Well, after yesterday's disaster I did much better today though I still feel I have a lot to improve upon. I'm struggling to involve everyone and to not go through material so fast. I ended too early again today and played hangman with my students using the words we covered in my lesson about mysteries. However, I found out that this made things too easy for them since they counted out how many letters there were and just guessed the word based on that. They didn't even guess letters and just went straight for the throat. Wanting to involve as many as possible, I decided to institute a few rules: I will only take guesses involving letters until we have half the word figured out and instead of volunteering I drew names from the name bag. I even got one of my really shy students to give me a few letters today. I'm so afraid that I'm just picking on him all class because I really want him to be involved but getting him to respond is hard. It's less scary when you're with a partner or a group so I'm planning on doing more small group activities to ensure he works with me. I'm still struggling with the final culminating activity I want at the end of class, but I think I have it down for tomorrow.
I haven't been observed by the field directors yet so I'm nervous for when that happens, though there isn't much I can do by that point except what I planned for class so I guess I can't be too nervous. I felt awful after yesterday, but can you imagine if I didn't have this experience right now before walking into a much bigger classroom? And for 16 times a week? Instead of feeling terrible about confusing 26 ESL students I'd really feel bad about misleading and confusing 600 students! I feel like I'm learning to incorporate more and more everyday as I make my mistakes and try to adjust myself for what feels like a wide range of English skills for one class. I only have them until Friday, so I guess I shouldn't take it too hard but I still want to do well and ensure my students are learning. Only having them for a week is not an excuse.
I haven't been observed by the field directors yet so I'm nervous for when that happens, though there isn't much I can do by that point except what I planned for class so I guess I can't be too nervous. I felt awful after yesterday, but can you imagine if I didn't have this experience right now before walking into a much bigger classroom? And for 16 times a week? Instead of feeling terrible about confusing 26 ESL students I'd really feel bad about misleading and confusing 600 students! I feel like I'm learning to incorporate more and more everyday as I make my mistakes and try to adjust myself for what feels like a wide range of English skills for one class. I only have them until Friday, so I guess I shouldn't take it too hard but I still want to do well and ensure my students are learning. Only having them for a week is not an excuse.
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