Magic moments, sensible diversions, unforeseen problems and SMART obujectives

 Hello everyone!

How are you doing? I hope you´re doing awesome and that you're ready for... 🥁🥁🥁 Another weakly entry! Today we are going to get into Magic moments, sensible diversions, unforeseen problems, and S.M.A.R.T objectives in lesson planning.

We started yesterday's class by talking about objectives. Objectives are very important to know what we want to focus on and what we are seeking for students to reach at the end of the lesson. Teacher Orlando mentioned that there are 3 main types of objectives; we can be as vague or as precise as we want with our objectives. Or we can be somehow in between, but we should always make sure that we are clear with what we want to achieve. 

I was reading the material about S.M.A.R.T. objectives. They should be Specific. Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based. This is a very useful key to what we should consider when crafting our objectives. Teacher Orlando also showed us an example of his own (the one that he crafted for the last virtual class that I didn´t notice BTW 😅) and it clearly followed a structure. It included time, what we were supposed to do, mode, and proof which in that case was uploading our recordings and updating our blogs

Then, we moved on to some cool activities! When I saw our teacher with a bunch of objects and stuffed animals, I couldn't help being taken back to my old English classes, it´s exciting to see different things in the classroom because one starts wondering what´s about to happen! We started discussing different things I will now list down:

Activities to group people:

There are quite a number of ways in which we can group people. for all of the activities, we need to pay special attention, teachers need to be good observers, so we can look for things in common among our students and group them according to the color of their clothes, and accessories: All the ones wearing glasses go together! People in skirts make groups! If you have a watch look for another person wearing one!

We could group them by age, month of birth, zodiac sign as Rodrigo said, by the initials of their names (for this name tags can be of incredible help), you could also give different candies to everyone and then group them according to the flavor they were given, by the color of their name tags, etc, etc. It´s almost infinite the number of possibilities and you might need to be creative, and if you are not, don´t worry, we can observe and learn from other teachers.  Something important to consider is breaking up pre-set groups, students always work with the same people, so we can choose leaders, and split them into different teams.

Activities to measure time:

It is a good idea to play background music (suggestopedia) and warn students that went the song is over, time´s up! We could also set an alarm on our phones, or use a chronometer, all of these in the most dynamic way. It might work better if we have a big screen displayed with the timer rather than just saying "ok, guys time´s up". Of course, this is definitely valid and useful too, and it will all depend on the resources we have.

After we discussed these two, teacher Orland gave some instructions and double-checked using ICQs. We had to pass around an octopus and when the noise stopped, we would answer a question for activities either to group people or to measure time, depending on the color of the octopus. 

Activities to check on participation:

We need to motivate students and make it as engaging as possible. To do so, we could paste labels with students´ names on them on the wall and set a number of times to participate so they can take their names away from the list and be "saved".

We could also create heaven and hell, and explain that they can go to the positive side when participating a number of times. We could give stickers as a prize too and once they reach a high number, they could get a point or another type of reward.

We could spice it up by making it competitive. Boys versus girls, Gemini vs Aquarius, red team versus blue team, or we could have them name their own groups.

Activities to make sounds:

They could clap their hands along the activity stamp their feet, ring a bell, bring a noisy toy into the classroom or we could use a whistle, little drums, trumpets, etc.

Activities to make students up when they´re falling asleep:

I think this is one of those difficult situations teachers need to deal with. I remember my former English teacher would have us stand up and stretch out, or he would make us touch our heads, shoulders, knees, and toes in a catchy brief song. We can also do games like dropping the marker without previous warning and students should know that when this happens they need to change seats, and the last one in doing so, will be our victim.

Activities for praising students

We could praise students after accumulating a series of good practices, like being on time, participating, or getting the right answers. We could keep track of it by telling students to make their own "reward charts" and once they complete them, they can redeem it for a bar of chocolate, candy, credit for an activity, 5 minutes extra of break, etc.

INTRODUCTION TO WARM-UP ACTIVITIES

Warm-up activities are used to recall/review previous knowledge (activation), introduce a new topic (lead-in), or it can be a just-for-fun activity that will help students get excited about the class. (Ice breaker.) Let´s not forget that new methodologies suggest that warm-up is important to build a community. In this sense, warm-up activities need to involve feelings, culture, or global citizenship. Now, it makes sense... In ¡Supérate! We would always start our mornings with our famous "morning hug" We would walk around and hug every one of our classmates, after three years together, I truly saw them as family, it was a beautiful way to build bonds.  And in general, warm-ups have to be:

• Dynamic
• Short (5-7 min.) *máx 10 min
• Engaging.

As an example of warm-up activity, we had a dice rolling around, as the teacher stopped making the noise, the one person with the dice would roll it and would make a statement using the structure "Are you... Happy/sad/embarrassed/flirtatious, etc."  and another student with another toy would reply: "yes, I am./No, I am not."

Finally... We had a magical moment, a community-building activity! Yesterday, it was Miriam´s Birthday, so we took advantage of this and sang Happy Birthday to her, as well as some classmates said nice things about her, it was really beautiful and it was proof that teaching is a very rewarding profession, we genuinely experienced a magical moment.

So, that was it from my side for this week´s entry! I´m sorry I didn´t take that many pics, but I recall almost every single detail of our class. I hope this entry was of help and that you brought back some things as you were reading as well. Bye-bye! See you around! I hope that you guys have an amazing vacation time! 💫👋