After observing this group and talking to the teacher, I figured that the students wanted to be challenged, they enjoyed it when the activities were a bit more difficult and challenging, so with Daniela, we prepared and presented the first activity “Running Dictation” together as an opener to our class. This activity was very successful, even though it took a bit more time than expected, the students were very engaged with the activity, which consisted of having to read 8 short paragraphs from the board, and dictating them to their partners, so they had to read, recall, and speak the information to complete the task. As I mentioned before, this activity got the students up and trying to complete the task, which was somewhat challenging, thankfully, it got them engaged, if there is anything I could change, I would have asked them to repeat the instructions back to me, so that I knew for sure they knew what to do.

After the Running Dictation, we proceeded to complete the course book, for this part, Daniela and I divided our time, so we could practice separately. My turn came after the second recess, which was to complete pages 28 and 29 of their course book. These activities were more monotonous, the students were not as engaged, but they still participated. After a few simple activities, we had a task that involved being creative and writing about a topic they have chosen, then they had to present their work. This is where things got a bit messy, some students were getting a bit rowdy, and I had some trouble getting them to focus on their classmates’ stories, which tends to be my issue when students try to go away from the topic or task at hand.

As a whining-down task, I chose to do a little game provided by the book. There were a few flashcards with phrases they have read about before, and they had to say the phrase and ask if it was true or false. Luckily, the students enjoyed this game, but after three hours of class, they were ready to be done.

I would say that I learned a few things with this group, being that they are more advanced students than I have taught before, they were ready to learn more, to practice what they knew, and to do games that were challenging rather than playing easy games to pass the time. I would have prepared more dynamic games if I knew they would be open to doing them.

As an opener I had written some of the animals we read about in the previous class, the students had to write down the vocabulary words from the animals as one does in a “Word-Web”. After writing down what they felt each word fitted best the animal, the students had to create 8-10 lines of a paragraph using the words surrounding the animal of their choosing. This activity was seemingly not too difficult, but it got the class moving and engaged with the content, they were a bit more passionate about misunderstood animals since the last class, perhaps some of them did some research and were able to talk freely about their thoughts on the animals. After they had done their paragraph, they had to read them aloud and express their feelings and reasons for those feelings towards the misunderstood animals. Most students paid attention and were interested to hear what the other person wrote down. I would say this was a successful activity.

Then, we proceeded to complete the course book on page 30. Which were a few interactive tasks with their classmates, asking them about their answers. The last excise I completed with the group was the “Unit 2 Worksheet” where students had to match the cause and the effect, then they had to complete the sentence with the correct phrase. These activities were a bit calmer, but to make it more interesting and not lose their attention, I asked them to complete the phrases on the board for both exercises.

Overall I believe my performance was better the second time around, I remembered to ask students to repeat instructions, and I asked multiple times if there were any doubts or if there were any words they didn't know the meaning of, and I avoided using Spanish to explain the things they couldn’t understand. I politely asked them to put their cellphones away, because in the first lesson I had forgotten about this.

If I could change anything, it would be to ask them about their week before starting the class, try to create some rapport before diving into the lesson, and to have more games ready to go for them, as they have three-hour classes, by the second hour they tend to get bored and games tend to stimulate them and allow them to practice as well.

For my third and final teaching class, it was ninety minutes long, and I had pages 68 and 69 of the course book, which were about the different houses around the world and why they were different. So as an opener I decided to have three pictures of different types of houses and different names alongside the materials from which the houses were made of. The students had to guess which house was made of which material and the name itself, then they had to read a short story about each type of house. Then I asked them why the houses were so differently made and located, they gave their answers and speculations. Then we proceeded to complete the course book, watched videos, and we chatted about our ideal room, then students had to re-create their favorite room as they wanted it to be, it could be any of the rooms in their house, in the worksheet. Sadly, we did not use the last worksheet because we ran out of time, and I did not want to leave them homework because I was not going to be able to pick up their homework.

From this last lesson I practiced I realize that we need to be aware of the different levels of our students as much as humanly possible, we could have students that are ready to be on the next level, and we will have students that need more time to develop their skills, and also I need to improve on my classroom management skills, whenever there are more than 10 students I tend to panic and scramble through the class, I need to be more confident with a larger group. For this group in particular we played a little bit of “Hangman” by using the vocabulary words from the unit, as a cooling-off period for them before going home.