Thurs Feb 25

For OPP, I had planned to ask them the question to discuss in pairs, who the 'best' teacher was they'd ever had, and why, then to list their ideas on the board.

Unfortunately only two people turned up until almost 4:30; and as I also wanted to do other activities with them, it was cancelled.

We looked at El Plan de Clase by Ann Hildreth (it has errors still! Must change them!!) and we also went through the lesson plan format. V and C are used to doing lesson plans of some form, while M was given his lesson plans to give at Interlingua, and I'm not sure about E as she still arrives late; but I think she has less experience with them.

I asked the TTs to do free observation on the class today rather than focus on one particular aspect, but to focus on either the teacher or the students.

The 613 class freewrote first on mobile phones - good and bad aspects of them. We checked some of the questions on the Stardust homework, and also played the video again for certain answers for the vocabulary. Even then, some of their answers were vague or not quite right!

Most of the class today was on connectors. I wrote some sentences on the board, and they suggested possible ways of linking them; then we looked at the worksheet, sts filling in the blanks as we went along and suggesting other connectors. While it was a lot of work I think it helped sts conceptualize the words more, that they probably are familiar with but using incorrectly while writing or speaking. Finally they went through the "mobile phones" activity in the book. There was still some uncertainty about some answers, but in general they were able to apply the rules they'd just studied. It was, however, a long time going through each of the types of connectors; and if I give this class in the future it would be useful to find other ways of giving them the information in a more dynamic way - perhaps discovering a rule, then doing an activity, then another rule, another activity etc. just to break it up a little more. One st commented on this in the blog, and I agree that it was not the usual student-centred, dynamic activity they prefer.

There was no time for summarizing an article with a partner as I had planned; so I just gave them the homework task of bringing to class next week an interesting news article to work on for creating an oral report of it.

The TTs' comments following the class were as follows:

C said that the students had a very high level of concentration and self-confidence (ie. they're not afraid or embarrassed to make mistakes).

V noted that the planning of this class was evident. [A lot of what I do and teach, I hope that it helps the TTs too in their English!!]

M observed how the sts discovered the information together with the T, filling in the blanks and then working in pairs and speaking.

E noted that the attention was not centred on the T!! [I had considered it a T-centred class!] but I had asked for many volunteers and that all questions were redirected to the students.

We also noted that two students who are sisters, B and Z, are down the lower end of abilities in the level 6 class.

I suspect that once the trainees begin teaching themselves, they will also pick up other things. Or perhaps I'm not taking advantage of all the learning opportunities in the class?

I'm currently trying to design the midterm exam for level 6, and finding it beyond my capacities; plus all the homework I have to mark is starting to pile up!!