MY INTERVENTION POINT: TIME MANAGEMENT

ENTRY # 01

From this experience I learned that I need to invest more time on the regular verbs pronunciation’s explanation. And make sure the instructions are well understood before carry out any activity.

ENTRY # 3

Probably in the following lessons I could invest more time to let them get ready for dramatizations like this. 

Upon the reflection on my entries I could find that Time Management was the most remarkable difficulty that I faced in my classes and in order to overcome this specific situation is relevant to beging working  deeply on the lesson plan which is an extremely effective tool that provide me as teacher the guide and the way that I must take in order to develop my classes. Despite every class is planned there are issues that doesn’t work in the way I expect. So it is necessary to reshape the way I plan the classes in order to invest the necessary time for each activity of the class.  And to make sure that the instructions that you provide your students are clear enough in order to avoid misunderstanding that could take aditional time to develop.

All these previous assertions demand certain grade of commitment  and  awareness to improve my teaching practices and acomplished my student's goals succesfully.

 

ASSUMPTIONS

1.     

    "From this experience I learned that I need to invest more time on the regular verbs pronunciation’s explanation. And make sure the instructions are well understood before carry out any activity."

                                                        (JOURNAL  #  01 )

  

I    

I am quiet convinced that we as teachers can influence over the learner's actions and thoughts in positive or a negative way. For instance we must be very careful with the teaching we offer them. 

(MY TEACHING METAPHOR)

BELIEFS ABOUT ENGLISH

Beliefs of  English learning and teaching have a significant impact on our  practice as teachers.  Since we start as a pre-service teachers  we began to store different kind of beliefs that determine our teaching profile. For example there is a belief that younger students learn better than older ones. Probaly this is an evident fact, since children have more cognitive capabilities and faculties to learn. Otherwise I have the experience to realize that not all the times this is true. I have had the chance to work with adult learners, and they have shown in English clases that they are more interested than most of the children I work with.

And there are more several beliefs that need to be told.

JOURNAL #  3

This class was about reading from a representative character from North America culture called Johnny Appleseed. The development of this lesson was  good, in terms of organization. Although, I consider students at the very beginning were afraid to participate because of the story I brought to the class. For instance I explained some key words that were related with the character.

The next activity was the video with a short scene from this story; unfortunately the sound did not work very well so I had to ask to them to watch only in order to understand the video. Probably, I could ask some questions about the video at the end  instead to continue with the next activity a little fast.

In the power point presentation they were attentive and at the end they answered some questions related with it. Later I gave them a handout with the story of Johnny Appleseed; I designed it previously with the purpose of using regular and irregular verbs.  I was afraid because there were some verbs they did not know very well but at the end they got them.

Subsequently, I asked them to read the story in couples and answer the questions. This part of the class was workable, and I did not have any difficulty, I just monitored their process in order to provide feedback in the necessary cases.

The activity they like the most was the last one, I asked two students to read and to acted out a short scene from the story, the pronunciation wasn´t very good because they did not  have time to prepared it but the corporal performance was good. And most of them enjoyed this part too much. Probably in the following lessons I could invest more time to let them get ready for dramatizations like this.  

JOURNAL #2

This class was about simple past irregular verbs. So in the first portion of the class I began showing them characters from the Simpsons family series and explaining them the actions they did the previous day using irregular verbs. In this part I could get their attention easily because they are familiarized with this cartoon and they started participating actively. Something relevant I must mention is the fact that when I was writing the name of the verbs they gave me feedback for my spelling because in two verbs a made a mistake. For instance, it showed me that they were attentive to the activity. 

In the following activity they demonstrated their understanding of the irregular answering the questions I made, based on the power point presentation. Additionally, they understood the difference between the use of the verb in affirmative and interrogative.

In the next part of the class  they were divided into three groups in order to play a game called focus,  so there were 20 cards on the wall and behind  each there were irregular verbs in present and past, so they must looked for the couple this kind competence made them to be more attentive and engage in it. It was the activity they enjoy the most.  Something I would improve is to make emphasis in the pronunciation of the verbs in present and past that were behind the cards.

With the final activity, I was afraid because it was about writing, and they are not very skillful, although at the end they did a good job with their compositions using some useful expressions I added in the handout. At reading time, I figured out they need to practice more their pronunciation.

JOURNAL  #  01

The class was about past simple emphasizing in regular verbs, I implemented some characters from simpsons family  in order to make the class more appealing and interesting for my students. I can highlight several issues from this class such as  the fact that during the class they showed  clear understanding of the regular verbs presented in the lesson. There was a matching activity  and most of them could match  the written word with the picture. After this part I developed a hot potato activity with the song and it worked very well, since the students were very attentive.

In the pronunciation part of the regular verbs I could realized that this part needed more reinforcement and practice. I began explaining them the difference betweem (t) and (d) sounds and then we classified the verbs on the board. I  think I could invest more time working on it instead to pass to next activity.

I model the yes/no question in past  “Did you…?” and I began to ask them in order to get their answers, this part was well done; probably some of them hesitate to speak but they try it, and they got it. The purpose of this last activity was to get the students familiar with the question and short answers in order to develop an information gap activity. In this activity they had to look for a partner in order to fill the handout asking them what activities they did in the previous day and mark in the corresponding column.

From this last activity I could realized they did not understand the instructions very well. Since, once they started asking they did not use complete questions and answers, so I decided to make an intervention and clarify the instructions. As the activity kept going I monitor in the different groups in order to provide feedback if it was necessary. At the end they had to report to the class what their partners did, according to the information they collect. In this part I could notice some of them were a little nervous when I ask to them. On the other hand, I also could evidence they forgot the (t) and (d) pronunciation of the regular verbs when they report.

From this experience I learned that I need to invest more time onthe regular verbs pronunciation’s explanation. And make sure the instructions are well understood before carry out any activity.

HOW DID I BECOME AN ENGLISH TEACHER?

MY STORY BEGAN WHEN I WAS IN FIFTH GRADE. I STUDIED IN IBAGUE AND MY FIRST BRIEF EXPERIENCE WITH ENGLISH WAS PARTICULAR, SINCE MY FIRST ENGLISH TEACHER WAS BLIND.  HE ARRIVED TO THE CLASSROOM AND BEGAN TO SPEAK IN ENGLISH. PROBABLY THIS FIRST EXPERIENCE WASN´T THE MOST WONDERFUL, BUT FOR ME WAS MEANINGFUL, AND SINCE THEN I FELL IN LOVE ABOUT ENGLISH.

IN THE FOLLOWING SCHOLAR YEARS   I BECAME IN ONE OF THE MOST OUTSTANDING STUDENTS IN ENGLISH CLASSES AND MY TEACHERS RECOGNIZED THAT. NEVERTHELESS, THEY DID NOT HAVE THE APPROPIATE COMMAND AND STRATEGIES TO TEACH ENGLISH, FOR EXAMPLE I HAD A TEACHER WHO USED A TRANSLATOR DEVICE MOST OF THE TIME WHEN WE DID NOT  KNOW THE WORD IN ENGLISH  . BUT WHEN I WAS IN ELEVENTH GRADE I MET THE MOST DEDICATED ENGLISH TEACHER EVER. SHE WAS A SPANISH TEACHER, BUT SHE LOVED  TO TEACH ENGLISH AND IT WAS EVIDENT IN EACH CLASS  SHE TAUGHT TO US. FOR ME WAS VERY INSPIRATIONAL. SINCE SHE WAS VERY RESOURFUL AND PROFESSIONAL, THE MATERIAL AND THE STRATEGIES SHE USED WERE KEY FACTORS THAT LEAD ME TO DECIDE TO STUDY ENGLISH. IN THAT SENSE I CAN SAY THAT A TEACHER CAN TRANSFORM THE WAY OF THINKING OF HIS/HER STUDENTS, IT COULD BE IN A POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE WAY.  FOR ME WAS VERY POSITIVE.

WHEN I GOT TO THE UNIVERSITY I FIGURED OUT THAT SOME OF MY CLASSMATES WERE THERE BECAUSE OF HER TOO.  ON THE OTHER HAND,  IN MY ENGLISH CLASES I SHOWED  MY SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY, DEDICATION AND LOVE FOR THIS CAREER, AND WHEN I WAS IN SECOND SEMESTER ONE OF MY ENGLISH TEACHER  TRUSTED IN ME AND  SENT ME TO NORMAL SUPERIOR  HIGH SCHOOL  TO TEACH THEM. OBVIUSLY I DID NOT HAVE ANY TEACHING EXPERIENCE BUT IT HELPED A LOT TO LEARN ASPECTS SUCH AS CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND LESSON PLANING. 

  

FROM THIS, MY TEACHER REALIZED MY VOCATION TO TEACH AND HELPED TO  BE HIRED FOR A PRIVATE SCHOOL. SINCE THEN I BEGAN TO WORK AS AN ENGLISH TEACHER WITH LITTLE CHILDREN. IT WAS REALLY GREAT EXPERIENCE.

NOWADAYS I WORK IN SANTA MARIA – HUILA AND IT HAS BEEN A REALLY GOOD EXPERIENCE TO WORK THERE, SINCE THE LABOR IN THIS EDUCATIVE COMMUNITY HAS BEEN  REALLY GRATIFICANT, THE STUDENTS AND PARENTS REALLY APPRECIATE WHAT I DO. ADITIONALLY IN THIS MASTER I HAVE LEARNT SEVERAL ISSUES THAT HAVE HELPED ME IMPROVE  MY TEACHING PRACTICE.