Reflection 11

University of Puerto Rico in Humacao English Department Shirlenne Peralta 842-07-6270 Practice Teaching Practice Supervisor- Dr. Nilsa Lugo

REFLECTION #11 October 27-31, 2014 It is the end of the month of October, and though my rowdy students are still rowdy, I have seen an improvement in their academic skills. Also, I feel more connected to my students, because I’ve gotten to know them better. One of the things that has amazed me these past few weeks is how a few of my students have an art to lie! I never imagined a 3rd grader lying straight to my face and that I didn’t notice, but I’ve been fooled too many times! This week I have improved my lie detector with my students. Every time one comes with the excuse, I left my notebook, I send them back to the classroom with one of my practice teacher colleagues and voila! The notebook magically appears! I think they are now doing it less and see that they cannot fool me with that one anymore and are bringing their notebooks to class.

I gave my students their second test on Unit 3.2 Immigration. It was about the story we had been discussing for a long time now. My students did much better now than in the first test.

They demonstrated that they were learning and acquiring the skills I was teaching them. The downside is, that though my students did better on the second test, their grades did not boost up as expected because of the fact that the majority of the students do not hand in their homework, which was for points. The measure I will be taking from now on is that the majority of work that is going to be for points or grades, will be done inside the classroom, except for some special cases.

Another improvement I have noticed is their willingness to speak English. At the beginning of the semester, my students were very shy when it came to speaking their second

University of Puerto Rico in Humacao English Department Shirlenne Peralta 842-07-6270 Practice Teaching Practice Supervisor- Dr. Nilsa Lugo

language. I have adapted a few strategies to encourage speaking in English such as the star track and the most recent one, the morning message. I bought a Christmas decorated mailbox. I am certain that the students will want to participate and see what’s inside the mailbox to read. I also see students who didn’t participate much in class raise their hands and want to read everything, even when I don’t call on them to read. It’s pretty exciting for me to see that, and at the same time overwhelming, because they have so much energy stored up and so little patience, the rest of the groups at times lay back and let the eager ones to answer. This is the time where I have to try and calm down the hyper ones and I call on those who haven’t participated to give everyone a chance.

The changes I made will be running next week, such as the work in classroom for points and the mailbox. One thing I did not mention is a reading Journal. I will ask the students to bring a pocket folder with their names on it. That way, I can keep track of all of the work they hand in based on the stories we will read this month easier, and if one smart student left his or her notebook, the papers that they copy in can be stored in this folder as well. I am confident that these changes will work but I will have to confirm it next week.