lesson if you do not know your students. First, you have to get to know your students, their learning style, if they are hyperactive or not. Getting to know your students should give you some ideas in how to organize your lesson.

3) Command and Respect from your students. It is important to cross a line or a limit between the teacher and the students. If you start joking with them or talking about your personal problems, this can be a problem. Sometimes students get advantage of it! They will believe that the teacher is their friend and this can lead to a disrespectful path.

4) Give students different opportunities or responsabilities. If you have the same wrap up everyday one day you can have one of your students to do it. They will not do it as you! but that does not mean that is not okay. We should start giving opportunities to our students because they are capable of great things if we give them the chance

5) Incorporate VAK type of learner in your class. Not everybody has the same learning style. For example, I am a visual learner, I get bored if I do not see something colorful in the classroom. There are some others who are kinesthetic or auditory. You should take into account this! In this way, all of your students will enjoy the class.

6) Plan questions based on knowledge goal. Ask questions after you have explained the topic. Or let the students do it. Give them some time and confidence to do it. 

7)Evaluate Using rubrics. Rubrics are really important because students have some ideas in how to do the assignment. They can see what is going to be checked. It is really important that you show them the rubric before the assignment, during the assignment and after too.

8)Collect and use data. You can create a little quiz after the topic was explained. As a teacher you will see which topics are not clear for your students. You can improve the way you teach.

9)Take time to reflect. Take some time to review what you have been doing during the semester. What am I doing wrong? What am I missing? 

10) Encourage and Grow. Learn from your students and let them to learn too! You will not make the same mistakes that you did some years ago. We teach how to learn, but sometimes we can make mistakes and that is fine.

Friday, October 13th, 2017.


This day the more challenging skills were taught: Listening and Reading. Why do I believe that these are the more challenging ones? Well, why would kids be interested in listening or reading something? Not even adults find them interesting. I do not why, probably it's our culture or I do not know but in my opinion these skills are really important.

Listening is important because as ESL learners we should achieve a great pronunciation and if we listen properly we will achieve this objective.

Reading, on the other hand, can provide you with a great vocabulary. While you are reading an English book you will find new words, idioms, expressions that  are only used in countries with English as a mother tongue.


But well, I think my classmates did a great job with these skills. One group have some technical issues and our teacher advised us to always have a back up plan. If your audio does not work, you can always use your voice! Sometimes we will have to improvise.
Kids looked happy and they enjoyed the class and so did I! I took some pictures of the kids' drawings. They were beautiful. In this activities you can see how creative children can be!
It was a great Friday unfortunately the classes have ended! I will miss my tiny humans. 
This coming friday we have a conference with a fellow. I'm excited. This will be the first full English conference. Awesome!

Friday, October 6th, 2017.

Yeap, we taught twice :-( but this time it was easier! we had vocabulary as skill. The topic was Professions! We prepared a lot of visual material. It is not because we have a lot of money but kids enjoy colorful and creative things. So that's why we created a lot of material. I believe that in the case of teaching vocabulary to children this is necessary because it catches their attention. 

Well, we found a way to keep children's attention. We created a "Behavior List" we put happy faces or sad faces if they were behaving bad, and none of them did! So I think we did a great job with this list. It was a great idea. 

We received a great feedback and congratulations from our teacher and from our classmates.
if you ask me, I enjoyed this class more than the previous one(reading) and probably it was because I felt more confident with my kids!

It was a greaaaaat day! But this coming friday we are only going to observe, no more classes.

The other group taught Grammar! it was a really challenging skill, kids do not pay attention to this. 
I mean, it is sad because grammar is so interesting, but they find it boring. So probably we need to find newest and more creative ideas to teach this skill.

Here you have :) 

Friday, September 29th, 2017.

This was my teaching dayyy!! This meant a lot to me and to my group as well. As I said some weeks ago we were going to teach READING :( we were nervous, but actually this went even better that we expected. Kids loved the material! they were a little bit hyperactive but well they are kids. It is normal. We receive feedback and advice from our teacher. I really enjoyed this experience. Even though, reading is not my thing.. I mean I like it but teaching reading to children is a great challenge!

Friday, September 22nd 2017.

This day we started classes with Children! I was nervous and I was not going to present that day but one of my friends yes.

This day vocabulary and grammar were taught. The vocabulary class was really nice, kids looked very focus on the class.
At the end of this day, Teacher Orlando gave feedback about the class and we as observers gave some ideas about the class. Things that could have been better and stuff like that!

Here you have.

Friday, September 15th 2017.

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This day was free due to Independence Day.