My Fifth Class

To start off the class, I encouraged students to speak by asking them about activities, moments, trips, and things they did on their vacation; they were telling me all the things they did, and then I asked them if they cleaned their bedroom during their vacation, but the most of them said “No”, so I wrote down the word “MESS” on the board and asked them for some synonyms; they provided words as chaos, disturbance, disorder, and noise. After that, I asked them to get in pairs for them to work on a worksheet I passed. The worksheet contained a picture of an apartment that was a complete mess. I said to students that it was Jennifer´s apartment, and then I invited them to take a look to the picture and notice the mess. Later, I asked them to discuss about it with their partners and to talk about the things that Jennifer should have done or should not have done.  After some minutes of discussion, I asked one by one for them to contribute with some ideas they had about the picture. To finish up, I brought the class together and asked them if they had their bedroom like Jennifer´s.

 By developing the activity described above, my intentions were to recall previous knowledge and diagnose students´ proficiency level when talking about advisability in the past. I think that the activity was appropriate for the topic because students understood easily the point. When discussing about the things Jennifer should have done or should not have done, they found some hardships; however, as my intention was to diagnose how much they knew about the topic, I took advantage and explained to the students who faced hardships while the rest of them were talking. Also, I am sure that this activity made students warm their minds by thinking, formulating, and managing the grammar structure taught.

According to my tutor suggestions, I should have included colors and movements when developing the activity described above, so I will take into account these two observations. How? In my future classes, I will try to have the same picture in color or a better one in a big chart pasted on the board in order to make it visible to the whole class.  Besides, next time I teach this lesson, I will ask students to stand up and go around the class telling others what the girl, in the case, should have done or should not have done for them not to talk with the same mate and not to be sitting in the same place; also, I will try to use the Suggestiopidia approach in order to create a better environment.