2nd Journal Entry

September 2^nd

Rivera- Huila

Professional Development program

Colombus American School

This was the first Skype session for the teachers’ development program, most of the teachers were on time to start the class. In this occasion, a native speaker was helping us with the development of the class. The purpose or objective for the intervention was that the students practice the structures and vocabulary learned during the first session, and also that they could have a real interaction with a native person in order to let them know more pronunciation patterns.

The class started at 9:10 pm, all the student were joined to the video call, my role in this case was to record the session, and to clarify some vocabulary. The native person start the class by greeting the participants. At the beginning they were ashamed because it is not usual to interact with a native person unless you are in another country. The instructor helped as a moderator for the questions, and also he provides feedback in terms of vocabulary and sentences.

After a few minutes the participants started answering the questions that Garvin proposed, I was surprised because they started to ask questions that were not in the worksheet, they asked about his hobbies, his experiences in Neiva, and also about his parents.

It was interesting to see, how the participants felt confident after some minutes talking with Garvin and the teacher. Also it was important the role of the teacher as a guide for the conversation. The only thing that could be improved for the next session, is to assign turns in order to have a more organized dialogue, sometimes they were confused because they did not identify who was asking the question. Some technical problems were also perceived because it was not possible for one of the participants to interact fluently during the exercise.

For the next class, students are going to learn vocabulary about food. All the exercises were uploaded to Edmodo.