JOURNAL #8

During those weeks, I felt so excited and nervous because we are working for ICFES test and my students will present this examen next month.  My classes tend to be full of activities, I have been working on “reading comprehension” I think that it is one of the most difficult aspects of the test. Usually I have a whole morning of class, so I try to carry out my classes in a very dynamic way otherwise my students would get boring easily, at the beginning I didn’t know what I could do to have lessons where my students enjoy reading so I found a really good strategy, “Audiobooks”. Acting is an amazing tool, I choose a book so I presented the book and they had to act every single situation in the book, in that way they enjoy the class and I evaluate the reading comprehension, they are teenagers so the activities are according to this age.

JOURNAL #7

 During this week I was so stressful because Eleventh-grade students are going to take the “Icfes” national exam, so the school is focused on just obtaining good results. I could notice that my students are thinking about it all the time, they are worried about their future, next year the majority of them are going to be at the university. For that reason, I decided to talk with the teacher and give her some suggestions, so we decided to put in stop the course programming and being focus on the national exam. Students had the opportunity to ask some questions, I carried out a complete review of some topics and also I looked for some material with multi-choice questions. I have 3 hours per class, so I have to plan a lot of activities because students tend to get boring easily, now is more difficult because we are studying a lot of grammar topics, I am using a lot of games, I am trying to have dynamic reviews.  My students are grateful and I feel that they are clarifying a lot of doubt so all my sacrifice worth it.

TEACHING IS A BIKE

Teaching is a bike, when you analyze the bike you could perceive all the aspects that take a role in this object, every part of the bike is important for its performance. The education process is the same, we need to take into account lot aspects to have successful results with our students, such as know the context where they are immersed, and their specific needs inside the classroom, the different ways to learn and so on. When a part of the bike has a failure all the bike’s performance is not going to be the better is necessary that all the parts of the bike work in a correct way, the same with the education process.

JOURNAL #6

I think that this was one of the most stressful weeks because it was the end of the term, so I had too much to do, especially with all those students who still had doubts about topics. I could say that I manage my time in a wisely way, I know that I had a lot works to being grade so I decided to have a group activity where students had the opportunity to correct some exercises with me. It was an interesting way to grade because of the participation of my students, also they asked questions about it and compare with their classmates.  In general, I would say that I have good results at the end of the term, nobody failed the subject and the most important thing, I feel that my students learn while they enjoyed the classes. I still have 3 more weeks, I will use this time to have a general review of some aspects that I consider I need to improve, for example, grammatical issues, but always in a didactic way.

JOURNAL #5

During this week I carried out some test related to the studied topics: First conditional, second conditional, third conditional, past continuous and passive voice. In this week, students have a lot of questions about it. I noticed that there was a big lack of information about this grammar topic. I thought that they already had studied this topic but, unfortunately, they did not know too much about it. For that reason, six students failed the exam. I talked with them and they told me that they needed extra work because they felt that they were back in comparison with their classmates. I felt motivated because of my students’ initiative, I think that they enjoy the classes and they want to learn and improve in English lessons.  I planned a workshop for them, I noticed how important is try to plan this kind of activities but in a different way, I mean, it was not just a workshop, they did the work in pairs and after that they compare with other classmates, finally we have a socialization with all the classroom and they have the opportunity to ask some questions and doubt about all the topics. In general, I can say that I learned that my students have really good ideas to improve every class.

JOURNAL #4

During this week I had a lot of work to do, unfortunately, there were a lot of activities in this school so I hadn’t class for 3 hours.  This is one of the problems that we are facing nowadays, all your weekends you plan classes, but during the week, you have to change your activities to make shorter your lesson in order to have time to comply at least one part of your initial idea. I felt a little bit disappointed because I had to discard many interesting activities. 

On the other hand, one of the positive aspects during this week was the 3rd intervention about the innovation plan; I noticed how I chose the best topic to work with my students. They are really motivated by this kind of activities. In this intervention, they had to make an ecological corner where they are going to share environmental news, message related to pollution, a new way to recycle and so on… I could notice that each day they are using English expressions for communicating, I am working hard in self-confidence in my classroom, I think that I am accomplishing with my principal objective inside the classroom that is trying to encourage them to discover all the English speaking skill that they have, they are amazing.

JOURNAL #3

In general, I could say that it was a good week. It was possible to carry out some projects with the students. During this week I was focus on Reading comprehension and speaking, those are the skill that the cooperator teacher suggested me improve in the classroom. For that reason, the use of short presentations was essential in order to encourage students. One important aspect that I need to be careful is the use of notes or paper during presentations, students have this habit for each presentation, so I told them that the next presentations they are not allowed to use this material otherwise they are not doing their best, they are going to read and that is not the main idea with this kind of activities.  On the other hand, I could notice that during this week my lessons plans changed totally because of other activities in the high school,  I had another topic to be introduced, but I didn’t have time to implement the complete lesson plan, the time during this week was crucial,  I tried to use time wisely.