The conversation club was a wonderful way for me to end the semester. I really enjoyed working with Mara to come up with a fun set of activities. We spread the work out evenly and it was a pleasure to work with Mara. She is so passionate and kind. I also appreciated her sense of knowledge and experience with other conversation club sessions. The students that attended were quite active and engaged and willing to speak and participate. I think that some activities should have been shorter at the beginning of the session. However, the last part of the session went very well. The students loved speaking and I really gained great experience being encouraging and motivating. It’s great to see students put themselves out there and speak and try to express themselves. Through this session, I learned how important it is to actively listen and provide appreciation and motivation to students when they speak.

Through the entire student teaching experience, I’ve really been able to reflect and learn what I will do going forward. I have learned I need more work and confidence in the Grammar department. I learned that I can create engaging lessons and strong powerpoint decks that ensure students are on the same page, understand expectations, and have multiple opportunities for questions and checkpoints. I have learned that I am more patient than I thought. I have also learned that I have to offer more praise and positive reinforcement when students answer questions or offer their thoughts and opinions. I also realize I get focussed a lot on timing and need to start working on splitting lessons so that there is more room to build a sense of community.

This was a bit of a difficult lesson to prepare. I wasn’t sure what the prior knowledge of the students was. I would normally try to split this lesson between a few classes to ensure the students fully grasp the concept. I would have liked to use Nearpod for this lesson but I didn’t as I felt like maybe I used Nearpod too much. This is one of the lessons that was observed by Karen so I don’t think I have much more to say. I know that I can engage better with students and try to provide more positive reinforcement when I am teaching. Sometimes, I get too involved in what’s next and keeping time because I only have the forty minutes, that I forget to be more present with my students. I also feel that in my own classes, I would use Nearpod quite in every class and make it a part of my classroom structure. I find it extremely beneficial. I would have also asked the students to submit a final copy of their work for me to grade but in this instance, I didn’t have the luxury as it was my last class and I wasn’t marking student work as a student teacher. 

This lesson was very interactive. I created a Kahoot and Quizziz for the students to participate in while they learned words from the academic word list. I provided a brief overview of the academic wordlist and then the students put their vocabulary knowledge to the test. This was a great class in terms of engagement as each student was ‘forced’ to participate in the Kahoot and Quizziz. In hindsight, I wish I had more time to go over the academic world list and devote one lesson to introducing the word list and building more activities that allowed students to practice the words before we jumped into the Kahoot and Quizziz. Through this lesson, I have learned that the these types of activities  would be more successful should they be done after students have built confidence around the words. 

This lesson was also a fun lesson to teach as it allowed me to utilize one of my strengths – social media marketing. I provided the students with an overview of what kind of content works and how they can market their school on social media. This class is a part of a larger project they are working on. I gave the tips solid tips and tricks and for the remainder of the class they worked on producing short instagram story videos that the school could share on their instagram. I was limited in terms of technology as once the students went into their groups, I was not able to move around or support them. I also did not get a chance to see the end results of their work. I learned how important social media is to students currently and I have started thinking about how I can incorporate it in my own lessons in the future. It will be an engaging and relevant method of teaching. I think I take social media for granted as it is a part of my job and because when I was in school, we didn’t place value on such things. 

I was a bit nervous preparing the passive voice lesson. Grammar is not my strong point and I need to work on improving. Although the Grammar course with Hilda has helped a lot, I still find this to be a huge weak point for me. Initially, the sponsor teacher had asked me to list several grammar tips and points into one lesson. I was very overwhelmed and created an entire deck for approximately six grammar points. I knew it was too much material to cover but I also didn’t want to let down the sponsor teacher. I have learned that I have to be more vocal about my concerns and stand up for what I believe is realistic in terms of lesson content. After presenting the material I prepared to the sponsor teacher, we decided to focus only on passive voice. The lesson was well-planned but I did pause sometimes when I was asked a question and I did doubt myself. I was thankful for having the sponsor teacher there to support me and answer questions. I will definitely have a grammar book on hand if I do teach grammar. 

On another note, I find that sometimes, it is difficult to tell if the students are learning and engaged. I find that the same students are participating in class and I wish I had more time and technology to ensure all students are able to participate. I find that some students may just join the MS teams session but they may not physically be present. 

This lesson was probably my most favourite simply because it forced engagement and most of the students were able to participate. I do feel limited and restricted with the length of the lessons as I wish I had more time. In this lesson, I had an overview of the speaking module and then the remainder of the class was a speaking activity where each student was assigned a speaking topic and they had to speak for 1.5 minutes regarding that topic. In IELTS, I believe they are given two minutes to speak so I wanted the activity to simulate the exam as closely as possible. In hindsight, I believe that I should have given each student only a minute to speak so more students could have participated. Each student that was able to speak did a great job and it was a great way for them to firsthand experience the speaking module in IELTS. Time management and constraints are a continued challenge for me. I just wish I had more time and more classes to teach so that I could have consecutive classes and continue lessons instead of trying to jam as much as possible within a 40 minute period. This does provide great insight into the future when I do have my own class so that I can prepare proper lead-in and scaffolding. 

This lesson was fun to prepare. I started off with an overview of the listening module for the IELTS exam and what it consists of. I found a series of recordings where speakers of different accents told the same story. I played these stories and allowed the students to fill in the blanks regarding what they were listening. I found that this gave the students great exposure to the type of accents they will be presented with and how they feel when they hear the different accents. I also ended the lesson with a listening activity from the class textbook. I found this lesson to be quite comprehensive and the students seemed to participate and be interested. I learn a lot from my students and each lesson. I learned how important it is to try to build a personal connection with my students. I also learned how important it is to allow time for checkpoints and understanding. 

This lesson was interesting to prepare as I hadn’t thought about this subject matter for years. It started off a little rough as what I prepared and what the sponsor teacher was expecting were not aligned. I had to edit it last minute and add other information as I had only prepared the True/False and not Yes/No questions. I have learned quickly that time management and engagement are very important. I created a nearpod lesson and all student were participating. I believe the students found this lesson useful and it is one of the most difficult types of questions.

The second lesson I taught was right up my alley and I really enjoyed it. This lesson took place on a Friday, when the students work on a special project.I started the lesson with appreciative inquiry and asked them to type into the chat one thing they are grateful for. Starting the class in such a manner has now become my signature.  As an introduction to their project, I provided students with an engaging overview of what a business plan with a youtube video that paused and had built-in questions to make it engaging and summarize learning. I then delivered a lesson about what personal branding is and why it is important. I engaged students to think of themselves as a personal brand. I gave personal examples. The students really seemed to be inspired and engaged. This was a wonderful way to end the week. I keep thinking of ways to keep the students engaged and entertained. At the end of the class, I asked the students to provide feedback for the lesson. I have continued asking students for feedback after each lesson. I feel like I have been trying little techniques such as appreciative inquiry and asking for feedback and then making them a routine.

I learned a lot from Yazmin right from the beginning of my student teaching experience. I was planning on delving right into content. I must admit that I was quite excited and anxious about teaching the lessons so I was mainly focussed on the content. When I met with Yazmin to plan, she suggested that we do a simple icebreaker for the first lesson and create a fun environment where everyone can get to know each other. I enjoyed creating the fun ice breaker activity where I shared a little bit about me and I was able to learn about the students. I realized that my students are quite passionate and engaged. It was really great to have this introductory session to set the tone and to get to know the students and their personalities. I learned how important time management is as not all the students were able to share something about themselves. Going forward, I will keep this in mind when teaching a new class.