Implementing the lesson plan

From Monday, 10th December to Friday, 14th December 2007. I started my lesson plan on Monday afternoon at half past four. I was really excited and nervous because after having made a great effort developing the activities of my 'unit', I didn't actually know if they would work well or wouldn't work so well with students. In fact, I felt really impressed at the end of the session because they had enjoyed themselves very much and, moreover, they had taken part in the activities. It was very rewarding for me as I couldn't imagine their reaction. They showed enthusiasm and motivation with the powerpoints I presented because it was an absorbing visual way of learning for them. The powerpoints helped me keep students' attention and get them engaged as all the information was focused on the screen.
On Wednesday, I had a lesson with half of the group, as usual. The class was devoted to speaking and listening skills. The fact of teaching only fourteen students on Wednesday mornings allows the teacher to concentrate on those abilities and skills which are more difficult to put into practice with the whole class. So I took advantage of this situation and I prepared, apart from some introductory oral activities and a listening -suitable for their level-, a role-play based on travelling. I divided the class into holiday makers and travel agents. Holiday makers had to decide where to go for a short holiday. In order to know what kind of holiday they were looking for, they had to fill in an individual questionnaire, which would be useful later on so as to choose a destination. Travel agents' job consisted of selling different holiday resorts around the world. Every travel agent -there were four travel agents with different stalls around the class and offering different destinations- had to convince the customers to buy their destination. I enjoyed this activity very much and kids seemed to have fun as well. When I finished the lesson, I felt satisfied with the result because apart from learning some vocabulary about travelling, they had been able to create a friendly atmosphere and they had enjoyed simulating a real situation that may be useful for them when travelling. In the afternoon I attended an 'assessment meeting'. It was interesting to know what teachers usually talk about at these meetings. They talked about strategies to carry out by teachers as a whole and they also made reference to the attitudes and aptitudes of some students.
On Thursday I had fun, too. I prepared for students a great variety of activities, all of which were involved with different countries around the world. After having looked up information about the population, the currency, the climate and the most important places of interest of a list of countries, they had to identify the country and the place of interest of a number of photographs. After this task, I showed them a powerpoint on a tribe who lives in Thailand, called the giraffe-women or the long-necked women. As I went to Thailand so many years ago and I had the opportunity of getting to know their lifestyle, their traditions and their village, I showed them different pictures about this tribe's daily life -I also included some beautiful photos of children at school. The lesson was a success because students took part in the speaking task actively. They were really engaged when they saw me among the giraffe-women. I also brought them different objects that this tribe tends to sell so that they could touch real things from this Asian culture. They enjoyed themselves a lot and some students even told me to repeat the experience with another different country.
On Friday, the lesson was a chaos. Students were out of control. In fact, the class started at half past eleven and they were tired after the recess. The lesson I had prepared was really interesting but I didn't manage to finish it because they were shouting and chatting all the time. Anyway, I have survived so far. Just two more sessions and I will have finished. Wow! I can't believe it.