Teaching my first ever lesson
As far as learning from my mistakes goes, I think that my first ever lesson will probably be a big success… I hope so anyway! There were some good things – apparently I was speaking clearly enough, and some of the activities were good. But the main problem was the language I used on the worksheet that was to help with presenting to the students the vocabulary I was trying to teach. The vocabulary itself was ok, but the language I used around it on the sheet was a bit too complicated for most of the people in the lesson. So they began by not really being able to understand the words, which wasn’t really a very good start! The students are quite mixed in ability, but some of them don’t have very much English at all, and it really is necessary to be very basic (using the past perfect and adjectives like ‘dented’ was a bit too much).
I was very impressed by my colleagues’ lessons this morning. They all seemed so natural and friendly in front of the class, and seemed to have complete control of what was going on in the lesson (though they assured me afterwards that actually they too were feeling somewhat nervous!)
Anyway, there’s been so much else to do today that the lesson already feels like a long time ago. I’ve been working on an individual profile, interviewing a student. It’s harder than you’d think to type up a transcription of a recorded conversation. And yes, we’ve already started planning lesson two, which will be on Wednesday. Very simple language for the lower intermediates this time!
