This was my last lesson to teach the class as a whole in person. This lesson was a continuation of the previous preposition lesson. The first lesson focused on using prepositions of place, but today's lesson there were two other types of prepositions for the students to learn which was prepositions of time and prepositions of cause. Since the last two lessons were fairly short, I decided to combine them and conduct it as a seperate lesson. This lesson was conducted right after break, so once the students came in I quickly ushered them inside and asked them to take out their English book and a pencil to prepare. Surprisingly, everyone was able to settle down and quickly get ready for their lesson, so I gave the class a Dojo point to reward their good behaviour. Next, I started my readiness activity. My readiness activity was similar to yesterday's, but since it was near Christmas, I opted to have a Christmas theme instead. I asked the kids where certain objects were inside Santa's workshop to test out whether or not they remember what prepositions are. Next, I explained to them that there are three types of prepositions, and that next preposition we need to learn is preposition of time: at, in and on. After explaining to the time what preposition of time was, I proceeded to an engagement activity to test whether or not they understood how to use at, in and on in a sentence. Throughout my time in this practicum, I had noticed that some students incorrectly use the word at and in, so I really tried to emphasize these two prepositions. For this task, I asked the students to complete it individually and to write their answers in the notebook. Then, I asked them to take out a purple pen that the students use to correct their work. After that, I instructed the students to look towards their partner and check with each other to see if their answers matches their partners; similar to a think-pair-share activity. The classroom did get quite lively, so I kept reminding them to lower their voices and focus on their work. I also walked around the classroom to ensure they knew what to do, and that they were following instructions and working with a partner. Once the student and their partners were ready, I asked them to put their pencils down and look at me so I know that they were ready. Then, I showed them the answer, and asked them to mark the correct answer with a pen, so they can see where they made their mistakes. The class soon got distracted as they lamented and exclaimed that they got the answers right/wrong. I informed them that it is okay to make mistakes, since this was the first time they are looking at this type of content. I also, retaught them when to use at/in since I realized that many of their mistake was because they used these two words interchangeably. Then, I told the students we would be doing it one more time. This time, the students were more excited because they knew what would happen and at the end of the activity I asked them to show me the number of questions they got right and many had actually improved in how many questions they got right.

Once I knew they had understood the lesson, I moved on to the next type of preposition: preposition of cause. For this activity, I simply explained to them there were two words we use when using prepositions of cause. There are many other prepositions, but I only used these two because I didn't want the students to be overwhelemed. Then I asked them to take a look at how I used these two prepositions in a sentence. Since time was almost running out, I quickly changed my activity to one that involved the whole class rather than one or two volunteers, as a way to check the students' understanding on the last type of preposition. Instead of having two students volunteer to use the preposition "because of" and "due to", I had everybody write one sentence with either "because of" and "due to" in their English book. While they were writing independently, I walked around the classroom and helped the students to construct one sentence. Only a few students were struggling to create a sentence because they did not know how to apply the preposition, but after I gave them a few more examples they seemed to understand the structure of the sentence. I also gave the students a check if they were able to construct a sentence, to indicate that they had done it correctly. Since, we had a 2 minutes left I asked each student to share their sentences with the classroom.

Before the lesson I felt courageous. The previous lesson went perfectly because it they understood how to use prepositions and the purpose of prepositions, so I figured that it would be the same with today's lesson. The readiness activity went flawlessly and the engagement activity went well. It actually went better than expected. What was good about this experience was that I was able to carry out a different teaching strategy. Yesterday, I used explicit teaching, class discussion and implemented a worksheet for the students. Today, I opted out of the worksheet, but instead included a think-pair-share activity. Since yesterday's activity was more solitary, I figured today we would have a change of pace. Interestingly enough, this think-pair-share was something I did not know I would implement in today's lesson. The original plan was to have the students write their answers in their notebook, and then have me read out the answers to them. I honestly did not know how I got the inspiration to implement a think-pair-share. I definitely suprised myself. Also, since today's activity require collaboration between the students, the noise level in the classroom was definitely louder than normal. There were many times I had to bring the students' attention back to the task at hand, but what was good about this was that it gave me the opportunity to use a behaviour management trick. I didn't plan on an attention grabber, because, like I mentioned previously, the think-pair-share activity was an on the spot teaching strategy I implemented. Therefore, the attention grabber I used was the first one I thought of, which was the "eyes on me; eyes on you" attention grabber. I would say "eyes on me" and the students would reply "eyes on you" immediately after. I was astonished when I used this behaviour management trick, reason being was because it worked so well. I didn't think about whether the students were familiar with this trick, so I definitely was gambling with this. To my surprise, the whole class was able to respond with "eyes on you" and then they were quiet immediately after. I think a large part of this was because a majority of them were in the same class in the previous year, and their previous classroom teacher used this attention grabber.

What I learned from this experience is definitely that when it comes to teaching, nothing is set in stone. Depending on the students' performance, the method of teaching can definitely change to suit the needs of the children at that current moment, as well as the teacher's prior teaching experience. Hence the term, lesson prepration. At the most, you can only plan for what you hope to do, but only in the moment will it determine what will be done. This then brings up the age old question of whether lesson preperation is more important than lesson delivery. In my opinion, lesson preparation is much more important. This is because, when I prepare a lesson thoroughly, I realized that it contributed to me teaching much more effectively. It allowed me to mentally and physically prepare for students when they misbehave, but most importantly, it gave me tremendous confidence. As a result, the students were able to accept what I was teaching, and I was able to nagivate any questions the students threw at me (Meadoer, 2019). I didn't plan on having the students self-assess their work, but because previously I was able to see that the students all had a purple pen, and was able to edit their writing independently and I wanted the students to work with each other, did I choose to implement this tactic. Also, I think it is important that students practice self-assessment in their work. That way they can increase their self-awareness in their work and give them the opportunity to reflect on their work, so they can check how they can improve. Hopefully, this can instill a sense of instrinsic desire to learn (Dancer & Kamvounias, 2005 as cited in Academ, 2014). I also learned the importance of attention grabbers, but even more so to use attention grabbers that the students learned previously. Previously, I asked my mentor what kind of attention grabbers she used in her classroom and she informed me that she dislikes using attention grabbers that are loud and requires a response from the students. When she told me this, I was extremely shocked because in my opinion, these kinds of attention grabbers are brilliant because it allows students to redirct their attention onto the teacher and because they need to participate, it means the students are giving you their whole attention (Dunn, n.d.). Whereas her attention grabber of silently counting down to 5 often takes time, because sometimes students don't even realise that she's trying to capture their attention. Although, when I implemented the "eyes on me; eyes on you" attention grabber it was immediate, although a large part of this may be because it was heavily used in their previous year. Therefore, when I pursue a teaching profession, I will definitely be sure to talk to the students previous class teacher and ask their opinion on what attention grabber was most effective when they used it.