I snapped this photo on my way to the first TEFL practicum day.
The lesson went fairly well. There were a number of late arrivals due to the check-in process. I could probably have handled them less obtrusively, but I wanted everyone to feel welcome and not feel bad about being late since it was not entirely their fault. Three more desks also had to be located at one point, which is pretty hard to do without being obtrusive. It was clear during the first exercise that the students’ language level was higher than I had anticipated. The kinesthetic exercise I used to determine which skills the students found hardest and easiest was a bit cumbersome due to the size of the room. However, the discussion after the exercise was very good, the students were very articulate about why certain skills are easy or hard for them. The partner interview went very well. It might have worked better as an initial exercise, then moving to the kinesthetic activity after students had been sitting a while. Due to the size of the class, I split the students into two groups for the oral introduction phase. There was not time to reshuffle, so the students did not have the opportunity to hear everyone’s introduction. The teacher T/F activity at the end went well. I didn’t feel I had time to break the two large groups into smaller groups, but, obviously, students would have had more opportunity to practice speaking in smaller groups. Overall, I felt good about the lesson, though there were definitely things I learned that I will try to improve upon or implement next week.