I completed my first teaching hours on June 5th. My sponsor teacher and I have agreed that I should teach the first hour of each class that I am scheduled for and that she will teach the second hour. This allows her to jump in if I overlook something and to check the students' understanding when necessary. I think that this method worked well for the lessons that I taught and that it will continue to be helpful for the teaching hours that I will complete in the following weeks.

Reflecting on the courses

I think that the teaching I did for the reading course went well. I was glad when my sponsor teacher told me that I did a good job and that I did not come across as nervous as I thought I did. I was very nervous since it was my first time teaching. However, I saw one of my students in the hallway after class and he said that I seemed very nervous and was wondering why. In my opinion. I think there will always be some people who notice our mistakes but the majority of people either will not notice or will not focus on them and will instead look at their overall picture.

I need to be patient with myself because it is a learning process and it takes some getting used to. My nerves and social anxiety are something that I have tried very hard to overcome throughout my secondary and post-secondary schooling, particularly when I have had to do class presentations. As such, it is somewhat amusing that I have chosen a career where I will have to do presentations every day. However, I feel that it is necessary for both my personal and professional growth and that I will benefit from pushing myself, going out of my comfort zone, and having new experiences.

I think that the students were very receptive to Lesson Plan 1 that I created for the reading class. I think that they grasped the concept of the author's purpose and that the examples that I provided helped them understand the differences between informing, entertaining, and persuading. They were able to successfully identify the three purposes in the blog text samples with a small group and individually. However, I think that some of the phrases that I identified in the text to provide them with examples of what to look for to distinguish between informing and persuading were unclear. I think that the students may not have understood what they meant or how they should be used. As such, if I teach this lesson again, I will spend more time identifying these phrases in the text, explaining what they mean, and modelling how to use them when reading texts.

I think that Lesson Plan 2 that I created for the culture (conversational) class was less effective. I found it difficult to get the students to participate when I was asking for situational examples. I'm not sure if students had trouble understanding what kinds of examples I was looking for, how to phrase them, or if they were just hesitant to speak up in class. The energy level in the class was low and the students were less engaged in the lesson than I had expected them to be. I was also hesitant to write information on the whiteboard because my back would be faced towards the class and I was worried about the students not being able to hear me and about being the only source of language input for the students. I also think the students struggled a bit with the activities where they had to infer what the characters in the example dialogues would say based on the context. I'm not sure whether the students just need to practice completing and creating dialogues or whether I need to model this kind of activity in a different way. I tried to structure the activity according to the stages I read for this week's resources. However, I think it may have still been too challenging for students because it was something that they had not done before. As such, if I teach this lesson again, I will try to break this activity down into simpler tasks so that what I am asking for is clearer for the students. As a new activity, I think it will be less frustrating for them.

My sponsor teacher told me that the students seemed to grasp the material in the first lesson because they could answer the comprehension questions that she asked after I competed my lesson. She said that I provided a lot of helpful feedback for the students, particularly in the writing and sharing dialogues activity. She also liked that I walked around the groups of students and checked in with them to see if they needed help or more time to complete the activities. However, she said that I need to call on students more and suggested using the attendance sheet to ask individual students to share answers with the class. For my future teaching, I need to practice calling on students and trying to get them to participate.