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.
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.
What makes a good teacher?
I think that the most important thing to become a teacher is loved what you are going to do. When you start the degree in a university, since the first moment you are going to feel if you are ready for this field or not. I remembered that I couldn’t imagine becoming a teacher. But when you have the experience to share ideas, to be in a classroom and try to help students in class my mind totally change, because I noticed that the principal objective in my life was trying to help people y anyway. Also, I think that teachers should have some qualities such as responsibility, patience, respect, and tolerance.
So it is important that teenagers think about what they want to be in a future in that way probably they will love their professions, and their work become in a free time activity every day.
JOURNAL 2
It was a really difficult week. I had to much work to do with my students. The last week I was focused just on one topic, I carry out a lot of activities but at the end of the class students still felt confused about it. I felt so disappointed about my class for that reason I decided to think and look for a different idea.
I found an interesting idea that is called “Head and tail”. The objective of this class was the use of past participle, but I didn’t want just put my attention on teaching verbs I want to apply them in context. So in this activity students really used the verbs but in real situations. I immediately noticed that the main mistake that I had done was the idea of teaching verb per verb, just show them the list and work in the spelling of the word. Nowadays the teaching of English needs to be focused on the acquisition of a second language but in a contextualized way. I will never forget that anymore.
JOURNAL 1
In this week was necessary to review some topics. For that reason, I found some games in order that students could study the topics but in a didactic way rather than photocopies and study grammar. I could notice how difficult is for me try to carry out a grammar class because the topic here was “the use of conditionals”. In many times students tend to be confused so I need to think about some different strategies for implementing in the classroom. One of the strategies was the work in groups, they really enjoy talk with their classmates, so I gave them a situation where they had to use conditionals, they did a short story and after that they presented it, it was a successful activity.
If I could have the opportunity to change something about the class I would change the way I was teaching grammar, it was the most boring of the class.
