New week...

Monday: This week will I will give my first set of final exams: first to my shelter class and then to my TOEFL class. My shelter class exam will be a simple test of basic grammar, but with a short essay response to add a little something more to the exam. My TOEFL test will have students reading an academic passage and answering questions; responding in an essay to a question; and responding by speaking to a different question. These are all things that they will have to do on the actual TOEFL test and it's what we've been practicing for the last five weeks.

Thursday Night: I started this post on Monday morning and never got a chance to finish it. My exams on Wednesday went well. I began grading part of the test and they appear to have done just fine. One section of my exam was a speaking section - this is where I truly learned how well my students might do on their actual TOEFL exam. What they had to do was prepare notes in response to a question and then give a oral response to the question. I graded it on a scale of 1 to 5: I had no 1s and no 2s, a couple of 3s, mostly 4s, and about five 5s. I was pretty happy with the results, but some of my students still have a lot of work to do before they try to take the TOEFL exam. This is where I think my class website might help some of them out. On my website I have included my e-mail address so students can ask me questions and I have also listed useful websites for them to use for preparation. I hope that some of my students try to contact me in the future with questions or concerns about the TOEFL Test. It would mean a lot to me if I could help them in some way.

Next week is my final week with my other classes. With Quinto Secretariado I will be watching an English movie. With Cuarto Secretariado I will be practicing their spelling skills in preparation for their final exam. During the rest of my time at school I will be working on finishing my grading for Quinto Ciencias and for my other classes as well.

Well, I'll try to write again later this weekend or next week. Perhaps I'll be able to put up more of my activities/lesson plans.