WEEK 8. PLANNING A LESSON

Ever since I started with the educational courses at the University my teachers always pointed out the importance of lesson plans, I learned different ways to plan my lessons and I think each teacher has different “formats or patterns” to do it. I have to be honest but when it was about making lesson plans in class it was a nightmare for me, I didn’t like it at all. We had to set the topic first, then we had to develop the objectives and we had to relate each activity with the objectives, and the worst part: there was always something wrong.

But now I think it’s a matter of practice, and I know each school has its own way to plan. Even  though we spend time planning a lesson it’s very important to do it because it’s there where we have the goals to be accomplished , we cannot get to our class and improvise, we need to prepare activities, projects, exercises to help the students understand and apply the topic.

Week 7. TEACHING GOALS AND METHODS

I found this article very useful for us as English teachers, it made me think about the purpose of the language learning process which according to the reading is “the ability to communicate competently, not the ability to use the language exactly as a native speaker does”, and also how can I help my students put their ideas into words. I know it’s a long process it requires time and effort but if our students are willing to learn they will have a good command of the language. We don’t want to speak as natives but we want to say coherent and understandable sentences, since our students aren’t immerge in the language we have to provide them tools that simulate this immersion, for example teachers always have to speak in English and ask the students to speak in English too, we have to do activities in which the students can create their own dialogues and at the same time they use grammar, vocabulary they already know.

For example in my job we do improvisations, we choose a topic and a couple of students to talk for a minute or so about it. While the students are developing the situation the rest of the group is taking notes about the mistakes they can hear, at the end of the presentation the teacher ask the students to say the mistakes and the correct way to say the sentence.

I also think we should follow the 10 guidelines to make communicative teaching part of our own instructional approach that the reading suggests:

1. Provide Appropriate Input

2. Use Language in Authentic Ways

3. Provide Context

4. Design Activities with a Purpose

5. Use Task-based Activities

6. Encourage Collaboration

7. Use an Integrated Approach

8. Address Grammar Consciously

9. Adjust Feedback/Error Correction to Situation

10. Include Awareness of Cultural Aspects of Language Use

Week 6 WHAT LANGUAGE TEACHING IS

Teaching a new language is not easy and there are many methods we as teachers can use to help our students to acquire new knowledge.

One of the newest model is student-centered in which according to the reading “Language learning is a process of discovery. Learner develops ability to use the language for specific communication purposes. Teacher models language use and facilitates students’ development of language skills”. I really like this method because I have experienced boring methods from which I didn’t learn anything, for example I had a teacher that made us memorize all the theory and if you ask me if I remember a concept I would say no because I only studied for the exam, I never relate the topic with specific situations.

So the idea to let students discover new concepts and ideas by themselves and then practice activities that simulate real communication situations will make the class more interesting and enjoyable.

Since this is a new method some teachers are afraid to use it but they can find tips and books that can help them implementing this method, of course at the beginning all changes are like experiments that we don’t know if they are going to work but if we don’t try we will never know if they work or not.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

I know I haven’t written about my teaching experience since September 24^th but let me tell you I’m done with the 60 hours. The second and third week were awesome because as I said in my first entry I had one of the best groups, they are always working and participating, and they understand almost everything without any problem. I did a lot of activities to help them memorize the verbs but they didn’t memorize all, I consider it requires extra effort at home studying them and some of the studnets didn’t do it. Another aspect is that I got two new students in the middle of the module; they came from another branch so they already knew how intensa’s system works, but they were a little behind of the rest of the group, so I tried to help them during break and after class to clarify doubts. By day 12 they had the evaluation and we started module 10 which is about irregular verbs, I only stayed with them in that module for 2 days because it was time to change group (we change groups every two weeks).

This week I had another group they aren’t as a good as the other one but each group is different and I learn new things from each one. This group is in module 4, they are studying wh- questions and to be honest for some of them is very difficult to know when they have to use what, where, when so they spend a lot of time doing grammar. I had two experiences this week: we do improvisations in class; the idea is to test the current extent of the pair’s acquired language skills: grammatical accuracy, vocabulary range, pronunciation, and communicative fluency and effectiveness; since the students don’t have time to prepare the conversations they never want to participate. This week I had a student that didn’t know what to say and she started crying I was thinking if I had said something that made her cry, but then it was just that she was very nervous. The other experience was with an exercise from one of the books we use, they exercise has some questions like “Is kate young or old?” and according to the picture they have to answer, the second day of the activity we include another question to reinforced old grammar or to teach new vocabulary. So I included 2 questions “what is she like?” and “What does she look like?” I did it with 10 pictures and it took the students more than an hour trying to understand the vocabulary and pronunciation. I hope the following week they can improve their grammar problems and fluency.

WEEK 5. Bridging Classroom Practices to the Professional Development: Let’s Video-Coach, Shall We?

I think video coaching is a different way to give and receive feedback and as the reading says it lowers levels of anxiety, since many teachers don’t like to be observed this technique may work for them. Another aspect is that when we watch a video of our class we can see attitudes, or mistakes  we don’t see when we are teaching.

The text says we don’t spend a lot of time using this technique because we only have to watch chunks of the lesson, but I don’t agree with this because the teacher spends more time watching the whole lesson and selecting the parts he wants to receive feedback, so you spend less time doing the observation but not the teaching choosing the parts.