3rd CLASS

well, I have to say that it was kind of hard for me because I was to introduce the grammar part and it was hard. I did understand the structure, but when I was explaining someone asked a question and I doubted on the answer I gave. Time went on, and then the teacher took her time by doing a listening test, so during that time I reflected on the question that student made, and I got a most suitable answer for his question, so after he finished the test, I approached him and clarified his doubt. The tutor teacher saw me and in the feedback she told me that it was nice that I approached that student and the answer I gave him.

Some of you have said that teaching grammar is not easy even for simpler that it may seem, now imagine teaching grammar to advanced students where the grammar points are more complex!! that´s even more difficult.

The feedback sesion was very helful for me because I was given some advices on how I can do to explain some grammar points when students do not get that at the first time.

The rest of the activities I develop were nice as students enjoyed them, and they worked very nice.

Hello again guys. Well, today I had my second class with the advanced group. Let me tell you that this week was very hard for me because the charger of my computer got broken, and yesterday I was sick and I had to prepare the material I was going to use today.

well, as I said, I got sick yesterday and today I did not feel that comfortable, but I had to teach my class. The activities I developed were very nice and just the warm up had to be interupted because a student from the next room came to my room I told me to lower the voices or do something else because they were having a quiz.

I have to be honest. I was to teach part of the grammar part, and I was affraid of it because the topic was not well known for me, but fortunately students understood what I explained, and when they came the time for practicing, they did very well. I felt proud of myself because there was a student that does not like to work, but today he approached me and show me what he did, and he felt proud because what he did was ok.

In the feedback part, I was congratulated because of the activities I developed as they are very useful to get involved all students of the group. I was also told about my energy, my enthusiasm. The tutor teacher told me that she saw a lower energy compared with the first day I taught. I think it was obviuos because as I said, I was still kind of sick.

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.