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| “In learning you will teach, and in teaching you will learn.” ― Phil Collins
6. When things go wrong in class
Once, I
was coming at the school on time when the bell rang: supposed that my student’s
parents were going to go outside of the classroom, but it didn’t happen; all of
them were talking to my tutor Mr. Martinez about a trip to the zoo, and they
were also talked about. Children’s
graduation; however, the classroom was crowd of people, and I couldn’t star my
class on time. After that Mr. Martinez talked to me and told me teacher can you
wait some minutes before starting your class, and I said “ok! No matter” The
conversation between the teacher and parents took around 20 minutes, and then I
started my class; I wanted to teach children the traffic light colors, but
before that we made a review about numbers, and we took around 7 minutes I
started my class about colors and asked the students what they knew about the
topic; they were really intelligent and answered my questions, but in Spanish.
Then, I explain to the student the meaning of the traffic light colors; the
problem was that the tutor took part of my time talking to the parents, and
after I explained to my students about the traffic light; we repeated the name for the colors a lot of time; then,
I gave them a page to colors; there weren’t enough color for everybody in the
classroom, so they had to wail some minutes to use the colors they wanted , and
the colors activity took too much time and the break time was coming what I did
I let my students to finish the colors activity at home, and the we make a
short review of the class because I wanted they acquired that knowledge about
the traffic light colors.
I
think that any of the tips given in chapter 8 could have worked for me because
that was not what happened to my class.
An
activity took too long (Jackeline)
The class went out of control (Hugo)
With my students to do an
activity was easy because they love to play but once I tried to develop a
famous activity called the “hot potato” that activity is very common in the
university and in high school but for them it was the first time that they do that
activity; they were anxious.
Firstly, I give them the instructions
and they were so happy, that make me feel good because I like to see them
happy. After that, we begin the activity and everything was ok, we were
listening to a song while we were developing the activity but some minutes
later the class went out of control. They began to run and sing and to hit each
other; I did not really know what to do. So I spoke aloud and told them “please
sit down” and I continued with the class. After that, I did other activity in
which they had to color some drawings; I decided this activity to control the
class in a better way. I knew that we were going to play the hot potato later
but that day they needed other kind of activity.
Did you follow any of the tips
presented on chapter 8? Do you think the tips could have worked for you?
I think a tip worked for me. The tip is
to have other activity in the case that the first one does not work. That is
very important to change the activity we need to have a plan B all the time or also called
emergency activity.
These emergency activities are very
useful in moments when the things are out of control. We also can tell a story
to the kids, I think these tips are useful and I can use them in a class.
An activity took too long (Jonathan)
As far I remember, it happened to me
when I was teaching colors. I performed an activity which took too long because
students enjoyed performing the activity that I asked them to do. When I realize,
I had spent around 20 minutes doing that activity, so I did not have more time
for doing the following activities that I had to do. As a result, that class
was uncompleted and I had to finish the class; however, I refreshed this topic
the next class.
You had extra time (Jonathan)
When I was teaching the numbers, I faced this problem
because students already knew the numbers in English from one to ten somehow. I
did not know that, so the part of teaching the numbers was too fast. As a result,
I had extra time, around 15 minutes. Fortunately, I had some sheets of paper
with drawings, so I asked them to paint the number using at the same time some
specific colors. In that way, I was able to spend more time.
An activity did not work (Jonathan)
It occurred in my second class. I was teaching the
alphabet, and I was printed all the letters from A to Z. I knew that they were
too many for teaching in one class, so I divided the alphabet in two parts. I
started to teach around twelve letters that class; when I asked them to
recognize the name of every single letter; they were not able to do it. Next
class, I decided to teach fewer letters using a good tool, a song. Afterwards, students were able to recognize
letters easier.
Another activity did not work when I
wanted to play a song about farm animals. It happened because the CD player
could not recognize my USB, so I started to sing the song without music. In the
next class, I could perform the activity with music because I had changed my
USB for another one.
An activity was too difficult (Jonathan)
Another problem that I faced occurred when I was
teaching the parts of the body. I asked my students to touch the parts of their
bodies which I have taught previously. The problem happened because they did
not know accurately the meaning of the words I was mentioning. They rarely knew
the parts of their bodies that they had to touch, but I had an idea; I had to
perform the activity with them at the same time in order to refresh the meaning
of the words.
Did you follow any of the tips presented on chapter 8?
Do you think the tip(s) could have worked for you? Explain (Jonathan)
I followed some of the
tips presented on chapter 8, but in a different ways; for example, when one
activity which I perform took long, I decided to stop. However, the next class
I refreshed some points of the topic I had taught the last class. Also, when
the CD player did not recognize my USB, I started to sing the song about farm
animals without music. So, I put into
practice some of the tips.
In some
other possible cases, indubitably, tips could have worked for me. Fortunately,
I did not have so many problems during my teaching practice. I consider that
the amount of students I had was something that contributed. Also, my students were kind of quiet because
they obeyed me when I asked some attention; the tutor advised students as well,
so this decreased the possibilities of some behavior problems.
7. The tools of the trade
From this chapter, choose the tools that you used in
your class, and describe the activities that you used them for.
In
English classes, I did not use many tools for teaching because I took into
consideration the English level of my students. So, some tools could not work
in my case as teacher because I taught an introductory course in the
kindergarten. However, I chose some tools which were suitable for me at
teaching. Here are some tools which I used in classes.
Picture cards: I used them when I wanted to show them to my students;
for example, when I was teaching the days of the week I showed some picture
cards that contained pictures of activities that people do in certain days of
the week.
Books: My tutor had some books which had tales. So, I took
advantage of them when I wanted to change the mood of my students. Some tales I
read were Pinocchio and the Beauty and the Beast.
Toys: I had some toys about animals and fruits, so I decided
to use them in order to vary my tools at teaching. Furthermore, my students
could touch the toys and they were able to have a better understanding of the
topic.
Cassette recorder: In my case, I used a CD player. I used it when I
decided to teach my students a song about farm animals. It was so helpful
because students really liked that song.
Classify all the tools in this chapter into useful and
useless in our environment. Provide the reason why you made such distinction.
Classifying all the tools into useful and useless is not easy because it
may vary from classroom to classroom and from teacher to teacher. In addition,
we must take into consideration students´ capabilities and weakness. In my
case, I taught an introductory English course; therefore, I did not have the
opportunity for using many tools because of students´ English level. However I
will provide some useful tools and useless tools according to kindergarten environment.
I made such distinction
because in our environment as teacher of kindergarten pupils is kind of weird
to use or to perform activities with tools like puppets, cardboard boxes, word
display, readers and other. These tools are pretty difficult to perform since
we are teaching to students, at the same time, most of kindergarten students
cannot read at their ages. On the other hand, picture cards, tale books, toys,
cassette recorder, wall charts, and others are more common and easy to perform.
Furthermore, six-year old children are familiar to those tools in the
classroom. However, this point of view may vary from teacher to teacher
depending on the capabilities and the environment in which we are.
Make three collages of the nine TVYL presentations.
Reflect upon the top three chapters you would incorporate in your own practicum
and you would leave the others aside.
 
8. Write an assessment about how
useful the TVYL practice is in your way to become an ELT teacher.
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In the other
hand, when teaching children at a very young age, we can easily get tired, but
if we love what we do, there will not be any problem. Many teachers in El
Salvador only complain of the many things they have to do when teaching.
Neither do they do anything about it, nor do they stop complaining.
9. Self-assessment and evaluation
of your own learning in this course/ recommendations to better this teacher
training course
Katherinne’s
In my personal opinion, I have
learnt too many things about the teaching process in this course. I’m
completely sure that I have developed my reading skills because I had read many
handouts in this course I some of them were really interesting. Through this
course, I have discovered how to teach other, and I have learnt how and when
the teaching process takes place; Didactic s of the English language is a road
to follow and learn more every single day about teaching. I believe that though
this course; I will learn the essential things that a kindergarten teacher
should now. At the very beginning, I was pretty nervous because I had to start
my firs teaching practice, but Ms. Mata helped to understand the basic tools to
start a teaching process; she was a nice guide.
This course helped me
to make conscious about how important is the education; I as a teacher have to
take into account some important things during the teaching process; for
example, the type of students that I
have; what the best way to teach then is etc. I have learnt that kind of things
that I myself consider very important, so I believe that this course really
helped me in order to be a better teacher or a teacher. At some point, I
consider this course like a training to be successful into the teaching
process; that´s why I consider this course pretty important in my own those
class, but I try to apply what I have learnt until now. For me teaching
practice was an amazing experience because I haven’t dealt with little kids
before. But, they are really able to learn many things easily.
May be my students
didn’t get all the topics, but I’m sure they got things that can help them a
lot in or out the classroom.
Didactics of the English language was a great course through of which I
learned new things related with the teaching process. Now I have the bases to
continue developing my skills as a new teacher. I guess something important was
the way that my teachers laugh me because she was able to answer any type of
questions.
Recommendations: I myself believe
that this course was really helpful I have just one recommendation: student in
this course should participate more in classes because it going to help them to
get better knowledge and if they ask questions or doubts through the time; they
are going to lose fear to face that kind of situations.
Jackeline’s
First
of all, I teach children in church, so I know that teaching is not an easy job
at all. Trying to control everyone at the same time is one the hardest thing when
teaching, but you learn how to face those problems by dealing with them. Secondly, I know many kindergarten teachers
that know a lot about children and who say that children are very sensitive
about all and I have to be awareness since they notice everything, so it is not
that you can invent.
There
is something very important when teaching, and it is the satisfaction of
teaching some else something you know.
Seeing the children’ faces make you believe that there are many things
you can do to make the society better.
Some of the recommendations are:
·
That the lesson plan should be taught at the very beginning, so
·
That
the TVYL practice starts earlier and every student is able to finish on time
and without any excuse.
Hugo’s
In
this teacher learning course I have learned a
lot of things and I have tried to do my best. For every single topic, I have
studied hard, and also I tried to understand the topic very well because when
you are teaching, you need to know a lot of things about the topic.
I had always wanted to teach and
with this course I had that opportunity. I have to confess something, at the
beginning of the course the idea of teaching does not like, I was scared about
that but now I am very happy with the result. This teacher learning
course has helped me a lot and I believe I have done a good job.
The sensation of teaching to my
students has been amazing and I think I will never forget that. This was my
first experience as a teacher and I could learn a lot of things about my
students, they are very intelligent and also I can teach them a lot of things
too.
I tried to teach to my students with
a lot of materials for a better comprehension. Besides that, I earn to be
responsible, my class began at 1:30 and I was there at the time.
Some recommendations for better
this course are:
-
Give the chance of teaching more than 2 hours per
week.
-
Give more percentage to this activity.
This teacher learning course is very
useful for all the students because with it the student can have the first
contact with the “teaching world”. This practice it is an excellent tool to
learn how to be a teacher, to deal with your students, to think as a teacher.
Finally, I can tell that being a
teacher is more than to stand in front of the students. It is a great
responsibility and we can learn it with this course.
Jonathan’s
During
the semester, I have learned many things that I did not know before. Since the
very beginning, the subject seemed very helpful and it has been helpful for my
classmates and me. For example, I have
learned how to develop classes, how to encourage students at the classroom, how
to arrange desks in order to facilitate attention from students, how to prepare
activities in a meaningful way, etc. Of course, that according to kindergarten
students, but it may work with students in general as well.
During
Didactics of the English Language classes, I have learned about different
methodologies, techniques which can be applied in classes. Another important
thing I have mastered is the way how I teach classes, and I have developed my
own style at teaching. It has really helped in order to be a nice teacher in my
future. During practices, which I have had in classes, as presentations,
classes, dramas, etc; I have put into practice as much knowledge as I could.
This has helped me at teaching as well.
At teaching in kindergarten, I have had
many amazing experiences with students and with the art of teaching English. It
has been really amazing because it was my first time at teaching. I do believe
that it is a new world or lifestyle since not everybody teaches well, hence,
one of the biggest problem in our country´s education. In my opinion, every
single teacher must have at least minimal knowledge about teaching, not only
knowledge; that is why didactics is an important subject in order to learn how
to teach as accurate as possible.
According to recommendations about this course, I would like to mention
some things that may improve the course. One of these important things is that,
I would like to emphasis is about the classroom in which we received the
classes because not everybody is able to pay attention. This occurred since the
space we had in the classroom. Another important point is that, some of my
classmates used to talk about other things which were not related with the topic
we were learning, and this affected the environment for the rest of the class;
On the other hand, I do appreciate the way that teacher Darlene teaches, and
her well-known rapport that she has with students.
