5th WEEK: STARTING MY DIDACTIC UNIT

Yes! I have already started with my Didactic Unit! And I must say I’m quite happy with my work, I like the activities I have prepared for them and they seem to like them too. However, I’m a bit disappointed with their homework… but, let’s start for the beginning!

On Monday, I decided to go at 8 o’clock since I thought Fran started his didactic unit, unfortunately, he was supposed to start it on Wednesday, just like me. Nuria did a review with 3th of ESO b: some vocabulary, some grammar (must/have to/should… related to school rules) and at the end of the class one student did a presentation about her town. I must say she was very nervous but the presentation was quite good, taking into account that Nuria hadn’t corrected it.

Afterwards, I wanted to show Nuria the final activities I was going to use for my UD. She thought I could start that day, so I rushed in order to have everything ready and printed for them, I started getting nervousssssssss. My office version is very different from the one that there is in the highschool, so it changes everything and I had to modify it again…
We decided to do just the first activity which was an speaking activity based on a survey, I had my PowerPoint presentation ready, I showed them an example, told them to work in pairs, and gave them a paper with a survey about fast food. One of them was going to be the survey taker and the other one had to answer the questions without looking at them, then, the other way around… They behaved quite well, but I was very nervous since I hadn’t prepared myself for starting that day, anyway, it was good experience.

On Wednesday, I observed Fran doing his Didactic Unit. And with my class, I continued with the PP presentation, we worked with some vocabulary related to cooking and food. And I gave them their first homework: write two questions for a survey we were going to do about food habits, I had created a wiki for them and I showed them how to do it. When I finished the explanation, I looked at the time and there were just 3 minutes left! I had also prepared an extra activity in case we finished before we did.
I was veeeeeeery happy with that lesson, I wasn’t nervous at all and they behaved very well, really.

I also observed a 1st of ESO because they were going to talk about mediatons. In this highschool, there are some students who have done a subject about mediations who are mediators. They try to solve problems among other students by listening to them (first separately, and afterwards, together) and making them sign a kind of agreements until the problem is solved. I think this initiative is a very good idea. The mediators, who were from 2nd of ESO, explained to them how they could contact them and what their function was.

Finally, we observed a couple of oral presentations for the research project from 2BAT. One of them was based on Disney films, the girl was pretty nervous and did the whole oral presentation in English (that was new for me), and the other one did it about Budism, her English level was very good but the oral presentation was half in English and half in Spanish, and she wanted to show too many fragments of film… They reminded me when I had to do mine, which was about Spanglish, but I did it at the end of the course, that has also changed.

On Thursday, I had a reading comprehension for my 3th of ESO a, but we didn’t have time to correct the exercises, because we had to spend quite a lot of time to explain it. Moreover, at the beginning of the lesson we lost time since I had to talk to them about the homework. Just 8 students out of 23 had done the homework… I was quite disappointed because that day I wanted them to complete the survey online with some of their questions, but as some of them told me they had had problems with the wiki and some of the questions were not appropiate for a survey, I gave them a couple more of instructions and gave them another chance to do it for next Monday. My tutor also explained to them, what they already knew, that she and I would grade the activities and everything we did in class. Let’s see what they do…