BE NEGATIVE LESSON PLAN

Hello everyone, I would like to share with you one more amazing teaching experience. Every time I have to prepare a new class I had a big chance to become a better teacher because I can improve my weaknesses, so I am glad for the feedback that my classmates and observer teachers gave me at the end of each teaching practice because it guided me to do the things in a better way. I hope you really learn somethingout of my faults and conquests just as I did. I have experienced that when you teach not all the things come out as you expect. However, it does not mean all is lost because as you know practice makes perfect.

 

Of course there are some things that I still have to improve like for example: give shorter and clearer instructions, correct some pronunciation mistakes, avoid helping students during the production stage and elicit students to speak in English instead of Spanish.

 

The objective for this class was: Students will be able to describe Salvadorian famous people’s jobs by using be affirmative and negative sentences.

The grammar focus for this class was “Be (negative)”. The lesson began with a warm-up in which students were divided into teams, and then they had to run to find a correct picture about famous people when the teacher asked. After that they were requested to say an affirmative sentence. Ss seemed they had internalized the vocabulary very well as the grammar part “Be affirmative” which they had studied in the previous class, so it did not present a big challenge for them.

Ss were presented a chart with some “Be affirmative” sentences in order to let them remember and internalize that grammar part studied in the previous class and help them get ready for the “Be (negative)” form. I tried to explain them be (negative) form through the display of each part of the structure of it on the board with different colored papers. It was really helpful for the students because they easily understood how to applythe “Be (negative)” form into sentences.

In the practice students were given a worksheet with a chart and some sentences which they had to unscramble some words to make sentences (looking at the chart for information). And while I was monitoring them I could notice that they were able to do it because they were working individually, and at the moment they were asked to share their answer with the whole class they did it without any problem.

In the production part I asked students to write three sentences: two false sentences and one true about Salvadoran famous people using be affirmative. It was a big challenge because even I had presented my examples, they told me they were not really familiar with many Salvadoran famous people, so I let them write about the famous people presented as vocabulary in the first part of the lesson. Consequently, at the end when the observer teachers gave me the feedback they told me I could have presented a list of Salvadoran famous people. All in all, it was helpful for students because when they were asked to work in pairs they tried to correct the sentences by using either “Be affirmative” or “Be (negative)”. They did it!

As I said at the beginning in this lesson I had a big chance to improve my mistakes, let me tell you that I did a better job by giving shorter and clearer instructions, I tried to correct my pronunciation mistakes, I tried not to intervene students during the production, because in that stage they have to put in practice by their own what they have learned from the lesson. And every time they asked me something I encourage them to try to find the way to say it in English. Nonetheless, it is still a big challenge because when they have a question they say it but in Spanish.Hence, finding the way to make students communicate using the L2 (Second Language) is my next challenge.