My second practice and observation week was from December 13th, 2010 to December 17th, 2010. I went to “Centro Escolar Niños Héroes de Chapultepec” High School, and I stayed at the school all the mornings of the week. This is my Permission Sheet:
The planning of the class*
In this second week, my work was to prepare just three classes, so the topics assigned to me by the teacher were “Singular and Plural” and “The Present Continuous Tense”. Here is the planning of my classes.
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| Singular and Plural Class |
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| Singular and Plural Class |
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| Present Continuous first Class |
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| Present Continuous Second Class |
The material*
*Singular and Plural Class
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| "Tik tok" song and rules of Plural |
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| "The Ghost Catcher" (frangment of a text for identify plurals) |
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| Picture of The Simpsons (the students should describe it by using singular and plural) |
*Present Continuous (first class)
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| One of the flashcards of actions in progress |
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| "Is Sammy home?" text, for identify actions in progress |
My Classes*
*My class of Singular and Plural
My first class was on December 15th, 2010, with the 1° “A” group, which had around 45 students.
I started my class by introducing myself and talking about the purpose of the class. Then I started with my first activity, that was to listen to the song of Kesha and identify the plurals, this activity was quicker than I thought. Then I continued with the class, I gave a fragment of a ghosts tale to the students, for they found the plurals and classify them in different groups according to the endings. This activity took more time from the expected and I didn´t realized about the time. Then I passed to the next activity, the students should describe a drawing, by using the singular and plural forms; this activity had good results. But I didn´t have enough time for my last activity, so the students couldn´t do it.
At this practice I realized how difficult is to work with big groups, because the teacher should pay attention to a lot of things, like the students pay attention to the class or they really do the work. This practice was so different from the first one because I didn´t involve very much with the students, there were a lot of students and I think that make me feel less confident that in my first class.
I think it was a good group, they were students who have more knowledge about English, so they participated very much, they were interested in the class and they followed the instructions. But I think my mistake in this class was that in the “classify” activity I forgot myself about the time, so I spend a lot of time in this activity and this brought me two consequences: the first one is that maybe students got a little bit bored, and the second one is that I couldn´t complete my last activity.
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| Results of the work sheets |
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| Description of the picture |
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| Results of the "clasify" activity |
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| Description of the picture |
*My Class of “Present Continuous Tense”
This class was on December 16th, 2010. I started my class by explaining the objective of the topic of the day. Then I showed a Power Point Presentation with the flashcards of actions in progress; at the same time I described the actions in the flashcards. At the beginning of the class I was a little nervous. Then I showed to the students the video with some actions in progress and they respond a sheet of paper for identify such actions. Finally students worked in teams and played to guess and write on the board what their classmates were drawing.
I liked more this class than the past one, because I think this class was more fun for them, they participate very well to, especially at the game activity, I really liked this part because most of them were paying attention and wanted to participate, I think they liked this part to.
In this class I finished all the activities and I think the topic was clear for the students, because they had good results in the “Is Sammy home?” activity, also, when some of them wrote on the board what their classmates were drawing, most of them wrote well structured sentences.
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| "Is Sammy home?" text, answered by students |
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| "Is Sammy home?" text, completed by students |
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| Notes of the students, about the topic |
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| Notes of the students about the topic |
*My Second Class of “Present Continuous Tense”
My class was supposed to be on December 17th, 2010, but students had their Christmas party, so I couldn´t practice that day.
My conclusion*
After this practice week I realized that is very different to teach a small group than to a big one. We, as teachers, should pay attention to a lot of things (like I said before) and develop a lot of patience, because a lot of children make a questions, and sometimes a lot of them want our attention, so we should be able to listen to everyone and try to solve as much doubts as we can.
Also I realized that to respect the time in the planning is important for we could finish all the activities we have planned, and for make an interesting and active class for students.
But again, I think practices and observations would be more useful if we could go to the schools in regular periods of time, not in periods of time close to holydays or during evaluation periods, because it would be more useful for us, to observe the regular classes of the teachers.
I liked to visit this school too because I could know different kinds of students, different ways of organize a school, different kinds of teachers, and different perspectives of the teaching of English.
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