One of the strategies I wanted to apply from the very beginning was making the classroom speaking and listening experience as authentic as possible. 

After the observation period, I was going on a trip to Europe, so I told the kids about it and that I was going to be back after that. The idea was to raise their curiosity and to use the trip thing as a tool to encourage authentic listening and speaking activities. I could do so, indeed. We had to start a new unit in their coursebook and its title was “Around the world”, pretty apposite. I took advantage of that context and my recent experience to bring photos of my holidays to show the kids and introduce the new vocabulary about countries and continents. I asked them to guess where the photos had been taken and then to point the countries on a poster of a world map. We talked about those countries, the language people speak there, typical food, famous places and sights,etc. Actually, we had a very entertaining conversation and it was highly effective as students felt excited about my experience and they even felt motivated to ask me questions about the trip. I admit I didn´t need to encourage them to do so at all! The interaction around an authentic experience was extremely useful to work on students’ speaking and listening skills and also to awaken their inner curiosity. I really enjoyed this first lesson. 

Students participated actively during the whole lesson. They were very enthusiastic when I showed them my photos and wanted to know more about the trip. At the same time, they related all the information I was giving them to their previous knowledge about those places. So, for example, when we talked about Italy and they saw the photo of the Coliseum, they came up with stories as regards Gladiators. One of them told me that he had gone to an Italian school when he was little but that he couldn´t speak Italian. 

Their reaction to the lesson and to the activities I proposed for this lesson was very positive. In addition, I observed that they felt comfortable with me and also free to ask me about my experience. 

I prepared a speaking game called “Guess the country” to revise the vocabulary from the previous lesson. The idea was to give students clues using the information about the countries we had been discussing about in Lesson 1 and ask them to guess the country. I noticed that students get really involved in these kinds of guessing activities and that this interaction gives me the opportunity to encourage speaking in a fun way while we revise the vocabulary from the previous class. I think it will be a good idea to include guessing games in future lessons.

This lesson truly reminded me the image of a family, a quite big one! Actually, I think of the classroom as our home and of all of us as members of the family. I strongly believe that this lesson showed how relaxed we all feel during the classes and how each member contributes to the interactions and even to problem solving according to their different abilities and skills. That is what a family do: they all work collaboratively using their skills and experience in order to get better results which will benefit all of them. 
The video segment shows this relationship clearly. During the game in which they had to put themselves into the correct position to form sentences, they all used their varied skills, depending on their personalities, to solve the problem. There was always a leader but all the members of the group tried to contribute to the discussion. Not only the memebers of the group who was performing the activity but also the rest of the students would comment on how they were doing!

First, I think that the warm-up activity (which was a guessing game again using a piece of music) was a successful exercise to catch students´ attention and to create a relaxing atmosphere prior to start working on grammar which sometimes could be a bit boring for students. 

Secondly, I think that it was a good choice to practise the grammar item (present simple tense) with the game of the colour balls. At this starting point, I believe it was useful to give students options or ideas, in a visual way,  to write their sentences. It also gave me the opportunity to revise the vocabulary we had been learning. Finally, it was interesting to read students´original and creative statements.