My Weekly Journals

Week 1

It is meaningful to remember that, since the first day of the two allowed weeks for observation, I started to get along with the students of the seventh graders. Since I stepped in the class I introduced to them and they were really interested since the beginning to get to know me. I was pretty much intimidated because of the amount of students in the classroom. The first class to teach to them was memorable, as I had never taught to a big class before. I am a teacher, I teach in a private school where the amount of students differs from a public institution. While in a private school there are allowed to be among 15 to 20 students, in a public school the maximum number is pretty much until 50. So, the reason why I was freaking out was because I was not sure whether the amount of students had a significant change in terms of teaching. So, three days before my first week of teaching for this public institution would begin I started to design my lesson plan.

The main topic to teach the students was the prepositions of time. I looked for fun and entertained games to play while the students could learn in a dynamic way. As I had observed in the previous classes with their English teacher that the classes were boring and pointless, I decided to bring joy to the whole class. At the end, students were pretty engaged with the topic and the games that I brought during the week. They said they would love if I kept the classes like that way as they enjoyed it a lot. That was the very first concurrence to get to know my students. I wanted to test them or pretty much to know whether they had learnt or not. So, on the second day of that first week I printed some exercises with the prepositions of time (on – at) just to make sure they understood. As the games took a lot of the time of the class, I had to assign that sheet of paper as homework rather than an exercise for the class. On the next day, after the class was over I picked up the homework that I had assign the day before and I took the sheets of paper home. After had checked them, I realized that most of the students had brought the homework and that they did it pretty well.

Week 2

There was one preposition of time left, as part of the design. The last preposition of time was “in”. As this preposition is very broad and it takes many topics or aspects related to time. I decided to give it a two-class-teaching. I brought my students two videos in which someone was mentioning when we use “in” as a preposition. The examples of the two videos seemed very clear to me. However, I realized that some of my students did not understand the videos. So, what I did was to report what those two people said in a way that my students could understand. When I finished giving that information, I asked my students whether they understood me or not and the answer was positive from all of them.

I think it is important to say that something relevant that I noticed in these two classes was that most of the students were not engaged with the topic, I believe it was because the students were expecting me to bring them more game but I did it because I wanted to make sure if it was true that they wanted me to teach them English through games.

The last day of this second week I decided to test them. So, I tested them. The test was about the topic of the prepositions (In – on –at). Students did it pretty good at it. 85% of the students passed the exam with a grade of 4.0. The others had a lower grade. But I understand that the development of everyone’s mind is different and it takes more time to develop or less time to develop. At the end of this week I ended up voiceless. My voice has gone and I don’t know where but I believe it was worth it because my main scope was achieved.

Week 3

For this week of teaching I designed a series of games. The main topic was verbs. So, planned on my lesson plan a list of verbs that I previously chose to teach. I wanted my students to learn the present and the past tense of those verbs. The first game that I brought to the class was the hot-verb-potato. This game is a game for learning while playing. My students were pretty engaged again with this game. After reviewing the list, the students had to say a verb in the target language (of course the verb had to be chosen from the list). If they weren’t sure of the pronunciation, then they had to do a mimic to the class and the rest of the students had to guess what the verb was. Students showed many signs of joy and excitement. At the end of this class, some of the students came close to me to tell me that they had never played a game like this before in their English classes. Accordingly, I thought that what these students wanted was to have active English classes instead of the same monotonous classes like the ones they had been having.

Another great exercise that I noticed that my students loved was the crafts class. This class was unforgettable I can tell. The second class of this past week, I decided to create some sort of communicative approach in my class. In such manner, I asked them the class before to bring a cardboard for the next day. Of course not all of the students brought the cardboard. However, I was prepared and I brought 10 cardboards for the students who had forgotten to bring it to the class. I asked the students to cut the cardboard into 12 pieces and to write a verb from the list on it. I also told them to add finishing touches to their 12 pieces of cardboard. They spent the whole class in this exercise to what I had previously assigned 30 minutes maximum but as a request from most of my students, we had to take some more minutes, which let us with no time at the end.

The next day (last class of the week) we could finally do the activity that I had planned for them before. Students had to show a piece of cardboard to another student and he or she had to say a sentence using the past simple of that verb. Students were pretty happy, engaged and entertained during the whole class. I decided to organize the class before the class was over and talk to them about this activity. I asked them whether they liked the class or not but they did, they told me they found this activity very meaningful for them because they could interact with the classmates and that was pretty significant for them as they thought that talking to others in the English language would prepared them to have a conversation with others. I ended up very enthusiastic because I knew that I was going through a good direction to guide my students in this process of teaching.

Week 4

It was not possible for me to teach during the whole week because of a strike. However, I could teach one class meaning one hour in the week. I also decided to spend at least 4 hours planning a great class for that day. As I will be teaching a new topic in the following week, I will have to be prepared and to have a variety of ways for teaching my students. I have been thinking about the class few classes with my students and I have come into the conclusion that this practicum has done such wonderful professional and personal development in me. I have realized that I can do things that I thought before that were not possible at all. I have grown in a professional aspect because I can surely say that I can accomplish professional goals and I can accomplish achievements that I never though about. I am very happy according to what I have achieved until now.

I am very happy with the process that I have been part of and I really appreciate the opportunity of teaching and allow me to do such tremendous impact in this public institution. This student-teacher practicum is an open door to know what and how it is like to be a teacher and to discover things I did not know before. I can say that I am not the same as I was before I started teaching here and that I am growing professionally and personally and that this practicum has helped me in some many ways to get to know myself and my own way of teaching successfully.

Week 5

For this week I brought my students some games for teaching irregular verbs. Students were pretty engaged in the last two classes of learning new verbs and nouns and words and we learnt a lot about us. I learnt that patience here is the key for teaching and that not the whole time students are going to keep things in order or that not all the students are going to learn at the same pace. I discovered that I have the willingness to endure under any of the last circumstances at this school. I enjoyed every time I spend teaching with the kids, they seemed pretty happy learning and discovering new things in the English language. This week was one of those weeks that we learn a lot from people and other teachers too.

Week 6

This practicum came to an end and I am pretty happy because of it. It has been hard as at the school the executives are asking for the grades and exams and everything. However, I could grade them. I know that a grade does not necessarily define a students or someone but it help measure the students knowledge and capacity to read, write, speak and listen. I was very fair and impartial. I wanted to grade my students taking into account the four communicative skills. Those grades did not grade them in a written way but I was aware enough to help them to be accounted for what they knew in the all four ways we all know.

Eight grades supported the final grade in which two grades would count for each communicative skill. We agreed on this since the beginning of the fourth term and I am really happy that none of my students failed the course. Which is something reliable and it let me know that it is important to allow the student agree on how they are going to be graded in the course. I believe I will never forget this, as I had never done this before. I have always been told to grade them in a written way but it is not going to be like that anymore. It is important to let the learners know that they matter, their knowledge matter and the ways in which they are going to be graded really matters. 

I also learnt that, it is important to set at the beginning of each class what is going to be learnt and at the end of the same class whether they learnt what was supposed to be learnt. In this way, the teacher and the students are both aware of the is going on in the class, otherwise everything is pointless. This is something I learnt from my supervisor, who has given me so many advices, tips and has told me many of his experiences of teaching and how he has handled those and how the should be handled. Anyways, I am pretty happy of what I have achieved in this educational process of teaching.  All kind of experiences are always welcomed because they always teach us something that we need to learn whether we like it or not. Thanks god, my experience was really good at this school because I taught me relevant thing that I was not aware of before.