First class (Advanced Group)

hello guys. Today, I had my firts experience on teaching the advanced group, and let me tell you that I feel so happy because it was great. Students participated in all the activities I had planned, and it was nice because I felt very comfortable teaching them.
I have to be honest. The first five minutes, I was kind of nervous, but then I felt comfortable and I succeed on what I was supposed to do.

This group is very special; as they like to talk a lot, I prepared more activities that required them to speak and it was great. They did the activities. They did more than I was expecting.
they also develop some roleplays, and believe me it was nice to see them performing those situations. I think that they really like roleplaying because when I gave them the situation, they immediately started to think about what they were going to do, how to do it and they even asked me for ideas on what they could include in the performance.

The only disadvantage I saw is that just 5 or 6 students have the books, so that whenever you want to do any exercise on the book, it is gonna be kind of hard to get all students involved.
So, this group is nice, and I am sure that when you get to teach them, you are gonna feel comfortable my friends.

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT: LARGE CLASSES

PEDAGOGICAL PLANNING

To manage a large group is difficult but not impossible. The video suggests starting the level, course or year by having a diagnostic test in which you as teacher will know the students´ need and strengths and then you can prepare your lesson plan easily. Something really important is that we as teacher must not label students as intelligent, fool, etc because that leads to other problems.
When having a big group, something that I have experience is that you can not remember all the students´ name very well, but you must find the way you can do it because if not students may not feel important in the classroom in you do not call them by their names. With a big group, it is recommendable to have groups work and in that way you will rotate your attention to them, I mean you will not be paying attention just to the same students and believe me that will help you to remember their names.

CLASSROOM LEARNING SYSTEM

Here is really important that a teacher uses all his/her creativity to create a nice environment, but how? Well what I could see in the video is that when you change from one activity to another one it has to be smoothly, it means that the change must not feel like “hard” let say. The explanation must be given clearly. Something else that I liked is that we should somehow find the way how students may help us to check their work or their partners´ work and I think it would be nice to do this.

STUDENTS BEHAVIOR

This is really important cuz from this depend how successful your class will be. In this part students can help us to establish the classroom rules everybody will follow. The treatment is really important too because you must be fair (treat all students equally), we can not humiliated students, and of course we must respect all our students as we are going to ask them that.

I think that in our country some of these ideas are already applied, but we can take into consideration the other ones in order to do a better job.

USING INTERNET TOOLS

It would be nice that somehow you as English teacher can have your students interact with internet tools, but you have to be careful as not all the students will feel comfortable using or working on them.

To be honest the last time we were working with internet tools, I felt disappointed. First because the computer did not work well, so when the teacher was explaining something, I was lost and I could not do anything. Second I think is because the tools the teacher gave us are not well-known well at least for me, so I did not feel like motivated to work on those tasks let’s say, but I could realize that some of my classmates were eager to work on them which is nice.

I think it can be important to use internet tools with the EFL students as they can help us to carry out any task but as I have said before we have to be careful on what we want students to learn and what the purpose on those tools is, I mean we can not bring any web sites we want. We need to have a clear objective on why we want our students to know about a web site.

Maybe the use of these tools can be related with the logical intelligence as these people have a clear idea of the information they are acquiring, and because they like to solve any difficulty they may have and for me using internet tools have some difficulties.

CONTEXTUALIZED LANGUAGE

Well this is a nice strategy to teach a foreign language as all the activities are related with real situation, so the language can become more meaningful.

The teacher attitudes in this strategy as somebody said has to be patient, esthusiactic, etc, as he/she is the one who will guide most of the activities at the very beginning levels, but then there is like more freedom when students prepare their own conversations or projects related to things they are interested on.
This strategy would be nice to be applied in our country, but it would be a little bit difficult at the beginning as there are many facts that would not let it to be well applied. First of all the curriculum in El Salvador sometimes does not give too much freedom to the teacher in creating like a meaningful class, but some teachers do it and that´s awesome. Second it can require a lot of creativity from the teacher as he/she has the responsability to create many activities in which students can be involved with the context. Third one the amount of students in the classroom, especially public schools, is big so it would be really hard for the teacher to get involved all students in the activities.

As culture varies from country to country, I can say that in our country at the beginning students may be confused on what they are learning, but later they can realized that the idea of the contextualized language in that they can learn from real situations; consequently, the learners´ attitude would not be as the one we saw in the video. It would take some time but it would be nice if teachers in our country start using this strategy of teaching a second or foreing language.

THE TEACHER AS THE CREATROR OF A NICE ENVIRONMENT
to create a pleasant environment in a classroom is pretty difficult for a tecaher as there are many factors you have to take into consideration.
first of all, the students´ proficiency vary from one student to another one, so you have to find the best way how you will work with them in order to make all your students to feel comfortable .
All your activities and tasks are more difficult for some students while for some others are easy, so it will depend on your creativity to have the students who finish first with the task to help the other students, it means that since the biginning that you know your students, you have to stablish like a community in which they help each other whenever it is possible.
You as a teacher play many roles and one of them is to be friend, and when that happen you have to be careful because you have to show them that you are also the authority of the classroom because if not you make lose the control of the classroom. to be your students´friend is nice because in that way most of your students trust you and you can help them with the tasks, clarifying doubts, etc. and you can even help them with personal problems.
You have to be always an enthusiactic teacher because it will make students to forget for a while any problem they may have at home, so your students will desire to be in your classes as you always share your energy and enthusiasm with them. by the way something really important is that you have to treat all your students in the same way. it means not to label intelligent and dumb students, cuz they have to feel that all of them play an important role in the classroom.

PROFICIENCY LEVELS

TEACHING BEGINNING LEVELS

It is considered the most challenging level because many students have little or no prior knowledge about the target language, so that is why to teach this level seems to be difficult, but at the end there is a feeling that can not be explained when you see how your students grew up in getting knowledge about the target language. There is a lot of work for the teacher because he/ she has to find the best way to get involved all the students in the target language but it does not matter when you see the results at the end.

TEACHER´S ROLE, AUTHENCITY OF LANGUAGE AND STUDENTS´CREATIVITY

At the beginning the teacher can be seen as the center of attention because he/ she has to model everything, but when you see that your students feel comfortable and start taking part of the environment (the learning of the target language) it is the right moment in which you can get students to participate in groups or pair activities in order to make them feel that you are not the center of attention; I mean to make them feel that you are just the guide.

Step by step you have to get your students to use the target language as much as they can.
The teacher in this stage controls the class, it means lead students in the right way to learn the basics of the target language, so the authenticity of language falls especifically in simple grettings and the introduction of simple phrases and you as the teacher has the responsability to provide activities in which students use the new language, so the students´creativity will be basically in a controlled repertoire of language, it means that students will create something in the target language but just things they already know becuase it has been practiced most of the time.

As you can see teaching in this level is not easy but it is really rewarding.

wow the questions teacher Aida asked in Lupita´s blog are interesring becuase I can not imagine myself being videotape becuase it is something that I do not like as it is something we are not accustomed to . even though I do not like it but if my supervisor asks me to record or videotape a class, I will do my best to deal this. I think before I start convincing my students to participate on it, I will start practicing by my own. I mean recording myself and then I think I will be ready to do it with my students. It will be hard but not imposible.