TEACHER-TRAINING COURSE
PRACTICUM RESIDENCES
BLOG-PORTFOLIO
Primary Practicum
Next chapter
to be continued in 2022
Introduction:
My first encounter with primary learners was when I was twenty-five years old, in 2015. I was living in General Roca at that time while my sister was studying at Law school and I was doing the third and fourth year at the university I started to study the teaching training course.
It was at "Youth ESL Institute" where I first started teaching very young learners English as second language. Their parents wanted their children to have a good basic level of the language because they attended public schools and I also had to prepare them for the final level test by the first weeks of December.
They got prepared for their A1 exams with the best grades, between 9 and 10. They are in this photograph that I keep as a memento of that time: (Left to right: Francisco in blue t-shirt, Joaquin in red t-shirt, Martina with the Ramones' t-shirt, Isabel, Valentina in red squared t-shirt and Triana in the middle.
This 2022, I went back to teach in the public system. Fortunately, I had two great jobs and I am still having the privilege to work in them; primary public schools 325 and 374, in San Carlos de Bariloche.
In the former, I am only working for the "Hora Más", as special teacher of English for 7th graders since 23rd March, and at School 374 since April 25 th, I work in the last one with 3rd, 6th and 7th forms.
At the beginning of October, At School 374, the principal asked us, the English team, to display an English Exposition all the content we have been teaching since the beginning of the year, children and parents were invited to come.
I was nervous because it was also the same month to start the practicum stage. All in all, the English Expo was a success, I invited parents to play the games we used to learn grammar and have a look at their sons and daughters' productions. 3rd Grade students designed houses with parts of the house, they also helped parents in the games I had prepared, such as ordering the days of the week and months, matching the pair pictures of the weather, guessing the school object, among other activities. 6th graders showed their Avatars designed in posters, characters with personal information written on white speech bubbles. For 7th graders, the Expo was more ambitious, they showed posters of cities they chose, with information about its location, weather, places in town, currency, population, government and tourist sites. I was very proud of their productions and the way they could put into use the language they have learnt in such a big project.
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This was the first assignment
that my classmate Silvana and
I had to do before starting
with our practicum residence.
We read the Diseño Curri-
cular and worked on a set
of questions in relation
to the theory, our
experiences and the Diseño
curricular
of our province.
I have already
been working and planning
lessons with the DC at work,
therefore, some parts of the assignment are based on experience and supporting arguments based
on the premises of the
curriculum.
FIRST ASSIGNMENT, PEI REPORT, DIAGNOSTIC REPORT,
LESSON PLANS AND REFLECTION
For the teaching practicum, I decided to go beyond the borders of the city and do my residence at the private school Jean Piaget. Born and raised in Bariloche, I always thought that it was a French school but its name does not have to do with teaching French. On the contrary, the founders of the school decided to call it "Jean Piaget" since they set their aims and beliefs based on Piaget's pedagogical contributions to education.
<------ This is the group report, which is based on the students' characteristics (age, linguistic, emotional, physical and social level of development).
All the information that has been recovered from this report was useful to design the lesson plans
Weekly Practicum residence ---->
In this Padlet, I have written my reflections and experiences during the ten lessons.
Each lesson is different, however, they are all interconnected through the same theme, language used and coherence of a variety of activities that reinforce the practice of skills.
Lesson Plans uploaded on Slideshare
Reflections before the practicum, during the residence, and once it was finished
WHAT DID I DO?
When I think about my practicum experience many things come to my mind.
For this second practicum, I found no difficulties to set the aims that I wanted learners to achieve by the end of each lesson because I was used to write aims for the projects and weekly plans at work. At first, I had miunderstood some of the headings, like transition comments with directed speech. For every lesson, the explanations for the scaffolding strategies were sort of similar since they were very young learners (2nd grade).
Firstly, my aim was to guide them to recognize the natural places in a new context, the one I had designed. Many of the planned activities were corrected more quickly with the helpful use of visual aids.
For this residence, I did not have much problems to think about the aims and the activities that I wanted them to carry out since I started to work more with primary students this year, therefore, having experience and creating resources was not very problematic this time.
What I was much worried about was classroom management and the way I had to deliver the instructions because they were second graders, they did not know me much apart from the assistantship and observation days. However, I noticed that I could establish a bond with them, they felt comfortable while working with me and they had the confidence to call me for help of issues not related to the lesson, like small conflicts during the midday break, for example.
HOW DID I DO IT?
Once I delivered the first two lessons, I could realize that the working experience was highly significant for me to illustrate the visuals. For most of the students, it was the first time for them to explore the vocabulary differently from what they typically used to do in every day lesson. Moreover, they were engaged in the pop-up book I had designed and they enjoyed the classes, they could also participate by naming the places. Sometimes, they expressed their ideas in their L1, I allowed them to do so but I tried to speak in L2 as much as possible, I repeated twice the language so that they could incorporate it on a daily basis.
What is more, I did my best to repeat the chunks I had observed from the teacher. Some days, they were effective, other occasions I had to use my own chants to settle them down, to keep them quiet.
It is also extremely important to be able to control the class, particularly after these two years of pandemic. That was a challenge that not only the teacher in charge had to deal with but also I as a practicum teacher. Even though she considered this group hyperactive in behaviour and noisy at times, all of them had positive willingness to learn, discover the language, and to give them the opportunity to express their ideas.
Moreover, the materials and activities that I had prepared carefully, I pictured them in my mind taking into account the characteristics of the group.
During the practicum, I paid more attention to how students could do the task during the lessons, how to give them feedback, how to revise and check understanding on the board and individually. I studied every lesson plan but I also thought over the possible arrangements in the real lesson because, sometimes, things never occur exactly like the organisation of the lesson plan. As future teachers of the language, a backup plan should be prepared as well, if there are fast-finishers, if the slow finishers need more assistance or scaffolding strategies.
WHAT CAN I DO DIFFERENTLY?
If I had the chance to redo the residence again, I would change some of the ways of how I had managed the classroom. I would change the chunks I used to keep them quiet, some of them did not work as I would have liked or imagined. Classroom management was one aspect that I am still reflecting that I could have done it better, like breathing transitions, physical response movements, Simon says. Techniques to keep them quiet or calm when doing an activity are always varied because some work effectively in one group but not in others. Given that it was almost the end of the educational period, they were also much more excited to finish English quickly, others got more engaged during the second week. All in all, they got engaged during the last lesson, playing and acting out with the menus for their Qatar project.
WHAT PLAN SHOULD I IMPLEMENT?
This was my first time working with second grade students and it was a similar challenge with the first residence because very young learners are used to incorporate the language visually through visuals, flashcards, realia and memorable and not so challenging activities. I could implement a redesigning of some activities, the checking part, by representing the same worksheet on the board with a much bigger perspective for students to revise their performance during and after the task. Besides this, I also had to adapt the worksheets by giving them some clues given that they did not have a big development in their writing skills and most of them find the fourth and fifth lessons’ worksheet about writing more challenging to solve even though I was always offering them assistance and guidance.
What I noticed different from the first residence, in comparison to this one, was that I had more tools to design and prepare. This time, I felt more secure of the aims that I wanted them to achieve by the end of each lesson. I was much concerned about the practical part of the residence this time, how children will be with me in charge of them, how they will work and react to the proposals of each lesson, how to check their understanding and how to control the group in terms of attention and silence. Tapping with music was the first thing that came to my mind during the second week in order to keep them calm, quiet and focused. It was truly effective that second week and they could work more concentrated, less excited and anxious to do the tasks. Tapping was not overtly written during the second week but it was useful in the spur of the moment and a new experiment to put into practice with the learners.
CONCLUSION
I am satisfied with my work but I think that I would have liked to be able to manage the class much better, given that some children did not pay enough attention, some got easily distracted and others finished the tasks too quickly. However, I think that those aspects have taught me what to do and what not to do; mainly for future experiences to come in this level. Personally, I felt glad that the group, as a whole, was always willing to participate and carry out the different tasks that I asked them to do. At first, I felt frustrated that they did not get quiet in some moments of the lessons, that permanent noise was challenging to cope and it made me feel that I was shouting over them. As days went by, that noise started to decrease and become lower during the last week. But, as I have heard from other colleagues at work, noise should not be seen as something negative, as teachers, we should find methods of how to live with it. We are working with children and there are always instances in which they want to talk about their lives, how they feel in the classroom and how they feel with their peers. That is also part of teaching, guiding them to express their thoughts, emotions, interests in relation to the subject and to their development as learners and human beings.
COMPILATION OF RESOURCES DESIGNED FOR THE 2ND GRADE COURSE PRACTICUM RESIDENCE
