Practicum III.

I am back again! I continue writing here explaining my impressions and experiences in the school (Practicum III).

First impression when I were welcomed at school:
"Light from the outside, corridors and the classrooms are big enough".

Three sentences on each of the weeks:
1. "How difficult is when you have to teach in different grades".
2. "How to integrate families and school: cultures, habits, ways of doing things...".
3. "Punishment, going out of class, notes in the agenda, visits to the headmaster".

Interesting initiatives:
"Breakfast in the cllassroom, classroom routines (starting with the date and the weather)".

The little ant!

Once a teacher told me that I was like a little ant. She told me that because when I was little I was always working. Not too fast, not too slow, but constantly working. This is the idea of what being a teacher is: a person who  is always looking for new things to improve the way he/she teaches.

I thought that the last entry of this blog (by the moment) has to be focused on the future. To do that I must review all I have learnt until now. After doing this course, I have discovered new ways of teaching taking into account the learning styles and multiple intelligences (didactics), how to lay out a class (classroom management), what tools can be used (ICT and others) and what/when/how I can assess my students.

This has been just a brief explanation about what I have learnt and worked on during the course. I’m sure that when I’ll be teaching, I’ll come back to the ideas I have written in this blog to get inspiration. In general, I consider that I have improved in some many aspects and that my picture of the block explains my process of becoming the teacher I want to be.

My PLE and the CLIL...connecting!

These tasks (PLE and CLIL) have been very useful because they have been done very different. Let's see it!

The PLE has been an individual work. I have had to look for my interests, my preferences and my ways to be updated in my day-a-day life but also as a teacher. Symbaloo was new for me. If I had to choose my favorite discover, it must be the Glogster. I’m sure that I will use it in class with my future pupils.

And what can I say about the CLIL? It was a group work and it makes that every member of the group is offering something unknown for the others. And this is always positive. It is not easy to connect two subjects but this is the way I would like to teach. Outside the walls of the school, children learn things connecting them, not separately. That’s why they would find difficult using English while learning different subjects.

Last entry...

Ways of assessing.

When we talk in class about assessment I first thought that we were going to do the same that we’re used to do in the major part of the subjects in University. At the beginning, the things that came up were things that I already knew. When we were the ones who had to decide the items in a rubric, the class became different. We had to choose what we considered that was needed to be evaluating in our PLE presentation. We wrote the criteria we wanted at the top of the rubric. Some examples were said to the rest of the class. We voted which one was the more adequate for us and we copied it. 

We talked about the fact that evaluation with positive and constructive language is very powerful. As teachers, we don’t want children feel disappointed or frustrated, that’s why we must decide what words and expressions are more likely to be used in class.

CLIL. What is not a CLIL?

After reading Do Coyle’s article, I want to talk about two topics that appear in the article and that I found interesting.

 

- CLIL is not teaching what students already know but in a foreign language.

The idea of CLIL goes beyond learning new vocabulary in a foreign language. It is learning some contents and skills that are from a particular subject (that is not language) through a language that is not the students’ first language.

- CLIL is not a “backdoor” language teaching or additional subject teaching.

If as teachers think that CLIL is an additional activity or subject, then students will think the same. Children that consider that a subject or a lesson is not so important lose their interest on that learning. As teachers we can evaluate differently each activity or lesson (depending on the objectives and the evaluation criteria) but that doesn’t mean that what has been taught is only complementary. Everything that is included in a lesson plan or in a project has been previously considered and accepted. We should skip that fact because that can affect on the teaching and learning process.

Little things matter!

The affective side of learning is also interesting and that is a topic that we are not used to talk about. The use of the words is as meaningful (or even more in some occasions) as the use of gestures or actions. When I think about this, what come to my head are images of a film: Les Choristes. In that film, children are used to be punished. I still remember the classic moment when the responsible of the school says that every action must have a reaction. We must understand that every child has an individual situation, background, family context, self-concept and self-esteem. Then the action and the way every kid behaves are a consequence of all those items.

 

As teachers, we can’t change their lives outside school but what we can do is that the time he/she is at school, he/she feels as good, comfortable and safe as we can. This is not an easy task because we will have lots of students (and if there’s only one English teacher for the whole school, then the number of pupils are multiplied). But we must make an effort and this effort starts from caring about how they feel and how they learn. A negative word from a teacher can hurt more than a low mark. And sticking the student favorite color sticker in his/her forehead so they can tell his/her parents he/she has done a good job it’s better than just writing a good comment in the agenda or in our block.

There are so many details that we must take into account so we make children feel encouraged to learn and to go to school.