Etienne and ESL

Kahoot! Learning Game During my teaching practicum, I decided to make use of a learning-game website and app called “Kahoot!”. This website allows you to create custom interactive quizzes that can be played through an internet browser or a smartphone. Points are awarded to students based on which answer they choose and how quickly they do so. How much time is allotted to each question can be customized when creating the quiz (I like to give the students 30 seconds). At the end of a Kahoot! Quiz, you are sent a summary report of the quiz, which gives you information on how each student. The website is free to use, and the best part is that students do not need to create an account in order to play. They simply open up Kahoot! ( https://kahoot.it/ ) and input a code that allows them to join the current session. For three of my five lessons I incorporated Kahoot into my class by using it to review vocabulary from previous lessons. This method of doing vocabulary review was a hug...

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 ...

Observation Journal Report             General Information     Dates:     March 12 – March 22, 2018 Times:    Mon + Wed 1:30 – 3:30, Fri 10:30 – 12:30 Teacher: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX TESL student: Etienne Robin                               Institution: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Course:   ELS 500 English for Communication Level: 500 A (High Beginner – Low Intermediate) Lesson Topics: -          Delivering good news and bad news -          Young adults living at home -          Culture shock -          Learning a new language -  ...

              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...