Things we learned in our mini-lesson presentations

First of all, the main learning I would underline is how important it is to write down your lesson planning, because when you actually write it you realise many things about the activities you intend to develop. Planning helps to find mistakes and things which can be improved, and it also helps to act more freely during the lesson, because you follow a guideline that you have made yours before. You are much more likely to feel relaxed and therefore you will help create a nice atmosphere.

The second learning I got out of last week's mini-lessons is that you should try to work in a team. There is no way any of the four of us would have been able to come up with the ideas and activities we included in our mini-lesson working on their own. Ours was a proposal made in a group and the four of us contributed equally to it. Working collaboratively is a key element if you want to have a sound proposal for your lessons.

There were many other learnings, which I will just mention briefly: the importance of thinking carefully the instructions the teacher will give for learners to perform tasks; trying to avoid competition among learners, as it rarely helps create a good atmosphere; bearing in mind that we can use activities we designed in previous years for maths, sciences, history etc. in the English class; using drawings to synthesise what has been learned and as a guideline to communicate those contents to others; using games; grading the task, and not the text, in task-based learning using texts; thinking of ways to make all learners participate; being aware of the interaction pattern you are promoting and trying to get the focus on students; thinking of small things (realia, materials...) which will help create the situation where you intend learners to visualise themselves in; using the information gap resource to motivate learners so they will listen to each other; using flashcards and stickers to help learners create meanings in the target language, rather than using translation into L1; thinking of activities that learners will enjoy, and will be challenging at the same time.