Methaphor

Teaching is like riding a bicycle. First, you feel like learning to ride a bicycle. So, motivation is the first step to teach. Then, while you are riding it; you fall off several times. When you are in the process of teaching you get demotivated to teach. Once you learnt to ride a bicycle; you never want to get off. When you become a teacher; you never want to stop teaching.

Journal 8

On Friday the topic was Emotional Intelligence. I was asked by my cooperator teacher to teach this topic. In the beginning, I did not know what to teach but then I remembered that once our university teachers made a lesson with an emotional test. So, I decided to take a test. The text had several questions in English and owing to the fact that the maximum time for the Friday class was just 1 hour I decided to apply the test. Every student was given a test and they started to complete it.

Once, I had explained what an emotional test was, I realised soon that they were not capable of doing it. So, I started reading alone the questions and asked students to come up with something. Some got something and was important to interpret the test. The activity went on until the last question was answered. Right after that, I set the conventions for the interpretations of the results. Some students were surprised to become aware that they lack Emotional intelligence such a human relationships.

This activity was quite funny for the students and they also enjoyed a lot. The only bad thing about the activity was that I made an extra effort reading and my throat got really hurt. As a consequence, I could not teach anymore for the last class. I did realised that the teacher's voice is very important for teaching and we must take care of our voice.

Journal 7

This week was a nice one. I start my classes with a game called “Find Someone Who”. Students had so much fun finding classmates who had pets, cats, rabbits among others. This activity was amazing because students participated actively. Then, the students opened their books and read a reading where it had the topic “Don’t have to and Have to. There, students had to complete some exercises about the topic.

Later, I asked some student things they had to do and what things they did not have to do at home. Students answered positively to those questions. Immediately, I explained the topic on the board and gave several examples of it. Right away, students were given a worksheet with the topic by me. Students finished the class with a game where they had to do a small performance and other students had to guess using "Have to and Don't have To" what they were doing.

One negative aspect was that some students didn't understand the topic even though I explained several times. Also, the worksheet was supposed to be done within the class but most of the students complete just 4 exercises out of 14. So, I had to tell them that the worksheet had to be completed at home. This was bad for students go and translate the exercises.