The Mirror has been polished!

Today I introduced myself to two classes. In the first class, students had little response to my little speech. The only response is to remind me that I should speak louder. Then, no anticipating little faces but only some warm smiles and blank stars. In the second class, I became a bit of nervous and didn't really follow the script I noted down in advance. This time, Rainbow helped me elicit students' interests and questions about me, which turned out to be pretty exciting. I found that behind those warm smiles and blank stars, students have lots of questions and anticipation for the new teachers, but they're afraid to ask questions and probably they're not used to ask questions. At this moment, instead of staring back with an awkward smile, teachers can serve as a facilitator, motivating students to brainstorm and speak their questions outloud. Rainbow taught 8 vocab today. I like the idea of picking up the most important or frequently used phrases as supplements and explaining them with sentences in real life situations. Most of the supplemental language usages are drawn from the examples in the vocab section, which is good for students because the supplements will not become a burden that scares students away from senior high school English and the repetition can help them memorize those new expressions more easily. The clear explanation with Rainbow's lively body language also help reinforce students' recognition of the new words; sentence-making that is linked to Ss' experiences helps give dead language patterns a live body as well. When teaching the new vocab, Rainbow would ask individual student to read the sentence outloud. I think it's a good way to make sure students are following teachers' instruction and to help them with unfamiliar pronunciation. However, the noise the AC and the ceiling fans produce make students' mumbles difficult to be heard. I'm afraid those who can't hear might find the noise distracting. Maybe next time when the AC is on, the ceilinng fans can be turned off. The situation might be better.

One other thing I learned from today is when going to see Ss' morning or noon self-study, always leave from the opposite direction, that is, leave from behind Ss' backs. In that way, Ss won't be sure whether the teacher is still there or not, which can creat some apprehension among Ss. Another is to make sure how far we teach in the textbook. Teachers might leave a bad impression if they don't know where to start teaching in the next class.