Journal V

APPENDIX 3: POST OBSERVATION STUDENT

TEACHER’S SELF-EVALUATION FORM (Journal)

Name: _Astrid Yarleth Trujillo Urriago_ Date: _Monday, May 6, 2019 to Friday, May 10, 2019_

Write a reflection about the classes you oriented this week (bear in mind the following aspects: what you planned, what you did, and what you would do differently if you were to teach your lessons again). Give examples and descriptions of those situations that, in your view, are relevant to your learning experience.

Fifth Week: Adapting my Lesson Plans

            During this week, which was supposed to be the exam week, I had the opportunity to teach two of the three groups I am working with. For the students from the English I course, the topic to be taught was adverbs of frequency along with some celebrations and festivals. I started the class by asking students some questions that made them think of the grammar topic we were going to use, for example, I asked them “how often do you watch TV?” When I made this question they did not understand what I was asking them, then, I provided students with an example in which I highlighted the adverb of frequency I used for answering. After I did that, students knew and understood what my intention was. Hence, they answered the questions using the most common adverbs of frequency they knew. One of the activities that I carried out with these students was about giving students a set of cards for them to play asking and answering questions within small groups. For this activity, I tried that the verbs and vocabulary being used was familiar for students so that they would not have comprehension problems. In spite of the fact that I explained students the structure for making and answering questions, some of them were still confused about it so I had to approach them and explain again while the others that had understood were working on the activity. This makes me think that something I would change about this lesson is the amount of practice I ask students to do before introducing a communicative activity. I need to make sure they fully understood the topic before moving into the next stage and for doing so; I have to look for interesting activities because they tend to be very restless. Finally, I finished the class with a listening exercise in which students had to check if the statements were true or false. I had to play the audio track three times since the first time was almost impossible to comprehend due to the noise from the air conditioner. In the end, I checked the answers with the students and they did well.

On the other hand, the lesson for students from the English II course was about the difference between the uses of “be going to” and “will”. As students have been studying these structures in previous classes, I did not have to worry about explaining grammar structures. For starting the class, I gave students a piece of paper in which there were three different conversations; the first one was about a conversation using the “be going to” structure, the second one used the “will” structure, and the last one was a combination of both of them. What I intended to do was that students try to explain what the differences among these were; however, they were unable to so. Therefore, I had to read the conversations with them and analyze each situation. Fortunately, they did remember the uses for both structures so when I asked them “what do we use each structure for?” they answered correctly. The main activity I planned for this lesson was about providing students with a set of fortune telling runes for them to work in pairs and construct a dialogue by using the two future forms. In addition, I gave them an example of a conversation between a fortuneteller and a customer for them to be guided. Throughout the activity, some students asked me some vocabulary questions. What I had planned for the last stage of the class was that students perform what they have constructed, but as the time was short, I made the decision that they only deliver the written dialogue instead.