Day 3 - Oh No??!!

Day 3 started smoothly, especially that I did not have to deliver the lesson. However, I had to finish two translations by 3 o'clock, which means that I had to use every single break, even the 5-minute ones to do what I was supposed to. That was pretty stressful, I admit, but what can I do? Unlike others, I can not afford to dedicate the whole month to CELTA only and quit all the jobs and refuse all the offers..I have to sacrifice my remaining nerves and of course sleep, though.

The first thing we did was to again receive handouts, this time language-related ones, such as style, grammar, structure, form, function. First, we had to talk about what they mean in pairs and then we already got the explanations we had to match them with. We also mentioned the MPFA thing (meaning, pronunciation, form, appropriacy). Then we dealt with some examples, such as the usage of USED TO and then also past continuous, the timeline usage a bit, some vocabulary and basically already quite a lot of information I would not be able to process unless I made a lot of notes.

Actually it is past 12 at night and I have not even started preparing the lesson plan for my tomorrow's lesson and again, the plan should be ready by 9 a.m. which means that although I stayed up yesterday, I might have to do the same tonight and who knows, how many more nights..I feel drained and not able to do a thing.

Nick introduced the grammar on his session, in particular future plans using "going to". He drew a very funny illustration of Manana on the board and tried to elicit what she "was going to do". was really a lot of fun. As well as that, we were told that grammar should be explained by the way of demonstration and situation rather than explanation.

After the lessons of other teachers, we had a feedback again and then planned tomorrow's lessons. Well, I should probably say, we "planned" them, because I have got no clue about what to do, I feel so sleepy that I might just die and at this moment, I want nothing but to sleep until 3pm, then wake up and find out that I failed (but the latter is not what I actually want).

Hope I am able to come up with something until 9am.

Day 2 and my first lesson at CELTA

Day 2 was more than I could expect because I was not only among the teachers who had to deliver the lesson today, but also the very first one - A. Although my teaching experience counts 9 years, it was still hard to realise this.

Therefore, I prepared a plan beforehand, wrote down practically everything, all the instructions I would give the students and decided to calm myself down and think about all the other problems in my life which made all this CELTA experience suddenly seem really inferior compared to them.

The first session was dedicated to classroom management and Manana gave us handouts of different colors. First we just discussed the concepts of classroom management, running commentary, pair work, classroom interaction etc in pairs, and then we got the answers to do some matching. After having matched the phrases with their definitions, we had to mix them up and try the same task in a different way, turn the papers one by one and try to match them again based on our memory. After this, we started discussing how to give instructions before starting an activity. These already included stepping back, using a gesture, eye contact, demonstration etc. We discussed them in pairs and then shared our views with another team. In addition, we had to mention some of the problems which arises during the process of instructing students, they include usage of L1, Echoing, seeking attention etc, basically the things that a good teacher should not be doing.

In the second session, we already had to deal with lesson planning itself. Nick took over this one and first asked us to compare a lesson to either a film, football match, symphony or a good meal. I chose film and wrote:

• A good lesson is like a film, because it has its own lead-in, development, climax and conclusion

Nick seemed to enjoy this idea, the other teachers had some interesting versions as well, though.

Afterwards, Nick drew a map on the board. For about 5 minutes we had to prompt him different cities to put down on this map starting from Tbilisi, finishing with Cambridge. After that, he told us a situation when we had to go to Cambridge using any transport except a plane. First, he limited the time to two weeks, but then he minimised it to 1 week. We, the pairs came up with the plan of travelling to our destination and then compared it with another team. After finishing the discussion, it appeared that what we had done was actually a model for lesson planning with the main aim, starting point, stages, stage aims, and subsidiary aims.

We also thought about anticipated problems and solutions. 

As I mentioned, after the lunch break the time for my 40-minute lesson came and I was thrilled, a bit shocked, stiff but trying to calm myself down. Then again, when I stood in front of the class, every single person including the teachers and trainer seemed to be students to me and after 5 minutes I became more confident. Everything went well. I did a reading lesson, I received my assessment at the feedback session and I felt even more relieved. Although there are some things to work on, still Nick wrote that was a very good start to the course (I hope I do not spoil it later on)

During the feedback session, we had to analyse the good and bad points of the lesson , like pair and group work, STT, instructions, time, board work etc. We were given the next material to work on and I still did not do anything, will start having a panic attack tomorrow late at night, when there are a few hours left before the deadline.

CELTA. Day 1

Today is Monday.
The second day of February.
The first day of my CELTA training course.
I did not really expect that it would be so emotionally overwhelming because I felt as if my heart would jump out of my chest it was pounding so hard at times.
And yes, despite having 9-year experience, I felt as if I was a 15-year-old random teenager girl standing in front of about 20 "examiners" and answering an exam ticket with thrill and fear.

Due to the fact that I do not trust my long-expired memory and as well as that I usually make so many notes that after some time it is almost impossible to go through them and find even a single useful piece of advice, I decided to force myself be very consistent this time and create a post about each day of my 20-day experience as a CELTA trainee.

Well, it is time to start talking about today obviously. I hope you don't mind if I add some additional info as I am a narrator and I can't just talk about pure facts without some introduction (anyway, you can find factual information with the help of Google so if you were searching for THAT, you would probably not visit this blog, right?)


I knew that arrival time today was 8.45. Due to my other work, I had to wake up at 6.00am sharp to do some translations, upload them on the website, finalise some things and then get ready for the first day. I felt neither worried, nor anticipating something a lot, it was as if I was going to another training. As usual, I was on the location just on time and had to wait for some others, while the rest of the class had already found their seats when I arrived.

The first session was delivered by Manana and Nick, two trainers of ours. They introduced us to some basic things. We had to review our workbook CELTA 5 and then go around the room, find the papers pasted on the wall and answer basic questions about the course, such as how many lessons we need to conduct overall, whether we can take workbooks at home, where to find lessons plans and so on and so forth.

Afterwards, we had a 15 (actually it was minimised to 10) minutes break after which Nick already gave the session himself. It appeared that our group of 12 female teachers had to be divided into two parts, one being TP1 and another - TP2 and after that something even more terrible happened - I found that I was A student out of A to F, which means that I will have to deliver my first 40-minute lesson tomorrow, being a pioneer from my group which scared all the guts out of me, but I am trying to deal with it as an adult and not let the fear overtake my mind and body (because usually, when I am terrified, not only I become nervous and stressed out, but my body becomes stiff as well). All in all, 6 lessons should be conducted, some being 40 and others 60 minutes long (although I have been doing 2-hour lessons for the past years, now 1 hour seems to be so long I can barely think about what activities I might do to engage all the students and to make the lesson fun and entertaining at the same time).


Anyway, back to Nick's session. In the first part, he made us write sentences on two separate pieces of paper and just through them in the middle of the room. These sentences included some interesting facts from our life. Afterwards, we had to pick the papers one by one and by mingling had to find its owner, which was quite fun. Found out that one teacher was in Egypt and saw the pyramids, another one could bake delicious cakes while yet another one was fond of Japanese food.

After that, Nick told us that he would dedicate the rest of the session to teaching us a foreign language. First, we had to do a short activity as he told us to close our eyes and imagine we were in somewhere in a field, in a village, at the same time we could listen to some Asian music coming out of the speakers. I personally saw myself in Chile, somewhere near Machu Picchu, but finally it appeared that Vietnam was the place he had in mind.

Later, he did some drilling with some Vietnamese words, greetings, introducing yourself, saying your nationality and so on. First we repeated the phrases several times, then we answered Nick's questions and then mingled and asked the same to each other. Finally, we had a written task where we had to already write down all those words and expressions. To say the truth, I liked how this language is pronounced but at the same time I accepted that I am absolutely hopeless at learning it (or maybe any other language at this age as I am not young enough to acquire new information easily..neither am I old..ok, maybe it is all about being motivated enough, whatever).

As the session finished, we had a lunch break. Although I had taken my cottage cheese and my spoon with me, I realised that I would not be capable of taking even one gram of it, so I just drank coffee..lots of coffee...and even more...in my group we also made some planning of our first collaborative lesson which should have taken place after Nick delivered one hour of his class. His class mainly focused on asking questions and pronunciation drilling, which is really crucial with English language learners and although I found this process very lengthy as an observer, the learners definitely enjoyed it...and then..the time came..time when we, the six of us had to introduce ourselves and be left one-to-one with the group (Nick left us on our own today)..I had the "luck" to introduce the first task and I can admit that my knees were shaking, shivers were running down my spine and I seemed to be forgetting everything I had ever known, including my name or how to spell it..It was probably worse than getting an injection which was my primal fear since early childhood.. anyway, what I did with them was activity with numbers. I wrote 5 numbers on the board, the ones which are somehow related with my life and they had to guess what these numbers meant for me. Then, the students themselves had to come up with 3 numbers of their own and in pairs undergo the same process again. Next 20 minutes were dedicated to story-writing which I proposed again. We gave the class beginning of the story and they could finish it the way they wanted. After that, interview time came. There were 13 in the classroom today, 6 teachers, practically everybody got a pair + 1 trio and we asked them the questions given to us by Manana and Nick to find out a bit more about the needs of each student.


Then again 30 minutes break followed. It was very timely obviously because as I noticed and understood afterwards everybody was very nervous about this whole thing..We drank more coffee and finally went to lesson planning. As I had mentioned in the beginning, I am the one who has to conduct the first part of 2-hour lesson tomorrow, the first 40 minutes. I have to deal with Speaking/Reading with more emphasis on reading. I am freaking out about it, I have not even started making a plan (an official lesson plan is not required this week at least, but I want to make a draft for myself) and I just do not have any idea about what to do.

Hopefully, I will use the night ahead to organise my ideas in a more logical way.

I would be more than happy to see some comments below this post so feel free to ask anything, share your experience etc.


and of course, wish me good luck ! 

:)