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.

Journal II, Second Class

“Every day is a new opportunity for gaining new experiences in the teaching field for the rest of our lives.”

This was my second experience of teaching at Intermediate English I and I consider that things went much better than the previous week.

There were many things that went well during my second class. Actually I can say that practically all things went well. The warm up activity was very interesting because all the students were participating and were practicing the grammar structure they had studied the previous week. I consider that is better if warm-ups activities are connected with the previous topic students have studied or the topic the teacher is going to develop in the class because in this way we help our students to practice what they have learned previously and we also introduce them to the new topic they are going to study.

The activities we developed all through the class went well. There was a particular activity in which the students had to choose a famous person and think about some questions they would like to ask these people if they were alive. Some of these famous people were for example Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa, Celia Cruz, etc. It was very interesting to observe how the students formulated the sentences using the simple past tense. One of the students for example, said that if Albert Einstein were alive, he would like to ask him why he invented the relativity theory. The students made interesting questions, and the best of all was that they were using the correct structure.

I know that there are many things I still need to improve, but I feel satisfied with the work I’ve done until this day. I know that I still have to look for a way to make all the students get involved in every single activity. I know they have problems with this aspect, but I will try to do all I can to help them to improve these aspects. At the end I will help not only my students, but myself too.

Journal I, Second period

Every day is a nice chance to learn all the new things that life bring to us through different experiences.

This was my first week at Intermediate English I, and I consider that I began my new challenge for this period. I like my new group because I was with them last semester; however this group presented me the greatest challenge for me during my practicum. I started to think about the strategies I will use in order to make all the students to speak because they do not like to speak and this makes more difficult my class.

There are many things that went well during my first class. The warm up activity for example was very appropriate for the topic students were developing during the previous classes.

Another thing that went well too was the classroom management because I asked the students to work in pairs, in groups, and I also asked them to develop a face to face reading. As there is not a perfect teacher, neither a perfect lesson plan, my first class was not perfect and I had to face some situations that made my first class not so good. Something that was hard for me was the grammar part. I received some comments about this part not because I couldn’t explain, but because according to my tutor teacher we have to look for a way in which students speak more than the teacher in grammar explanation. Of course that this is not an easy task, but I will try. I know that my second class will be better than this class, but I am happy to know that I got a new experience today.

Next period

What will bring us the next period???