watching and observing other teacher´s lessons

Memoria del practicum

4-DIA a DIA en el Colegio de Montgat

 

 

 

I have started my practicum by having an official meeting with my Tutor who is Montse Bulto. We worked in my schedule and she was kind, I must say very kind she made it possible for me to juggle my actual job and the time devoted to my practicum at Montgat.

So we agreed upon coming Tuesdays and Thursdays afternoons. On Tuesday I’ve got to observe 1rst of Secondary and the Teacher is Eva , that with one of the groups and the other 1rst graders group with Joseph , I’ve been warned about this second group as being of  low level and besides having discipline issues with some of the students..

 

I ´ve been with Eva’s group of first graders, and let me tell you a little bit about the whole experience:

 

This is first of la Eso group A and the teacher’s name is Eva. She is very nice and willing to help.

Today’s lesson is about food , they are watching a video about the different food habits of people from US and UK , Eva went several times over the scenes so students could listen to it properly, sometimes listening just one time is not enough.

Here is my observation form and what was observed that particular day (first ob. Day)

The observations included two First of la ESO group the A and The B and they corresponded to the month of January.

T= abbreviations for teacher; SS = abbreviations for students. HM= homework; WB= workbook.

 

Lesson 21/01-29/01	A	B	A	B
How did the teacher address to students	T. greeted students and calls them by first name	Teacher greeted them, but some students are down right disruptive.	The same as stated before.
Presentation of day’s activities	From the beginning of the lesson, today is a video	Under a lot of turmoil caused by students behaviour , this is the other first , the B	Posters were hung on wall, T presented a box with coins from UK Toy food was assembled near by, and
How did T arouse interest	The activity on itself is interesting enough for them	T was busy trying to carry on with the lesson , some of the kids simply stood up and started  moving around the classroom	Of course this brought in some excitement into the classroom.
Type of lesson: productive skill lesson or receptive skill Lesson	Receptive skill lesson	Consolidation exercise	Role play of course, table and table cloth , waiters practicing languages items , pair activity
How are instructions delivered	Very precisely A lot use of the board.	It is like a bumpy road.	Instructions were given a week before, and in this occasion it was a more student centre activity
How are questions by students dealt with	Right on the spot, but if time is needed she expressed it.	T. answered all of them, even from students who just wanted to mess around the activity. Difficult group.
Discipline issues during lesson	Not relevant discipline issues, I’ve heard it is the other group the one with the problems.	As I said the teacher has an enormous patience with this group, but I think some tough handling wouldn’t hurt at all.	none
Use of blackboard during lesson	A lot and a well conceived use of Board With labels stuck with blue  tack to call out for attention	Some students came to the board to write questions but even though discipline issues kept coming.	To some extent but not much.
How are noisy students dealt with	Given the quality of the lesson they ´d better shut up	No comment. The teacher is doing the best he can with very little support.	Most of them kept quiet.
Was homework given and how	Towards the end of the lesson.
Did t move around students checking work	No, she remained mainly at the front row, Scanning students to keep in control,	He moved a lot more than Eva did in her lessons.	She, the Teacher, remained on the front row, for most of the lesson.

 

There was a nice activity in Eva’s class that I want to write about, so it is keep here as a helpful tip : she writes all the letter of the alphabet on a column , and asked students to write as many words as they can listen to next to the corresponding letter. So she plays the video one more time and if there is the P they write pears , potatoes, pumpkins , Pepsi or say a D dinner , desert , B breakfast , butter etc .

Or she writes a chart, like this:

Question: what does Janette have for breakfast?

 

People	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Janette		sandwich
Victoria	Chocolate cereal
Alex	Cereal	Milkshake

 

last few days.......................

Fifth Day implementing Unit didactica.

 

Last Thursday implementing my lesson: it was surrealist, all these youngsters excited because it was raining and opening the enormous windows to touch the hailstones falling along with the rain. I was given the explanation that rain disturbs students and children and affects their behaviour ( same lame excuse was given to me at the school were I worked since early in the morning I had second graders for arts and crafts in English, and this group has some discipline issues going on …..)  Coming from a tropical and very green land such as my country rain is just nature’s way of feeding the soil and cleaning the air and it happens quite often and in fact there is a region called Buenaventura which holds second place after India in terms of rainfall rate percentage.

 

Any way let me continue with my description of what was the lesson like. As I was calling registrar ( list ) and insisting they at least responded present, one of them tells me to look behind the the teacher’s desk , meaning the wall : they have regaled all the teachers with a mural painting depicting a  giant penis, I didn’t give any importance to it since it was made to shock ( very mediocre and over used way of shocking , indeed), but I wanted the tutor to take a photographic record of it since I need to take pictures of my practicum , and sure enough , this is part of my practicum , too!. So she did saying that she usually does take good pictures…………….Thanks.

This particular day I had to teach reported speech and did as closure of this particular lesson an evaluating activity disguised as an exercise at the end of the lesson. It was to choose the correct form of the verb tenses according to the sentence and situation described.

I kept reminding them that they had to finish it on time but with 4B group everything becomes harder , so different it is from the group of fourth graders C that I have right after this class. It is an small group and their behaviour is so different, so you can have a better performance within the group and implement event ludic activities to promote speaking as it happens with this group, I am not saying that I have to use some percentage of my time to quiet them down but the attitude they have benefits them and therefore they gain. The lesson can flow and it is not like a bumpy road.

And again “ no discipline no learning “ and by discipline I mean everything from respect to the teacher, to keeping a silent attitude when explanations are delivered or dealt with, to effort at completing the task, studying or setting up sometime to study….and the list could go on.  But unless something is done regarding the respect due to the teacher figure, the attitude of parents regarding education, educating in the discipline of respect and effort, giving each one their place: parents educating at home not delegating this responsibility to the school and the teachers, the educators recuperating their rightful place within this society, we can prepare ourselves to face another informe Pisa with the same results we just had.

 

Regarding the lesson itself I tried to make it as easy as possible given the level of students, so I designed a chart where in one column we had direct speech and on the other reported speech. As I handed the exercise as a form to evaluate I still have to check on the results from this activity.

Other part of the lesson consisted in matching headlines to pictures about a ghost story , this activity I found most tiring with this group , so when I did it for the other group

lesson 4 didactic unit

Stories………..

 

Unidad didactica lesson 4                                                                 images  page 109 text

 

                                                A GHOST STORY

 

Look at the pictures , they come from a store called  The Guests . Then look at the sentences bellow and find the following things:

 

 

 

A burned –out house.                                     An isolated house                                Some ruins                                                    an elderly couple                 A newspaper headline                                       someone offering to pay                      An envelope                                                  a restaurant owner                       Thick fog

 

Work individually , decide in which order the pictures must go.

 

Pictures 7,4,6………………………….

 

 

 

 

THINK ABOUT THIS QUESTIONS :

 

 

A- HOW DOES THE STORY BEGIN?

 

B- HOW WILL YOU DESCRIBE THE CHARACTERS AND PLACES?

 

C-HOW DOES THE STORY END?

 

D- HOW CAN YOU MAKE THE ENDING MORE DRAMATIC AND INTERESTING  FOR LISTENERS?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PRACTICE TELLING YOUR STORY AND USE USEFUL LANGUAGE TOOLS A AND B:

 

A.     Describing when things happen:

 one day/night

the following day

a few moments later

after a while

 

 

 

 

B.     Making the story more interesting :

To their surprise/ horror

Feeling tired/ terrified, they …..

Suddenly….

Eventually

 

 

The sentences above are for you to use when describing the story presented before, use them ( the sentences )  within the story.

If your not sure of their meaning ask the teacher.     

lesson two of my unit ( stories)

Tittle unit : Telling stories……………

Unidad didactica lesson 2 .

 

Grammar oriented lesson.

Past perfect .

 

Please look at the picture below and then read the story bellow the picture.

 

 

In the middle of some grass lay a carrot, a scarf and some coal. No one had put them on the grass, but there was a perfectly good reason why they were there.

 

Grammar analysis:

a-In the sentences below, which verb is in past simple? Which is in past perfect ?

 

 

In the middle of some grass lay a carrot, a scarf and some coal. No one had put them on the grass, but there was a perfectly good reason why they were there.

 

 

b- which of the tenses shows which events happened first? How is this tense formed?

 

 

 

 

Past perfect

 

Everyone had left.

 

Had + past participle

 

Now the past perfect links one time in the past with another time further in the past .

 

e.g.: when we got there, everyone had left.

 

Everyone  left                                   we got there                       

 

---------X--------------------------------------X----------------------!--------------------  future

                                  Past                                                      present

 

 

For example :

I got wet because I had left my umbrella at home.

 

Which event happened first ?

 

SIMILARITIES WITH THE PRESENT PERFECT :

 

 

The present perfect is the past of the present:

This isn´t  Jane´s first visit to Australia: she has been there twice.

 

Has been : to have + past participle  =  present perfect.

 

The past perfect is the past of the past :

It wasn´t my first visit to Australia, I had been there before.

 

Had +past participle= past perfect.

 

 

 

-Consolidation practice

 

This is a mini “ tell a story “ so we practice connecting parts of sentences using the words  “so “ and “ because”.

So please match the beginnings of sentences in A with the endings in sentences in B using so or because. Then write out the sentences with the correct form of the verbs in brackets.

 

Examples:

She spoke French well because she had lived in Paris as a child.

I had left my umbrella at home so I got really wet.

 

 

A

1 she (speak) French very well.

2 I ( leave ) my umbrella at home.

3 My uncle( not want) to move.

4 There (be) no food in the house .

5  My grandparents(never fly) before.

6 When I ( get) home my father was angry.

7 They (already sell) all the tickets.

8        We ( not have to  ) queue in the restaurant.

 

B  a. we  ( not get ) into the concert.

     b. they ( be) nervous when they got the plane.

     c. I (not) phone him.

     d. I ( forget) to go to the supermarket.

     e. my uncle( reserve) a table.

     f. she (live) in Paris as a child.

     g. he ( live) in the same house for forty years.

     h. I ( got ) really wet.

 

Can you add four sentences of your own that apply to you.

 

 

For example .

I had a headache because I had been too long under the sun.

Or  I had studied until late the night before so I was very sleepy the next day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If time allows it we can play noughts and crosses with past tenses.

third lesson day ( implementing unitat didactica)

Third  day  implementing my Unitat didactica…….This was last Thursday , the first Thursday of April  it all started very early with a telephone call from Montse my tutor at the IES Thalassa to tell me that she had to go to Funeral and as I didn´t to prolongue my time dedicated to my practicum I told her I was going there anyway , last February with the teachers strike , my son being sick and then the final year excursion I had gotten behind time wise. So I told her that I would speak to 4 th graders´ tutor Ana since we usually bumped into each other at the teachers room.I didn´t have to wait to long once I had arrived to school: there was Ana and before I said anything she was already telling me there wouldn´t be any problem because she was going to talk to them prior to my lesson. And so she did .But I must talk or write about some of the things we talked about because I think I helped me to realized that delivering an English lesson in English is all very good in theory but that depends on the crowd and I mean the group of people or students ……And in this case I had been doing the class in English and they didn´t know I spoke Spanish and catalan and because of what   I had sensed on my last lesson given some disruptive behaviour problems I had with the first group of la ESO  I told Ana I thought I would be better if I  let them know I could understand them.I put it in practice and I think it was better or at least broke some of the ice . The tutor of course talked to them before the lesson some of the most problematic kids were not that day which it helped so I could finish what I had started last week  with the past perfect, besides I wanted to have a different approach a more human one with the group because I sensed some antagonism at my explaining the grammar lesson in English , not that I don´t believe in teaching a language within the language context and delivering explanations in the language which is being taught, but it certainly helped not with the discipline problems  to eradicate them but at least the class went a lot smoother than last occasion.With the other group I just did exactly same plus given the agreeable quality of the group we had time to play noughts and crosses in English practicing asking questions and using the right verbs , they loved apparently…………… the game is basically tres en raya but you can use it to practice just any vocabulary set of words or grammar estructure : you divide the class in two teams , crosses and noughts and them in each box there is a word , so they choose the box and use the word within a sentence , question or for example if the word is a irregular verb they changed into past tense and use it to make a sentence and so it goes until one of the teams makes tres en raya. 

first days observation activities.............at Thalassa of course

 

He empezado por la entrevista con la tutoora Montse Bulto, me ha parecido una persona coon la cual puedoo trabajar y ante todo muy cooperadora.

So we agreed upon coming Tuesdays and Thrusdays afternoons. On Tuesday I´ve got to observe 1rst of Secondary and the Teacher is Eva , that with one of the groups and the other 1 rst group with Joseph , I´ve been warned about this second group as being low level and besides having discipline issues with some of the students.. I ´ve been  with Eva´s group of first graders , let me tell you a little bit about the whole experience: This is first of la Eso group A and the teacher´s name is Eva . She is very nice and willing to help .Today´´s lesson is about food , they are watching a video about the different food habits of people from US and UK , Eva went several times over the scenes so ss could listen to it properly, sometimes listening just oone time is not enough.Here is my observation form and what was observed that particular day ( first ob. Day)The observations included two First of la ESO group the A and The B and they corresponded to the month of January. 

i´ve started my practicum a few weeks ago...

 

it´s been quite a while since i tried to get into this so called blog ,let´s see if this time i can be successful at making it.....as i was saying i have started doing my practicum and its been quite an experience.

i am going to check if this works before i get any further......................

well it seems it worked . finally

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