Facultad CIencias de la Educación
María Ignacia Aguilar Haase Teacher’s Name: Eduardo Yeager Major: English Teaching
1st week: August 11th – August 13th During my first week of teaching practice experience, the first day I was told that I would work with 9th and 10th graders, but I would focus my work on 10th graders. Then, I had the chance to get to know the students and observe a few classes, considering that it was the school’s anniversary week, so students had only one or two classes a day. The first thing I noticed was that my guide teacher has established a routine, before starting the class, which consists of saying “Good morning/ Good afternoon” to them, then asking them “How are you today?” and “What time is it?”. After that, she chooses one student, at random and she asks several questions to that student. The questions are related to personal information, for example: “What’s your full name?”, “How old are you?”, “Do you have brothers or sisters?”, among others. I like the routine, because is a good way to incorporate the Communicative Approach in the classroom, especially considering that 9th and 10th graders have a mixed level of English. Since I was mainly observing, my contribution to the class was limited to help 10th graders students to study and practice for their oral test they were having the following week, about asking and answering questions using present perfect and past continuous. 2nd week: August 17th – August 20th During this week, 10th graders students had their oral test. They had their test in pairs so, meanwhile a couple was taking their test, I was in charge of practicing with the students and helping the rest of the class. The same week, 9th graders were having written tests about irregular verbs in past tense, so I was in charge of monitoring students, in order to avoid them to try to copy their classmates. In addition, I was also in charge of watching out their behavior during the test. During this process, I noticed that my guide teacher gives instructions and answers questions only at the beginning of the lesson, before starting the test. She explains things twice, in both English and Spanish. Then, during the test, students are not allowed to ask anything, unless it is related to instructions. I quite like this method, since it forces students to pay attention to the instructions and be more autonomous while taking written tests. It is something I would consider doing in the future. 3rd week: August 24th – August 27th This week students started the third unit of their course book, which was related to “Arts and Entertainment”. With the course book, students worked on some reading activities, and they were also given some vocabulary related to the topic of the unit, which they had to translate. The following week, students are supposed to have a written test about the vocab. During this week, I was asked to be in charge of checking the reading activities from the book, while my guide teacher was finishing taking oral tests. I checked the activities by using a PPT, as I was requested. I tried to make students participate in the correction of their answers, by checking activities on the board and calling some students to go to the front. I tried also to make them read and justify their answers, by identifying the information needed to answer each
question. The idea was to make them improve their reading comprehension skills, since they seem to have several problems with that. With respect to my performance during those classes, I would say I did not control the class properly, since with some groups I had students misbehaving and not working on the correction of their activities. I need to work on my classroom management techniques. 4th week: August 31st – September 3rd During this week 10th graders had their written tests about the vocabulary they worked with on previous lessons. The test consisted on first a dictation part, where students were told words that were part of the vocabulary they had to translate. They had to write the words in both English and Spanish. The second part was a listening part that contained three exercises. They were shown three pictures and they had to circle the correct answer, according to the information they listened to. Each picture represented a concept and they were dictated the definition of each concept. This item of the text was done by using adapted material, since I was asked to read the sentences. The final part of the test consisted on multiple - choice exercises, where they had to match the definitions with the corresponding word. The test, which was created by my guide teacher, was based only on the vocabulary seen on previous classes, but assessed in different ways. I would say it was well constructed, since it was designed to assess students’ knowledge of the vocabulary, but I would have added an item where students could have produced language, like writing some sentences, including given words. 5th week: September 7th – September 10th This week I was not in charge of doing classes, until my Supervision class, which was evaluated with 9th grade A. Meanwhile, 10th graders were introduced some translation techniques that they will have to use to start working on the first part of their interdisciplinary project. The class I was asked to do was based on pronunciation practice, in order to improve their speaking skills, as preparation for their oral presentation (interdisciplinary project), by teaching them some phonetics symbols. I started the class by showing students a video with a song and its lyrics, that contained some sounds I was about to teach them. After listening to the song, I wrote some words on the board and asked them to read each one and repeat the pronunciation. Then, I showed them a PPT with the phonetic symbols and examples of words that contained each sound. I asked them to repeat the words several times, in order to make sure they were getting the pronunciation. Next, I gave them a worksheet and I asked them to work in pairs, reading some short dialogues, to practice their pronunciation. When time was up, I asked some couples to go to the front and read the dialogues in front of the class. I used students’ common mistakes to give a general feedback, by making the whole class read and repeat certain sentences of the dialogues. Finally, using the same worksheet, I made them classify words, in a chart, according to their sounds. I checked the activity on the board and I made them read and repeat al the words. With respect to my performance during the lesson, I would say it was good, since I had less difficulties controlling the class, despite being working with a large class. In addition, I achieved the class’ aim, since I realized students got the pronunciation of the sounds I showed them and they
recognized them. Even though I worked properly with that group, I still need to improve my classroom management techniques, especially when I want students to be in silence. 6th week: September 14th – September 16th This week 10th graders started with the first part of their Interdisciplinary project, which consists on a short movie. This part of the project consists on the translation of their scripts they wrote on the Language class. Students will be working on this process for two weeks. In order to work on their translations, students were sent to the English laboratory and they were allowed to use online translators or dictionaries to work, taking into consideration the translation techniques they were shown the previous week. The idea of working at school is to assess their class’ work, especially to make sure they are all working collaboratively and also avoid giving them homework. On this part of the process, with my guide teacher, we were working only as facilitators. What I liked the most about this project is that students are starting to work on their own, which leads to the development of their autonomy. Something really important for their future. 7th week: September 21st – September 24th During this week, 10th graders continued working on their scripts translations. As the previous week, students were sent to the English laboratory to work on their interdisciplinary project. This week students are supposed to finish with their script’s translations, in order to hand in both Spanish and English versions to make the corrections. My guide teacher and I are still facilitators on this process, since we only have to make sure if they are actually working and if they are taking into consideration the techniques they were told they should use. In brief, we were only monitoring their work. From this process I would like to highlight students’ attitude towards the activity. Most of them are taking this project pretty serious, since it is their chance of getting better marks on the subject. In addition, the project is their instance to actually apply language and work on something different from the traditional way to learn English. Students seem to be really engage to the activity. 8th week: September 28th – October 1st This week started with their second part of their interdisciplinary project, which consists on the pronunciation practice. For this stage of their project, I was asked to teach them pronunciation, taking into consideration what I did with 9 th graders. My guide teacher asked me to do the same class, but adding two more sounds and instead of making them read and practice dialogues, I had to do something else. So, taking into consideration what my guide teacher asked me to do, I replace that part of the class with a game. After making students classify a list of words according to their sound and then read and repeat them several times, I asked them to form eight groups. After that, I gave each group one flashcard with a phonetic symbol. The activity consisted of making them stand up whenever I said a word that contained
the sound they were given. I counted each group’s score, since they were discounted one point if they did not stand up when I read a word with the sound they had. With that final activity, I noticed students had fun and they were all engage on it, since they were all worried about losing points. Despite having done activities that seemed to be interesting to my students, I would have liked to have done something where they could actually produce language, since that is the idea of practicing pronunciation, but I have to follow rules and instructions and I did what I was asked to. 9th week: October 5th – October 8th This week students were sent to the English laboratory, in order to continue practicing their pronunciation, by using online translators or dictionaries. After giving them enough time to practice and monitoring their work, thirty minutes before ending the class, with my guide teacher we went to talk to each group and we asked them to read the dialogues of their scripts for their interdisciplinary project, in order to check their pronunciation. The idea was to give them feedback about their future performance. What I noticed while checking their pronunciation was that some of them were actually taking into consideration what I had taught them the previous week, since they remembered some sounds and they were trying to reproduce them. In addition, now they realized what the symbols they saw on online dictionaries represented. It was good to see that students learnt something they considered important. 10th week: October 13th – October 15th During this week 10th grade students practiced for their listening comprehension test, which they will take the following week. The test was supposed to be based on two songs: “You are so beautiful” by Joe Cocker and “I want to break free” by Queen. The activities students developed with the songs consisted on first listening to the song and then telling the general idea of it. Then, they listened to the song twice, in order to fill in the gaps and cross out the wrong words. After that, they had to sing the songs. The main objectives of the activities were to identify vocabulary and improve their listening skills, by identifying specific information and listening for gist. What I considered important about the activities students developed was the interest they arouse in students, since they really engaged in them. If I had to work with something similar, I would have probably developed the activities in that way. 11th week: October 19th – October 22nd This week 10th graders had their listening comprehension test. The test had exactly the same exercises they practiced in classes. First, with the song “You are so beautiful” by Joe Cocker, students had to fill in the missing words. In order to do that, students listened to the song twice. Then, with the song “I want to break free” by Queen, students had to cross out the wrong words. To do this item, students listened to the song twice too. The last part of the test consisted on the translation of 3 words,
related to the songs. The vocabulary was already practiced the week before. The way the test was done was quite simple, but it was good enough to assess what they practiced previously. 12th week: October 26th – October 29th During this week I had my second supervision class. My class was done with the same grade I was supervises with previously: 9 th grade A. The class was based on reading comprehension activities. First, I showed them a video with the sinking scene of the movie Titanic and then I asked students to share their opinions about what they had seen. After that, I told them that it was the topic of the lesson and of the text they were about to read. Continuing with the class, I presented some key vocabulary that would help them to understand the text. I showed them the words with pictures and students had to guess the meaning in Spanish. After presenting the vocabulary, I gave them a handout with the text and the activities they had to develop. I read the instructions with them and then they had to work on the reading comprehension questions they were given. Once they finished, I checked the answers with them on the board. I consider the class was good, at least I was able to do everything I had planned. I think this time I paid attention to aspects I had not considered during my first supervision, as working with and being aware of students at the back. One think I should have taken into consideration was to make them work proactively by making them work controlling the pace for each item. Despite not doing it, I think I achieved the aim of the class, which was to make them “Identify general and specific information from a text, in order to complete some tasks and work on the improvement of their reading comprehension skills”. Working on students’ proactivity is something I need to take into consideration for future lessons. 13th week: November 3rd – November 5th This week I was in charge of the classes. 10th graders started a new unit, which was unit 4: “How about working?”. This unit talked about voluntary work and the use of modal verbs as part of the contents. The way I presented the unit was by first introducing the grammatical content with examples of the use of each modal verb (Must, Have to, Can and Should). Then, I introduced some vocabulary that appear on the unit and that would help them to develop the activities. Whenever I introduce new vocabulary, I make them guess the meaning of the words because I think it is better for them to discover it by themselves rather than make them get used to be given everything. After that, students were asked to work on some activities that appeared on their course book. Once they finished, I checked the answers on the board. I guess I should have controlled the pace again, since it took me two classes to finish checking all the answers.
14th week: November 9th – November 12th This week both 9th and 10th graders did reading comprehension exercises. The text that were used were taken from the course book. I was not in charge of the classes, but I had to check the activities by using a PPT. The idea for me was to make students participate actively in the correction of the answers by choosing students at random to read the questions and some other to answer. I tried to be just a moderator during the activity, which I think is good since it allows students to take an active part of their learning process. I would say it was a good method, since it made the correction a bit more dynamic and it forced students to pay attention to what was being done, since they were being called at random. At least it worked with some of the groups I worked with, since I had some troubles with some others. 15th week: November 16th – November 19th During this week students went to the English lab to work on some online exercises as a review for their synthesis test. They worked on units related to the use of “used to and didn’t use to” to talk about past habits. Also on units about the use of present perfect, reported speech, linking words, modal verbs and reading comprehension exercises. The idea of was to give students a last chance of asking questions about the contents of the test they were about to take. I noticed that some students really worked on the tasks and asked several questions related to the contents. There were also some others that simply did nothing because they said that did not understand anything, since they did not study throughout the semester, so they would not memorize information in one day. From my point of view, students should have used their time properly to study. 16th week: November 22nd – November 26th This week students started to be evaluated in all their subjects, since they took theirs synthesis tests. Because of this process, students had special activities. Students were allowed to study for their tests during classes. With respect to the English one, they had the chance to make a review. After taking their synthesis test, students were sent to the English lab, in order to watch their short films, which were their final product of their interdisciplinary project. The idea of it was to give students the chance of having a look at their classmates’ works and make comments upon them. Most of them enjoyed the activity, except for those that did not want their videos to be played in front of the class. Students had the freedom to make comments about what they had seen: things that they liked, what they considered were aspects that needed to be improved, and so on. I think it was a good opportunity for them to develop critical thinking and their capacity to give opinions constructively.
17th week: December 1st – December 3rd During my last week of this practicum experience, students were sent to the English lab to do Listening exercises. The purpose of it was to work on the improvement of their auditory receptive skill. In additions, was thought to be an easy task, taking into consideration that students did not want to work at this period of the year. It was kind of difficult to make them work, since they know they are about to finish the semester and they are not getting marks anymore. . Considering the situation I described before, I noticed that some students used their time to play online games, to watch videos on YouTube, among other things that were not what they were told. Despite the difficulties we faced with my guide teacher during this week in terms of teaching, I would say that we were able to end up with this period successfully.