JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL TEACHING EXPERIENCES

We have recently experienced teaching to adolescents. It is very hard to manage a class where the hormones are so high, but it is not impossible. We discovered that teaching them is worth the effort since we could see their learning as a reward.

JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL PRACTICUM Lester Giovanni Gonzalez

My experience while teaching junior high school was such a challenge because i had to face new experiences and new attitudes with adolescentes. Adding activities according to their needs, and it was something that really took me too long, however, it was nice to know that every single student was not only having fun but also learning in a different ways. Planning activities and classes is not an easy task, but I had to do it quite well to develop the classes in a certain way. As every day, every student was interested in learning new activities and new words, so I had to look for a different class. In this way, I had to show my skills and knowledge according to the environment. Even though, sometimes were not appropriate for learning such as having problems inside the classroom or that some students were not with the courage for learning I had to change not the complete lesson plan but the activities.

Teaching English language to this level was a great opportunity to continue with the process of developing the strategies of teaching and my speaking skills.

The improvement of the level of English with my students was well seen and that is something that satisfies me. In addition, the way in which I had to help my students were not the same all the time and it is something that made me feel a real teacher at least being in the classroom with them

DIGPA Armando Siciliano

First, I’ll keep doing activities that involve students so that they change their passive state to an active one in the class. Also, I will hammer that making mistakes is not as terrible as they think; in fact, I will try to take advantage of their mistakes to create meaningful learning.

Last, I will create an environment so that students feel confident since for me confidence is vital for learning to take place.

Strengths:

I believe my best strength is to love teaching; I love to be in front of the class, being friend of all students and doing my best to develop my teaching practicum.

Maybe one of the areas that I have to improve is that I have to be more creative to develop my classes. I only follow my tutor´s directions and I cannot plan my classes in my own style to teach.

I think the action that I have to do for improve this situation is, talking with my tutor and ask him if I could plan my classes with some own ideas.

In general aspects, this teaching practicum was so important for me, and for my profession.

Every day that I went to school, I learned one more thing, and this is my objective: never stop to learn, every day is a good opportunity to achieve my goal!

In my last class, I did a warm- up with the students. It is called "Guess the word."

At 10:00 a.m, the class began and I gave my students the instructions for the warm-up activity: "First, you are going to form three groups. When you get formed in groups, you are to choose a representative per each group. Then, I will pass the representative of the first group to the front and he/she is to stay in opposite position to the whiteboard while I write a word on the board. The group of the standing student is going to mime the word for him/her to guess it. The group that guesses more words will be the winner."

The activity began, but the groups did not choose the representatives easily nether quickly. They were afraid of passing at the front. So, I encouraged them to not to be afraid since we are all humans and making mistakes is ok as we learned from them. Finally, they started to participate but when guessing the words I wrote on the whiteboard, I noticed they had some problems of pronunciation so I took advantage of the moment and made them have a choral repetition. The, the activity continued as the students passed to the front still not so convinced to do so. When the students started to pass to the front and guess the words, the others started to engage in the activity. The activity lasted about 15 minutes since they did not want to pass to the front and I did a brief choral repetition.

-Maybe had not been taught that making mistakes is not a sin; that is why, they were afraid of participating.

-Perhaps they do not like learning English since they have just received boring classes.

-Maybe the students had never had an activity that involves them.

-Maybe they are just lazy or not accustomed to those activities.

Warm-ups activities are the way in which teachers create an appropriate classroom atmosphere for learning to take place. Some warm-ups are used to introduce a topic or to give students confidence inside the classroom. Youngsters hate that somebody laughs at them, so they prefer not to risk themselves and they do not pass to the front in class.

Having done that warm-up with my students helped me to notice that they need someone to help them to raise and build their self-confidence. Besides, I realized the terrible background they have in the English subject.

DIGPA (Describe Interpret Generalize Plan Action) fredy perza barrientos)

D (Describe)

We started to study the auxiliary HAVE. There was time for practices, I told them that we were going to work in the first one that was about Building Sentences, then I asked five girls and five boys to come to the front and take a flash card wich contained the auxiliary HAVE/HAS and the object, there was going to be a Girl and a Boy line. I CCQ. Both lines began to work on their sentences but during this, some students were cross-talking and some were laughing at their classmates. They finished to write the sentences and sat down so, I started to ask if the Girls and Boys´ sentences were right or wrong, the students answered and also, they corrected three that were wrong. When we were working on this a few students began to cross-talk and to tell bad comments about the wrong sentences, I did the signal for them to be quiet and then, I asked them to write the sentences on their notebooks so, they wrote the sentences and later I asked them to repeat the sentences one by one.

(Interpret) 

Probably this practice didn´t work as well as planned because it was bored or the students didn´t like it, for example when I asked the ten students to come to the front, they didn´t want to do it. Perhaps, they hadn´t had lunch or didn´t enjoy the practice. Another possible reason why the practice might not have been totally successful is because I didn´t explain the topic as I should do it. Maybe the students didn´t understand the topic at all or they had doubts and didn´t ask me for answers.

G (Generalize)

Clear instructions are important that´s why you have to CCQ, CCQ and CCQ and be sure that the Ss understand what you tell them. During this practice I think that Ss work hard to build the sentences on the board but I think that they don´t understand exactly the function of the auxiliary HAVE. The environment of your class has to be really comfortable for them to understand and put into practice what I teach them. Doing this practice students learn to build and pronounce the sentences. 

 PA (Plan Action)

Next class I will form more groups in order to include all the students building sentences. I should explain once again the uses of the auxiliary, and also, next time I want to catch all the students attention, moreover I should have a trick up the sleeve. I will help students to reach their potential in this topic and also I will do a feedback of the topic. I want them to work hard to understand better their classes and also I will prepare better classes for them.

Strengths: one of the my most important strengths that I have is that I have good relationships with the students because I am very friendly with them and they trust on me, that help me a lot in my classes because they respect me and they are more enthusiasm in classes and if I made a mistake they are more compressible.

I have felt very nervous at the beginning of my teaching practicum, but a few classes later I felt more confident with the knowledge and the lesson plan that I had.

I have learnt a lot from this teaching practicum because I could notice my strengths and the challenges that I have to overcome in order to become a better teacher.

I like the experience a lot because I could see different personalities that the teenagers have and how I have to treat them in subtle ways and help them in everything possible because they felt very confused at that age.I think my specific areas for improving are the four macro skills:

The first step that I will follow is that I will try to practice more the language to have be fluent and I will work hard to lose my accent.

To improve my listening I will listen more podcast and different kind of resources in English.

To improve my read y will read books, magazines and some tales in English in order

to get more vocabulary and better my reading.

To improve my writing I will write different kind of things and I will ask for help to check structure and better my composition. 

DIGPA

(Solving the first part of the exam that students took last week) (astul Godinez)

At the beginning of the class I gave the students a pep talk about their progress in the language. I started to solve the exam that they took the previous class. They were anxious about the answers of the test. When I was developing the first part I noticed that some of them were happy and the others were worried about their results. The students who were worried started to cross talking at the same time I was explaining. Then I raised my hand and I told them that their attitude wasn´t the answer for helping them to get better results. Then they paid more attention. When I nearly finished solving the first part students were able to understand that they must work harder if they want to achieve their goals.

The pep talk help me to make them understand how important is to pay attention in class because during the first classes they didn´t work enough. But nowadays they have realized that the key of learning is to pay attention. Another thin g that could have caused effect in them is that they were anxious for expecting their grades. Also when I was solving the test they were discovering their mistakes for that reason their attitude. Finally, after knowing their strengths and weaknesses in English they were awareness that they must be hardworking students if they want to learn.

G

In my opinion I consider that as teachers we have to look for specific pieces of advice that help students to improve their learning process. As a matter of fact, students need to be involve during the class; moreover, teachers have to use KISS all the time. I try to use it all the classes in order to be clear with my directions.

PA

In the future, it would be better let students talk about their doubts and answer their questions. Also, it would be better if the students provide all together the possible answers about each item. Doing this could help to keep them in the same page for involving them in the class.

Strengths: my strengths are that I always have a good humor and I have a good relationship with the students, also in the activities I try that all the students participate  and that make them feel important in classes and they like to participate also.

The challenges that I have to overcome are the four macro skills

 In the speaking area I will speak with my brother because he is studying licenciatura

en idioma ingles opcion enseñansa so he can hep me a lot in this skill.

In the listening area I will listen to songs and more podcast to improve my audition and understand better the language.

In the writing skill I will try to write and rewrite some interesting topic that call my attention.

For better my reading skill I will read different kind of authors like Shakespeare and Alan Poe because I think they are so interest authors.