Etienne and ESL

During my ten hours of teaching, I learned a lot about myself, my strengths, areas where I can improve upon and overall where I want to see myself in the future. To start, I think some of my strengths lie in building rapport with students, time management, and breaking down material so that it is easy to comprehend. Strengths: After observing my practicum teacher develop a close relationship with his students, it inspired me to do the same; having students that trust you and feel comfortable is essential to creating a positive learning environment. Therefore, I worked at creating those connections with my students. I made an effort to learn their names and talk with them one-on-one to learn about their interests, where they are from, and their strengths. I’d do this during group discussions, during breaks or after classes. I wanted them to feel important and to feel that they could come to me openly if they ever had any questions. I also discovered that I am able to manage ...

              Today was the last lesson that I needed to teach for my TESL practicum. The lesson focussed on credit cards and debt, with a special focus on note-taking strategies; I planned my lesson around Chapter 3 Part 4 of the textbook. When I began the class, two students were missing; one had returned to her home country and another told me in advance that she would be attending only the last hour. We started with a class discussion on credit cards and differentiated them from debit cards, making use of a chart on the blackboard. I then divided them into groups of 4 and had them discuss some questions relating to credit and debt. After this, I introduced this chapter’s target vocabulary with a PowerPoint presentation and a crossword puzzle. The students did well on this, and I noticed that the higher-level students really went out of their way to help the lower level students with any difficult words. Once the students had a chance to familiari...

               For today’s lesson, my practicum teacher asked that I have the students complete their third evaluation for the course. The purpose of the evaluation is for them to synthesize what they have learned over the past two weeks. As such, I had the students work with a partner to create a dialogue about giving financial advice; the students were give three scenarios to choose from and had to incorporate a minimum of seven target words or phrases into their scripts. The students then came up to present their dialogue to the class. As each pair presented, the other students assigned them a grade based off of a rubric my practicum teacher provided. Although the evaluation took a large portion of the lesson, I was still able to fit in a game of Kahoot at the beginning of class (to review the previous lesson’s vocabulary), as well as a game of two truths and a lie at the end of class. For this game, I had the st...

             For today’s lesson, we went over the first half of Chapter 3: part 3, which focused on lending and borrowing money. I began the class showing a short YouTube clip and then led the students in a class discussion. After having the students go over some discussion questions in small groups, I introduced new vocabulary with a PowerPoint slide and then had them complete a short worksheet. After, I had them listen to an interview where a woman shares about her ideas on loaning money. I found that the class was split on how well they understood the content of this audio recording. However, after several play throughs and a look at the transcript, the students were able to answer the questions that accompanied the audio recording. For the second half of the lesson, I focused on teaching the class about how stress is placed on phrasal verbs. I had the students go over a list of words and identify the stress and then had them practice saying those...

For today’s class, I covered the second half of Chapter 3: Part 2, which focuses on banking terms and concepts. I began the class with a game of Kahoot and was happy to see that the students were able to correctly answer the majority of the vocabulary questions! The students really enjoy this game, so I’ll be sure to incorporate it again in my future lessons. After this, I got the students to start focusing on stress in noun compounds. I had them complete several activities focusing on this, involving speaking, listening and writing skills. I then ended the class with them completing a roleplay, where they acted out a conversation between a student and a bank employee. At the end of class, my practicum teacher advised me that him and I will have to get the students to complete their third evaluation activity for the course. I hope to work on something over the weekend. What Worked Well: I felt much more confident teaching my class today, now that I was able to get a feel of t...

For today’s lesson, I covered the first half of Chapter 3: Part 2 of textbook “Real Talk 2: Authentic English in Context”, which focussed on banking. The lesson began with a bit of a bumpy start due to a technical difficulty. I was unable to get the projector to connect up to my laptop, so I started the class with introductions and a class discussion to prime the students on the topic. Once the projector was up and working, I was then able to play a game of Kahoot with the class to review vocabulary from the previous lesson, as well as introduce new words using a PowerPoint presentation. The students especially enjoyed the game of Kahoot, and it served as a great way to connect with the students. After having a ten-minute break, we then moved on to the listening component of the lesson, where students listened to a conversation between a bank employee and a customer. The listening material appeared to be difficult for a good number of the students, so to give them a break, I change...