Jessica TS #10 (Sandra)

Date/time: July 14th, 10-11am

Location: Online

Topic/Skill: We went over definite and indefinite articles. I used the same format as my teaching roleplay during class and I think it worked well. Filling in the chart together and coming up with examples helped. I then had her do a fill-in-the blank with the/a/an for a couple paragraphs from a article on the British Council website (level B1). In hindsight, I should have gone over the common beginner mistakes again, but she seemed to be getting the hang of it. I'll go over them in a second activity next week.

We then went over the uses of 'silent e'. I don't think she struggled with this, but I thought it'd be useful for sounding out new words in the future. We ended off on how e affects the sound of 'th', which led into practicing the pronunciation of voiced and unvoiced 'th'. She said she found it helpful, which I'm really happy for.

What I learned: I think my explanations for grammar rules could be smoother. Articles feel abstract without lots of examples, and there are times when more than one article is appropriate in slightly different contexts. Explaining the difference in a simple way lead to confusion at times. Still, I've done "lessons" on definite/indefinite articles 3 times now, and it gets a little easier each go around.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bella TS #19

 Date: 29th August 2023 Tutee: Marcela Summary:  Today's lesson was a review of the present tenses in English. I started off by giving Marcela a level appropriate text to read that incorporated the different tenses. I read first and then she read the text, afterwards we reviewed any vocabulary the she didn't understand and pronunciation mistakes. She did a pretty good job with this, I think the text was very level appropriate, it challenged her just enough. The text was about daily routines so afterwards I asked her to create sentences describing her own daily routines. After giving her 10 minutes to do so, we reviewed the sentences for any mistakes. After that we had ran out of time. I am proud of her progress!
Read more

Bella TS #18

 Date: 28th August 2023 Tutee: Marcela Summary: Today, Marcela and I continued our review Present Perfect tense. Since it's been a few days since our last lesson I did a quick review of Present Perfect and had her create some sentences using the tense. Then we moved on to Present Perfect Continuous. She had a bit more trouble with this one than the others so I made sure to go over it again slowly and provided other examples in context. She's improving really quickly, during her free time I see her using apps like Duolingo to practice her English and whenever we talk she always incorporates English. I have been actively trying to code-switch between Spanish and English whenever we're discussing something I know she could figure out the meaning of in the context of a Spanish sentence. She's been doing really great! I'll include a snippet of the lesson plan below.  Present Perfect Continuous: Introduce the present perfect continuous tense by explaining that it is use...
Read more

Bella TS # 20

 Date: 30th August 2023 Tutee: Marcela Summary:  I feel confident in Marcela's understanding of the present tenses in English, so today we did some listening exercises. I didnt want to overwhelm her by moving straight on to past or future tesne, so I thought one more lesson of review and practice would be useful. Especially because we live together, so I will always be able to teach her so to me there is no use in overwhelming her right now, and there's no deadline. I want to go at a pace that suits her best. We watched a level-appropriate video together and then I gave her some prompts so we could discuss it, this took up the rest of our time. She is improving very quickly! During the next lesson, I plan to introduce the past tenses and incorporate more reading exercises. She also does a lot of practice in her free time so I will give her reading and listening material to use during. 
Read more