Over the next 2 weeks, in order to get my TEFL certification, I’ll be teaching 6 classes to real students in real classrooms in real schools. These teaching sessions will be observed and graded, but it’s not the observer that scares me – it’s the 30-some Thai students that will be expecting me to resemble an actual teacher.
These last two weeks have been very helpful, each day from 9am to 4pm being taught how to teach. But classroom instruction can only take you so far, and the best way to learn is by doing, so…
What the hell. Let’s go be a teacher.
My first class is Tuesday morning, with 15-17 year old vocational college students. I have to teach them how to answer the question “What time is it?” in terms of “It’s [minutes] past [hour].” and “It’s [minutes] to [hour].”
SEE TEFL (my TEFL certification school) has pretty strict requirements as to lesson preparation and structure. While it doesn’t leave a ton of room for creativity, as a brand new baby teacher, I’m happy to have this clear outline to go by.
The 50-minute lesson will go like this:
- Presentation (10-12 minutes). Leading the students through my whiteboard presentation, introducing the target question-answer structure, and how to determine whether to use “It’s [minutes] past [hour].” or “It’s [minutes] to [hour].”
- Practice (18-20 minutes). The kids will do a worksheet that I’ve prepared, giving them some individual repetition of their new knowledge. I’ll walk around and make sure they’re doing it right, then go over it with them aloud.
- Production (15-18 minutes). Using little clock flashcards that I prepare (and using no notes), the students will ask and answer the question out loud, in pairs, giving them all a good amount of autonomous speaking practice.
- Maybe some kind of filler game if there’s a couple minutes at the end.
So far, I’ve made my worksheet, some big clocks that I’ll print and stick on the whiteboard to use during the presentation stage, and I’ve sketched out my whiteboard plan. I still need to print things and do some arts’n’crafts with my flashcards and whiteboard clocks, but I have tomorrow and Monday before Judgment Day (a.k.a. Tuesday).
Credit where it’s due: