The first week of my teaching practice in Moraitis School was an absolutely amazing experience for me. I observed the first (B1+ level) and second year (B2 level) of gymnasium classes. I have to admit that I really liked entering a classroom again after 4 years of graduating from the Greek Lyceum.
When I first entered the B1+ class I realized that both the teacher and the students speak only in the English language. However, there were times when students used the Greek language to explain something that they could not explain in English. The teacher was always speaking in English, apart from when she was explaining grammar. In that case, she could speak in Greek to explain some difficult phenomena. In this first week, the B1 class focused on reported speech as far as grammar is concerned and vocabulary exercises and listening activities about professions. Because of the fact that this class consisted of more boys than girls, I could say that the teacher tried hard in order to maintain discipline. She was always checking if the pupils had done the exercises, brought the books or were paying attention to the lesson.
The B2 class was a really interesting class to observe as the pupils of this class are sitting the FCE examination on the 14th of May. As a matter of fact, the lessons are a preparation for them in order to succeed in the exam and students are very concentrated on their goal. In the first week, I observed that the level of English in this class is very high and they can use more sophisticated words when speaking in English. In the first week of my attendance, I saw that the students do many practice tests both at home and in the classroom. They keep a record of their correct answers and then they inform the teacher. For example, after finishing the "Use of English" section of the practice test, my mentor asked them: "how many correct answers did you have?" Then, the students answered: " 30 out of 40 or 35 out of 40". They also focused a lot on activities that included inversion, gerunds and infinitives. The teacher explained these grammatical features on the whiteboard many times so that the students can become fully aware of them and assigned exercises to do in class or for homework.
All in all, the first week of my attendance in Moraitis School was very important as I was able to gather a lot of information about the classes I am going to teach later on and about teaching generally. I feel really enthusiastic and I cannot wait to experience the following stages of the teaching practice.