As this was my last observation of the class in Mexico, I must admit that I will miss observing Andrea and her classes. She is a great educator, and they are a great bunch of students. It was wonderful that I have been able to spend most of the week observing the same class because it allows me to witness how teaching day to day would be like. Class begins a little differently than usual with introductions from the practicum students Lori-Jane and Mara. I will not say much about what I thought about their introduction since they were not who I was technically observing. They did use 3 truths and a lie which was a great way of getting the student involved and interested in getting to know them. They had great participation from the students, so it seemed like a very good start for them.
Andrea started the lesson by reminding them what was worked on yesterday. She goes through what would be on IELTS exam even though it might seem early in the semester to start thinking about it. This I think is a great way to set up students for success by making sure they are already thinking of what the end goal of the class is. Again, Andrea shows a very useful teaching method in this way. She then gives examples again using the True, false, and not given. I like this repetition with the students and the constant use of stuff from the IELTS. Another thing that I liked that she did was that she made students give reasons for their answers. This forces them to really use their deductive skills and not just rely on guessing. This will also help them be successful in their exam later. She relates to previous learning and why she taught something. I think that explaining to students why they are being taught something or why they need to know it is a great strategy. If students understand the purpose, then they might pay closer attention. She then gives tips on reading for the IELTS before heading into some practice with reading. She preps the reading by giving the bare bones and asking questions. After the reading, the next questions that she provides are ones that students answer based on reading. It was great to see strategies that I will be learning about in action. Overall, I think that watching Andrea teach was a great experience for me and from the past couple of days, I learned a lot.