NINTH TASK - JOURNAL 1

DIRECTIONS: Post in your blog at least five journal entries you have written about your practicum experiences

I have to say that it was not easy at the beginning due to the fact that when we face the real teaching world, we are not used to handle a big number of students. It was everything good until students started to going around and talking to each other, in this moment of the class, I realized that I was doing my teaching practicum.

This week was to learn about myself, about how I manage my feelings, my actions in front of those students that I have in the classroom.  Instead of going crazy, I thought many times about solutions of some problems that I had this week. For instance, one kid was making too much noise and he was always talking to his friend and they did not let the class pay attention to what I was saying. I tried to make him work without causing any drama but it did not work. As a solution, I said that if someone was talking while I was explaining the topic, that person was going to get a negative in his/her grades.

With this in mind, I implemented a method call “Cooperative Language Teaching”. The result was very impressive thanks to students really like to work in pairs in order to share ideas and finish their duties as faster as they can. Also, I learnt how to put into practice my strategies to teach, it was something that I needed to do in my first class just to know if I what planned before it would be beneficial for me and for them.

The environment in the class was not the best one because my working hours are after the break so, kids are full of energy and they try to continue making jokes and that is the reason why was not the right one. There is something that I need to point out is that most of the kids were interested on the topic taught.