LENGUAS VIVAS DE BARILOCHE

FINAL REPORT

PRIMARY

Naiman LorenaTaller de Práctica Docente

2015

Introduction

The institution where I did the primary practicum was Colegio del Sur. This school offers private primary education and it is located in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego.

I chose this institution as I work in it too. I work at first and second forms and I did the practicum with the fourth level. The institution offers a complete school day, students start lessons at 8 am and finish at 16:40hs every day. The school’s curriculum includes several extra subjects as chess, visual arts, dancing, music, technology, and they are trying to include theatre. The subjects that are given the most importance and attention are physical education and English. The school presents important projects regarding those two areas and it is well known in the community because of the education it imparts.

I had the chance to work with fourth level students at public schools, but I`ve never had the opportunity to work with this school fourth form students. I could see them every day at the entrance assembly but I had no contact with them not even with their teacher as we work differently.

As the English lessons last three hours I had the chance to do the practicum only with three lessons; one for observation purposes, and the other two to give my own lessons. Although it took me less time than the conventional, I had to plan 120 minutes lessons which took me a long time and were difficult to deal with.

The original aim of the project was to get familiar with the group of students and be able to adapt the way I give lessons to the student’s needs. Sometimes it gets difficult to create a rapport with the groups of students because of the short time we have to work with them. I would have liked to get to know the group a little bit more, but I think that will happen to me with all the groups. I’m too curious and I like having good relations with my students.

The pedagogical perspective I followed was the Communicative approach, and to be able to comply with this approach visuals, comprehensible input that is a little bit further than the students level and interaction are a must. I tried to use flashcards, word - cards, videos, and digital presentations; I used English during the whole lessons and I also encouraged group and pair interaction.

Development

The lessons are long and the teacher has enough time to practice communication and develop all the necessary skills. These students have English lessons every day, so their level was very good. There was a boy who has been living in Europe for many years, so he had a native like accent; I really enjoyed talking to him and the rest of the group was very interested on what he said. Besides, the group enjoyed working with the video and with the presentations, they are used to working with ICT though. They also enjoyed the book stories they find in their course book, and I think I helped them to assimilate the vocabulary they were working with as they could make connections between the words and the pictures. I also offered another story to work with, that even though it wasn’t a myth, it was a fable, students enjoyed it the same and worked with the meaning and message of the story the best they could.

I believe that the group teacher, Mariela Waczynski, bears a great relationship with the group, something that lets her trust her students and the other way around. She even teaches students some relaxation techniques that let students get in contact with their bodies, the earth and the significant other, all that before beginning the lesson so that they get ready and clean their minds. The teacher also showed a great ability to manage the group, students were trained and were aware of the need to keep up to the training. Therefore, I had a great example to follow, so I decided to work as organized as I could and to follow the same structure of the lesson that the group teacher had.

During the experience I learned that time management, self-organization and group management are really necessary to work such a long time per lesson, every day, and to be able to offer a lesson that is worthy for students to attend to. Personally, time management was a drawback as I got lost with the activities, but at the end I made a great effort to overcome that drawback.

This experience has been deeply meaningful to me as I got the chance of working with a group with an advanced level of English of about only eight or nine years old. I mean that they are really young students going through the learning of a new language who showed a good manage of the language at such an age. The possibility of offering more opportunities to use the language and also to present different materials to work with regarding the topic the group was working with was like lighting up the lesson, adding more meaning and why not, more enthusiasm to work with the material.

I believe that the lessons I offered the group were good lessons that gave students the opportunity to talk a little bit more and to participate more. I had a great time working with this group as they behaved very well and were organized in the way they worked. I’m satisfied with the lessons I gave but I think that I could have adjusted the time limit for each activity a little bit more.

I think that observing the teacher working in such an organized way made me think that working through good organization and mutual respect in the classroom is possible. Sometimes I find myself working with groups that are difficult to manage as they include students with different difficulties and also because in state schools there exists a different reality, and we give very few lessons in comparison with private schools lessons. However, group management is necessary in both situations, but I feel that if we don´t get constant training, group management could also be influenced.

Conclusion

Nowadays, group management is one of the most important aspects that the teacher should be able to cope with. However, it is one of the most stressing factors when working with children.

Sometimes it happens that families tend to believe that they send their children to school and that is enough. Working with values and morals is one of the factors that influence group management. Respect is another aspect, and if students aren´t used to respect family members, they won´t respect their mates. If families don´t take responsibility of their children´s behavior, we as teachers won´t be able to do so. The school and the families work hand in hand, the families should impart respect, morals and values, and the school should do the same and add the teaching of the necessary knowledge that will enable our students to cope with life in the future.

Therefore, I admired the group teacher’s ability to manage the group and I was surprised by her intentions of teaching or opening the lesson with relaxation techniques. Those two aspects put together, and the importance that organization had during the lesson made me realize that I could actually work with the group offering them a wide variety of options in my lessons. I felt even better when I saw that students behaved really well. The lessons I gave were very different from what the group was used to work, but I tried to take into account all the group teacher’s strategies so that students didn´t lose the track of the lesson and didn´t modify the way they were used to work. My idea was to keep emphasizing respect, organization and a good timing for the activities but offering a different perspective to work with the language. And I think I finally did it.