Teaching Stage.
TEACHING STAGE
a) Pedagogical event nº3:
I would like to comment my experience when planning the lessons during this stage. for me it was a difficult experience, because, as I said before( in the team-teaching stage's reflexion), we had too short time to know our students, so it's complicated to know how long they are going to take to learn a specific content.
More than once, I had to plan my lesson twice. I mean I made a draft of my lesson plan, and after doing each class I rewrote them with the information of what really happened in the class. Sometimes a draft could finish in 2 lesson plans...I mean what I expected to teach in one class, took me 2 instead, because I didn't have the proper information to know how many activities I could do in a class with that specific group of students.
Apart from that, there is another important issue: the attendance. When I started doing classes, in 3ºM especially, I felt dissapointed when the percent of the attendance to the class was no more than 50%. At the beginning I decided to change the whole lesson plan. So, the first unit, for example, was supposed to be covered in a month, but finally it took me a month and almost 3 weeks to finish it.
Then, with the experience I learnt that no matter how many students were in the classroom I had to teach what I expected to teach anyway. Otherwise I wouldn't finished any didactic unit...that's not my philosophy of teaching, but that's what I was forced to do, because of the reality in the Niños Cantores School.
I couldn't never know how large were my class. Sometimes I'm teaching 5 students, sometimes 20. difficult, isn't it?
b) Reflexion nº3: "Classroom control issues":
Considering all the facts that I mentioned here, the classroom control was a difficult issue for me, not in discipline terms, but in academic terms.
Since the attedance were not regular, most of the time there were a lot of students who had no idea about the activities or contents that we were talking about. So, that group of students use to interrupt the class. I had to use all my imagination to keep the attention of the students who attended classes regularly and to invite students who hadn't to participate in the class without interrumpting their partners.
Finally I get used to recap the contents, activities and so on, every single class. The good point was that this class were a very good one, I mean there were a lot of students who knew a lot of English or were willing to learn. So, dealing with them were a pleasure. It's a great pity to have had them just some days, if they have attended every class the results would be much better.
I feel a bit dissatisfied because I couldn't fight against irresponsability (I can't fight against parents, nor teachers...). But I'm happy because I helped students to overcome their fear of English. If it is not teaching, you tell me what it is!
Good!!! I also like the pictures that you have attached.