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An important moment for the students and for me.

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An important moment for the students and for me.

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When I gave the presents to the students, one of the boys told me the phrase “the best teacher ever” and that was so gratifying for me. As I told before, the students don’t speak a lot of English but they always try their best to say as much English words and phrases in English as possible. And I felt the phrase he told me was genuine.

In fact, when I got home from school I noticed the same student had mentioned me on his Instagram’s stories. He posted the photo of the present and wrote “the best teacher ever” with my name.

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I thanked to the students and the teacher. They were happy and told me they have spent a really good time with me. I also told them I was really happy and gave them a present I had prepared for them. They loved the presents.

I can’t explain how happy I am now!

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The last lesson has finally arrived. I can’t exactly explain what I feel. I can’t believe that I am almost finishing my practicum period and my career.

Today the lesson was very nice. I have to say that the students are lovely. I will really miss them. As it was the last lesson I asked them to make a project about themselves.

To begin the lesson I presented a poster I did with all the things I consider essential in my life. The head phrase was “I can’t imagine my life without…” and I wrote all the important things for me around it. They liked my work. We talked about it and I also asked some questions about them. We shared different opinions and thoughts.

After I presented mine, they had to do their own poster. They liked the idea and they enjoyed a lot creating it. I noticed that they all like talking about themselves. They did great presentations. I felt very happy because they took it seriously and made the effort to do their best.

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I think a negative aspect, or a mistake that I made, was that I should have revised the meaning of all the questions before students had to answer them. As I didn’t revise them with the whole group, then I had to revise them with each of them and this took lots of time.

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A positive aspect was that students interacted a lot during the lesson and they seemed interested in the topic. They all tried to use English as much as possible and they really enjoyed it. It was a great lesson and I think students and the teacher also think so.

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Today was great! I love the way students try to speak English during the lesson.

Today they had to speak about their likes, the things they enjoy and the things they are good at, among other interests. At the beginning of the lesson I gave them a photocopy with a word cloud that contained lots of different activities that they could choose to tell me about the things they like. I told them about my favorite activities and then they had to tell me about them. They enjoyed this activity and they used the language to answer.  It was a great start!

After that they had to answer some questions about them. They had to use the activities in the word cloud and they could also add some more activities they like. They liked this activity. I could notice that they enjoyed speaking about themselves.

The lesson was really good. We all enjoyed it.

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The sixth lesson was just great! I have to say that I feel happy with the students’ attitude. They are really nice with me and they show interest in all the activities I bring. There were 7 students in the lesson.

Today we talked about ourselves. I started the lesson speaking about my dream job and why I chose it. Students understood quite well and they enjoyed listening to me. I also asked them about their dream jobs and they could answer me. Only one of them told that he doesn’t know what he is going to do after school.

After that, I gave them a short text about me that they had to read. This part was great because students worked in groups and with the interaction they could understand the whole text without using the translator. I was great because they are used to look for texts in the translator and today they didn’t use it! This made me feel really proud of them.

Although it wasn’t necessary, there were three students that made a great summary on their own words about my text.

After they read and understood my text it was their turn to do their own text. Not all students could finish it but all of them started it and did it right, I asked them to finish it as homework and then they must send it to me via whatsapp (they always work like this with their teacher).

The students, their teacher and I enjoyed the lesson. It was great. As I said before, I am HAPPY with my practicum period on secondary school!

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A positive aspect that I could find in this lesson was that students didn’t use the translator until the closure stage. So I think this is really important to highlight because I could see that the students felt more confident with themselves.

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In the fifth lesson there were only 6 students. One of the students had to travel to a competition and will be absent the whole week and the other three students were absent but I don’t know the reason. The students that assisted to the lesson worked well.

At the beginning of the lesson we talked about students themselves. I asked them what their ideal jobs are and they could answer me. They also told me why they would like to have these jobs. I could notice that they enjoyed talking about themselves.

After that we watched a video of two people talking about their dream jobs and I also gave them the scripts of the conversation so they could understand it better. They had to complete a chart about what these two people said about their jobs and dream jobs. Students could do this activity without problems.

As a closure activity, I asked the students to create their own conversation. They worked in groups of three and each of these groups made a different conversation that they shared with their classmates at the end of the lesson.

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What aspects of the lesson require change / improvement? 

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What aspects of the lesson require change / improvement? 

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All in all, this lesson was good but I have to admit that it is difficult for me to plan activities because students’ level is really low and I consider the book they are using is not appropriate for them. In fact, the book was designed by their teacher and it contains different photocopies with texts and activities that are not related with each other regarding grammar and vocabulary.

Although it is difficult I am doing all my best because the teacher asked me to use the book as much as possible.

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I came back home from my fourth lesson around two hours ago and I’m really happy to see that students feel motivated to do the activities I provide them.

Today we used their book. We began the lesson by observing a picture that represented different skills that the most of jobs require nowadays and we discussed about them. After that, students had to read some examples of classifieds that we can find in newspapers and they also had to highlight the different jobs and skills required that appeared on them. They could complete this activity without problems. When they finished reading, they had to answer two questions: “What skills are the most required?” and “Why do you think it is so?”. They answered the activities in pairs. Two of them were absent so there were only eight students in the class. By the time they finished answering the questions, breakfast was in the classroom but while they had breakfast we discussed about the importance on English to get a job.

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My third lesson was good. Students are used to having me as their teachers so we all feel comfortable with each other. To begin the lesson I wrote a sentence on the board and I asked the students if they agreed on not with the statement. Students could understand it and they discussed a bit about it. After that I gave them two more statements and they had to read them to discuss. After they understand them we share our different points of view and I made some notes on the board about the different statements.

When we finished discussing the statements students sat in groups and I assigned each group one of the statements and they had to write a comment on what they think about it. They enjoyed this activity because they could work together and share their opinions.

To finish, each group shared what they wrote with the rest of the class and we all discussed about the different thoughts. This last debate was great because students liked discussing and they all tried to use English many times.

The lesson was great because not only the students but also their teacher and I enjoyed it.

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My second lesson was great too. Students were relaxed. We started observing a picture. I asked them if they thought the picture was related to the topic and they agreed. They also interpret it as expected. After that they had to read the last part of the text we read in the previous lesson and find the part that was connected with the photo. They could do it great!

After reading they had to use the text to do an activity. They worked in groups – two groups of three and one group of four students. They could complete the activity well too. In my lesson plan there was another activity after this one in which they will have to do a summary of the text, but I decided not to do it because after the first lesson I could notice that student won’t be able to complete the activity in the required time. So we did the first activity and we corrected it all together. After that, we discussed about their future. I asked them if they will work or study after secondary school and they enjoyed sharing with me and the rest of the students what they would like to be in their future. It was great because some of them tried to answer in English.

I really enjoyed the lesson. They could complete all the activities and I felt really comfortable. Unfortunately I couldn’t record the lesson because when I pushed the button to start recording my cell phone didn’t admit the memory card :( I could only take some photos.

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I had the first lesson with the group today. I have to admit that at the beginning I was really nervous. I was really relaxed ‘til yesterday night but when I arrived to school this morning, nervousness started to take hold of me. The teacher and the students were nice with me as in the observation period.

When we entered the classroom and I began speaking with the students I started feeling more relaxed.

The lesson was good. Students felt a bit confused because I spoke in English the whole lesson and they said they didn’t understand. But in fact, they could complete the activities very good. They had to read a text and explore the general idea. Then they had to do an activity about vocabulary. We discussed about the topic of the text and then we corrected the activity orally.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t finish the Lesson Plan I had designed and I think it was for two reasons. One of the reasons was that the lesson should start at 9:10 am but I could observe that sometimes the tutors that have to ring the bell to enter the classroom don’t respect the times (I think they usually forget to do it) and we entered the classroom a few minutes later. Then another reason was that students spent more time than expected doing the activities. So I believe I should take this into account when I have to do the following Lesson Plans.

Although there were some aspects that I would like to improve, the lesson was great. The students felt relaxed and they all worked in a great way. At the end of the lesson I was happy. As I noticed in my observation period, they have a good predisposition and they always try to do their best. I hope my practicum period help them improve their language skills.

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I’ll do my practicum on 5th year which is a
group of 10 students. They are all really
respectful and quiet. They were really nice with me in my first observation and they made me feel very comfortable. Although I found that the level of the students is a bit low according to their age, I strongly believe this will be a great practicum period because it is a group of students with a good predisposition.

First observation- 22nd of August

Today I had my first observation with this
group. They were really nice with me and I
felt comfortable during the whole lesson. The teacher was also great with me.
I entered the classroom with the teacher and with the headmaster. The headmaster introduced me and I greeted the students. The teacher also told them that I will be with them for almost a month and a half and they seemed to be glad with my presence.
The lessons started and the teacher gave the students a worksheet that they had to complete. It was kind of evaluation. In my point of view the test was easy. The worksheet contained a long list of irregular verbs that students had to match with their respective meanings in Spanish (go- ir, do- hacer, etc.), then in the second activity they had to translate a simple text - using the Google translator or dictionaries- that was about a girl who talked about her school and favorite subjects and thing among other information. After they did the translation they had to complete a chart about the girl in the text that contained her name, age, city, school year, favorite subject, etc. They also had to answer some simple questions about it. Although I think it was a really simple text the students spent the whole hour doing it and the most of them didn’t finish it. The teacher told them that they could continue doing it on the next class.
The teacher spoke a little English in class. She only greeted and told thing as ‘thank you’, ‘yes’, and ‘See you’. But it wasn’t interaction using the language. The students didn’t say a word in English at all. I could also observe that some students didn’t understand the most of the words they read in the text.
All in all, although I find the level of the group is not the most appropriate for their age (elementary) I think my practicum period can be good because as I said before, I notice a good predisposition in the attitude of the students.

Second observation - 27th of August

My second observation was good too. Students were more relaxed and comfortable. The teacher gave them the worksheet that they had to continue from the previous lesson and they began working. Some of the students asked me for some help. They were really respectful as the previous lesson. Only one of the students repeated some English phrases as “thank you so much” and “It’s OK!” through the lesson and he laughed each time he pronounce them. It was fun :)

On the other hand, another student asked the teacher if he could go to the toilet (in Spanish) and the teacher asked him to repeat the phrase but in English, and the boy felt ashamed but finally, after trying a couple of times, told the phrase.

Once the students finished the worksheet, the teacher asked them to complete some vocabulary and quizzes that they have in the book they usually use. They began doing the activities but it was break time so they couldn’t finish.

All in all, it was a nice lesson. The students worked well. I have to admit that I feel comfortable and ready to begin my lessons with this group.