Last Journal Third Period

“Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand.” 

Teaching has been a challenge for me every single day during this semester even when there are many things related to grammar structures or classroom management that as a student and as a former teacher I already know. Teaching will always be a challenge for me because one never knows when the students are going to be in the mood to learn. However, as a teacher is important to remember that we have to be ready to face whatever thing that may occur during the class and of course a teacher must do his/her best always.

This was my last class teaching at Intermediate English I, and I can say that there were many things that I learned from this level. One of the important things that I learned during this period was that it is important to establish a good relationship with the students because one never knows if one is going to meet with the same group again. I learned that is very important to establish a good rapport because when students feel confidence to ask and clarify their doubts they learn more.

I consider that I was a lucky girl because I had to teach grammar since my first class until the last one. I learned something really important. We don’t have to complain about teaching grammar, we have to look new ways to teach it. This last class I tried to teach grammar in a new different way. This time I had to teach adverbs of manner. There were about 10 rules, so I decided to prepare the rules with their examples. I prepared some cards with numbers from 1 to 8; the students had to explain the rule corresponding to the number of card they had chosen. I gave the students 5 minutes to read and understand the rule and to create their own example using the adverbs of manner of their rule. After the 5 minutes, the students passed to the front. They explained the rules, made the changes to the adverbs, and finally they wrote their own example. It was a nice experience because they were very focused on their task. They considered this activity very interesting and they said that they understood better.

I thank God because even when teaching to groups that come late to class, or groups that don’t like to participate is very hard, I have had good experience and I have gotten good results.

After a whole year of teaching practicum, I feel very satisfied with the work I have done and I feel happy to know that teaching is a process that never stops and that I will never do things perfectly; however, I know that every class I teach is a new chance to improve all those things that I have done wrong. I thank God for giving me the opportunity to learn new things trough this teaching experience.

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.”

Journal III, Third Period

After teaching my third class to the group of Intermediate English I, I consider that there are many things that I have improved and there are many things that have gone well till this day. I know that many things have gone well in the class; however, there are many other things that need to be improved as a teacher.

Thank God the objectives have been understood by the students and I consider that we have reached the objectives in every class. Today’s objective was about identifying the Present Perfect Tense. I didn’t know that the special gift for me during the last period of the teaching practicum was to teach grammar only. I have learned something important in this last period; a teacher doesn’t have to look for excuses for teaching grammar, but for a way to teach grammar differently.

After the warm up activity, I used a song for presenting the topic. The song was “Have you ever seen the rain?” the students had to order the slips of sentences to form the song. They all were involved. After forming the song they had the chance to sing together, and I consider that this was part they engaged and enjoyed the most because they like to sing.

As my previous classes, I had to teach grammar again, but have been using different ways for teaching grammar. In this occasion, the students were the responsible to create the grammar explanation. I provided them with the material, and they only had to stick the material on the board. It was really nice to see how the students create their own explanation. After doing this, they had to write some examples. The examples were in some envelopes. They only had to order the words to form sentences and they did it very well. The last part was about creating their own examples based on the explanation and using the verbs I provided them. By doing this, the student demonstrated me that they had understood the topic.

This was very important because all of them were involved in the activity, they enjoyed the activity and the most important aspect was the fact of practicing the language. I know that for teachers is not so easy to have all the students participating in every single activity, but I think that teachers must use strategies to make all the students participate in the activities.

This issue has not been easy for me, but I consider that what has helped me is the fact of showing confidence and enthusiasm when giving instructions. If the teacher doesn’t show enthusiasm, students won’t show enthusiasm either. Enthusiasm is a very important part of teaching.

After this class I have realized that there is a single thing that I will continue doing because this aspect will always help me in my teaching career no matter what level I teach. What I want to continue doing is keeping the enthusiasm in the class because this will help me as teacher to encourage myself to do things that I don’t like and enthusiasm will also help me to encourage my students to feel confident and to do things no matter if they make mistakes or not.

I have to remember that “The truth teacher is the one that teaches from the bottom of his/her heart.”

Journal II ....last period

Being a good teacher is something that takes time. Teaching is not theory, but practice. This was my second class in the group of Intermediate English I and I think that many things went well during the second class and these things helped me to feel good and at the same time those things made my students to practice grammar structures too.

During my second class I taught grammar again. I know that to teach grammar is something not so easy, but I have nothing to complain about because even when teaching grammar is difficult, a teacher has to do his/her best by trying different strategies when teaching this part of the lesson. I have been using different ways to teach grammar and I considered that they have worked until this day. The topic was about prepositions of place and I had to explain the uses of three basic prepositions of place and a huge list of other prepositions. In order to make this part interesting, I prepared the prepositions of place, the explanation, and the example in slips of paper. I asked the students to help me to read the uses and to stick the examples, but I did something else. I selected a part of the board for the students to write their original examples. This helped them to understand better. After this activity, the following part was to read or to explain the other list of about 30 or 40 prepositions of place. What I did was that I told the students that they were going to develop the other part of grammar. I divided the students in four groups and I gave them a piece of paper, a list of 10 prepositions, and an envelope containing the meanings of the prepositions of place. With this material they had to create their own chart with prepositions of place, meaning and original example. This was an interesting activity because all of the students were very concentrated in what they were doing and all of them were very involved in the class. After 10 or 15 minutes I gave them the opportunity to use their handout. They didn’t notice that what they were doing was in their handout. This was a nice experience. The students worked together. They worked by themselves. They read what they did, and I was there to help them to construct their own knowledge. We applied constructivism and I consider it really worked. This was a very nice class. The tutor teacher was happy to see how the students worked and she was glad to see that even the shy students were very involved in the class.

Sometimes we don’t want to teach grammar, but I guess it’s time to look for new strategies and challenge our students to learn by themselves. We are in the classroom just as a guide for our students. This is our job, to make our students learn by themselves.

Journal I last period

“In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work.  It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.”  ~Jacques Barzun

Being in Intermediate English  I has been a nice experience to me because I have had the experience to teach different levels and I have confirmed that every level requires a different attention and it also requires different ways to apply strategies according to the students and according to the activity that the teacher is going to develop.

During my first class I had the opportunity to start the lesson plan and of course I had to teach grammar. I can say that during this first class, almost all things have gone well. Objectives have been reached, activities have worked, the classroom management and the rapport have been good, and many other things have worked well. The warm up activity was an activity that the students enjoyed very much. Also the grammar part was not too difficult. The students helped me to develop the grammar part. I gave them the uses and the examples in slips of paper and they helped me to explain and to give the examples too.

Even though many things went well during the first class, there is something that I consider students and teachers still need to improve regarding with time. Sometimes it is very hard to start the class with few students and this group has the peculiar characteristic of coming late to the class. However, I consider they will improve this aspect in order to benefit themselves. What really makes me feel happy is that through these experiences I grow as a teacher and these things help me to see what my responsibilities are as a teacher. I know that what I have to do is my best no matter what things I can face in the classroom because there will always be a sun behind the darkest cloud.

V Journal My last class

“A teacher's purpose is not to create students in his own image, but to develop students who can create their own image.”

What can I say about my last experience???

Well, I am grateful because things went well during my last experience in the level of Intermediate English I. things went well since the very beginning of the class. The warm up activity was a drill in which students had to use the future tense, the structure they were studying.

Something that I consider interesting during my last class was the presentation and the grammar part. The presentation was about a conversation students had to repeat and perform. What I did in order to make something different was the running dictation. Students had to run and read the conversation I had posted on the wall, and then dictate the sentences to the person that had taken the role of secretary. After 5 minutes, the students had the chance to read the whole conversation that I had posted on the board for them to read. The funniest part of this was that when the students saw the conversation on the board they said “It was the same conversation!!!! Teacher you are bad .After this they repeated the conversation and two pairs went to the front and acted it out. I liked the way in which the students involved in the activity. All of the students where participating, thank God. The other activity that I consider went well too was the grammar part. I divided the grammar part into rules or uses and examples. I gave the students the uses of the WILL and the examples that I had written on slips on paper. I told them that we were going to study this part and they explained when we use it and provided the examples. This was very interesting because it was not me that explained the grammar alone, but together with the students. They also provided their own examples. As I said before, things went well during my last class. And I feel satisfied with the results in this group.

I learned many things from this group. They taught me that a teacher can grow together with the students. Something that I really like is that I feel comfortable with this group, they respect me, and they see me as someone that can help them. They ask me things and treat me as a real teacher. That is something that makes me feel very well.

I am sure that there are many things that I would do again and again with other groups, but there are things that I surely wouldn’t do again.  

I thank God for giving me the opportunity to learn new things from people every day.

IV Journal

“If a child can't learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.”

Here we are sharing our experiences once again.

I’m happy to know that my fourth experience in the level of Intermediate English has been very nice. I have nothing to complain about the group, neither the tutor teacher. To be sincere, I consider that everything went well in my fourth class even when I didn’t have the tape recorder when I started the class, but everything was fine during my fourth class.

During this special class we were studying the comparatives and I consider that the students were practicing this structure in the whole class. There were two activities that I really enjoyed and the students enjoyed too. The first activity was about a conversation that contained sentences with comparatives. I played the conversation once in order for the students to be familiarized with the conversation. Then, I asked the students to form three groups. I gave the students the conversation in slips of paper because they had to order the conversation as they were listening. I played it the second time so the students could check it. Then I played it the third time for the students to repeat it. After this, they discussed about the conversation. What I really like was that they new what was the conversation about since the first time I played it. The second activity was about a song. I asked the students to form to groups. I played the song “You gotta be”. The students had to make a list of the adjectives and the comparatives the song mentioned. It was a nice activity because the students were all involved and were very attentive to the song. I’m sure that if I had to teach this lesson again, I’d do these activities again.

As I said before, I considered everything went well in this week because I reached my objectives, and the most important part: all the students were involved in every single activity thank God.

This group has taught me that teaching requires patience and consistency.

Journal III

A teacher's purpose is not to create students in his own image, but to develop students who can create their own image.  ~Author Unknown

Day after day I’m living the experience of learning from every student in my classroom. Every day God gives me the opportunity to see that we are in the classrooms not to say how things are, but to discover together.

My third experience was great; and I can say that things went very very well. I was happy at the end of the class because I felt satisfied with the work I had done and because I received good comments only. My experience in the third class was very nice. I liked the way in which students involved in every single activity because this made the class more interesting and at the same time they work together. After teaching during almost a year I have proved that to make students be involved in the activities depends on the strategies teachers choose for developing their activities. Of course that we are not always going to make the hundred per cent of students participate, but at least the major part of them will do it.

Something I really liked from my third class was the last activity we developed. Because we were talking about past actions and using the past continuous, we developed an activity in which students used this structure. The activity was about the description of a picture. The students were given a picture that they had to describe using the past continuous, but I asked the students to narrate the picture. While the narrator was saying what had happened, the rest of the students had to dramatize the action. The narrator started the activity saying for example “yesterday morning I was walking around the park when I say John riding his horse…” The student that had taken the role of John had to do the action and so on. This was a very interesting and funny activity, but the most important thing was to observe how the students used the structure we were studying.

There are many things that I would do again if I had to teach the same lesson, but I have to keep in mind that as a teacher, I had to adapt the activities according to the students’ necessities. I will never stop learning from my students and my tutors teachers because every day is a new opportunity to learn new things from every person we meet.