On July 31st I taught my 9th practicum hour, it was my 8th hour in the conversation cafe. I only have one practicum hour remaining. It feels surreal to be heading into August, only one more week of the TESL certificate left. I started the TESL program this summer because it was available through online instruction, a unique opportunity brought to us by COVID-19. Normally I spend summers working in the very program I am doing my practicum in, although it’s a very different feel online. It has been an amazing opportunity to take this program through online instruction, it has suited my needs perfectly. I hope that this leads to some sort of hybrid model moving forward for the TESL program at TRU.
Today’s class focused on discussion work between students. The students created questions as a class and then interviewed a peer asking their opinion on a variety of topics. Although it was a slow start to get students to create questions, I was able to pull some questions out of them to use for our activity. I tried a new way of working with the students using google slides. I was pretty nervous using the idea because sometimes I have gotten great results from the breakout rooms and sometimes they have been a complete flop. I’m happy to report today that the addition of google slides was successful! The students filled out their slides with their partner and they are all prepared for the next class! I used link sharing, this way anyone has the ability to access the slide show and edit even without signing into an email account. The only downside to this is this makes them anonymous, which can make it difficult to track participation. On the other hand, I have a slide done for every group, so I can assume they were all able to make it onto the slides.
In our final conversation cafe, which happens to be my final practicum class, the partners will present their interview results. I’m hoping because it’s two students sharing together that it will help them feel confident to participate. If we have time I have prepared a game of 20 questions to play with them. I like the idea of using 20 questions because my responses are limited to yes or no, and it puts the harder vocabulary work onto the students.