Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta pedagogical artifacts and reflections. Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta pedagogical artifacts and reflections. Mostrar todas las entradas

Teaching Stage.

20:03 | 1 comentarios


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!

Team- Teaching Stage

19:21 | 1 comentarios


TEAM -TEACHING STAGE

a) Pedagogical event nº2:

TEAM-teaching stage, right? I really don't remember any class in which were a team-teaching work. In fact, the week for that stage the teachers (both) gave me a certain activity (handout, worksheet) to teach and that's it. While the team-teaching stage's classes I was doing the class and my guide teacher was somewhere. I'm very curious to know how is that stage really, because leaving the student teacher alone in the classroom is not the idea, isn't it?.

I feel that I don't have too much information to give related with this "event". I didn't recieve any feedback from my teacher guide about my lesson plans. When I showed her my lesson plans and my didactics units, she only looked over them quickly and said "that's ok".
How could she give me any feedback if she didn't even stay with me in the classroom?

B) Reflexion nº2:" Interaction in the classroom".

The team- teaching stage for me was just a practicing in the practicum. Sounds redundant, isn't it? But it's true. As I said before, that period for me was only to practice how to teach to that class group and that's it, but I would like to have had other kind of participation like preparing handouts, checking vocabulary, even preparing whole lessons but WITH the teacher.

First of all, I would like to suggest to the supervisor teachers that the team - teaching stage has to be a bit longer ( do you think that a week is enough to know my students and my guide teacher also?), and it has to be supervised too - I don't think it is proper to supervise students only in the last month...).
Since there are some students (like me) who don't receive any feedback from their guide teachers, the supervisor teacher could give her/him a good orientation on this. Doing that, we can avoid having problems when starting the teaching stage.

So far, I haven't had bad experiences interacting with the students. But I have the impression that since you have ONLY A WEEK to "prepare" the environment to do your classes, sometimes there are some problems based on lack of communication. And that's a great problem for me, because we are working with people, and the base of human beings' relations is communication.
I have to say that more than once during my teaching stage ,I felt disavowed by my guide teacher because I gave some instruction to the students and she said the contrary. That was uncomfortable.

Observation Stage

17:59 | 1 comentarios



OBSERVATION STATE

A) Pedagogical event nº1:

It is the first day in my practicum. I enter to the classroom, the teacher (my guide teacher) introduces me to the students, I say hello to them, tell some information about me and the class starts...

I'm looking around, seeing the students' faces. Suddenly I realize that there is a student who uses deaf- aids, and something calls my attention...the teacher is talking and talking as there aren't any "special" students in the classroom. The teacher explains the contents, moving her mouth while talking very quickly, and the deaf student look at her, with a question mark in her face all the time. She doesn't understand what the teacher is talking about.....

In that moment I say to myself "I know that face, it's the very same as my sister's. All deaf people have that face....

The teacher continues talking and asks the deaf girl to read a piece of paragraph from a handout that she has given to the students. The rest of the class is in silence, the girl starts reading with difficulty, because most of the words are unknown for her (can you image how she feels?., I look at the teacher’s face…she is looking at the deaf girl with an expression in her face as feeling bored. The teacher insists on correcting every single word after the girl reads them…That’s uncomfortable. And suddenly the teacher says “ok, who else? You! Please read the next one…” or something like this, with a really contemptuous tone. It’s seems to be that she felt annoyed because the girl takes too long to read a short paragraph…

B) Reflexion nº1:

That’s what I remember about my first day in my practicum. It was in 7º grade. I can’t forget that girl’s face. Catalina is her name…

It was inevitable to think about Catalina’s face every time, because it made me recalls my sister’s face (she is deaf too) when she doesn’t understand something. It is typical in deaf people.

After that day I thought “hey, it is a sign! Catalina needs especial attention and a different teaching style and I’m here to give it to her!” Surely I can help her a lot; I’m going to make a great contribution.

To my surprise, a couple of days after that issue, my guide teacher told me that she has a deaf child so she really understands how Catalina feels…In that moment I said (to myself) “are you kidding me? You just behaved as you don’t have any idea how to deal with deaf children!”

I really couldn’t understand how a person who is a teacher and who is a mother too behave like this. That’s completely absurd. I felt deeply sad. I felt angry.

From that day I set out to help Catalina to keep away that question mark from her face. My purpose would be not only helping her to learn English but also helping her to feel integrated in the class group. I took it as a MUST. No matter how long it would takes me, no matter if the teachers get annoyed with me because of taking too long to explain contents. But my premise was, is and will be to help students to feel happy and to be better people through English, and not expecting to have human- dictionaries.

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