Week #6

Last week Alexander explained to the students the future "be going to" and I was in charge of grading the exams. For my surprise there were a lot of mistakes about "to be" and the use of "going to"... the result were not the best.
To counteract this situation, Alexander and I agree to explain again the future "goign to" for improving the low result, so, for this day I prepared the class.
For the motivation, I talked to them about the results on the exam and the second oportunity they would have to learn it again, so, they were paying atention and ready during the explanation. In the explanations I try to include them the most I can, asking questions and asking them for doing something specific.
For applying what we learned in the class, I chose some students for coming to the board and making affirmative, negative and interrogative examples. During this I realized that although some sudents had the motivation to participate, it was a little difficult for them to follo the structure of the sentence and needed a little oof help for doing this. Generally, the ones who had this kind of diffiulties, were the onees who have problems with rules and discipline.
Anyway, I prepare an activity for them to do at the end of the class. They did it in pairs and, generally, it showed good results.

Week #5

For today, the teacher asked me to help the students with a topic they had little difficulties: modal verb "would" in the context of the restaurant.
I tried to prepare an activity for them to be active and participatory. For the first moment of the class I got a short video for them to feel motivated and curious about what we were going to do. In the first classroom it worked perfect, in the other ones, it didn't work but I did what I could to replace it.
From the examples of the video I did the grammar explanation and asked the kids to give me examples. Then we did an activity were I wrote the categories of the menu (soup, salad, meat, drinks, desserts) on the board and we played "tingo-tango" for them to choose a card with a food from the menu and place them in the right category. Almost all of them were so participatory, they wanted to do the activity, for that reason, something hard, for me, at that moment was to manage discipline because they were so excited, they were yelling, jumping and running around because of the emotion of the moment.
I had to get a litte strict and give them conditions to continue playing, on the contrary, we couldn't continue.
At the end of the class, to do the evaluative activity, we wrote on our notebooks a short conversation between a waiter and a person in the restaurant, using the modal "would".

REFLECTION: kids in the class are anxious for participate, but we, as the leaders of the class, have to mediate between fun and knowledge. Also taking advantege of the situations of the                                                                                             
class for increasing  their  meaningful knowledge.
About the formative issues, although I tried to follow Alexander's tips, it is still hard for me to be focused on making reflections and interrupting the class al the time for doing it. I know it is important, of course, but not fundamental for teachers. This training is a duty from the parents, from home, I think. This task for us should be minimum.
 Click for watching the video used in the class.

Week #4

The most important relevant and impressive for me, this week, was a moment when the teacher asked me to support some students (from different years: 3th and 4th) to develop an exam at the library.
One of those students was Samuel. He is an autist student aand of course, he needs a special treatment and more accompany.
Foor my surprise, Samuel is a very smart student but as a tipical diagnosis of autism, he needs so precise instructions, on the contrary, he is going to get so confused and exasperated... and that happened this day.
The exam was, obviously, in English and for Samuel it is too hard to think "outside the box", everything turns difficult nd almost impossible. So, he was asking all the time: "No! How an I going to do this?, how am I going to be successful with this?" and so on.
There was a moment when he got so mad that he started to cry out so loud and to do some "weird" movements with his body. At that moment I tried to remember some strategies I had learn at a previous course and to apply them. I asked him to keep calm and I started to explain step by step what he had to do. Even he was still crying and yellng  but trying by hard, he could finosh th exam.

Week #3

This week was devoteed (almost all) to evaluation. For Alexander, my mentor teacher, it is too important to be so precise with cuantitative evaluation. He has taught me how important is for children and their parents to get the exact grade because, on the contrary, we are going to get a lot of complains.
During this period of evaluation, I have realized which are the most difficult things for the students and their Achilles heel: the listening competence. In thi kind of excercises, the students use to make a lot of errors and, for me, it is worrying, to grade them with a very low grade.
According to my observations, I have identified some routines iin Alexander's classes. First, he does a warm up or a motivation about the topic, he explains, in detail, what is the class going too be about and an explanation of the topic (using, alays, grammar support). Finally, he does an evaluative activity (not necessary graded) to make sure how much did the students learn.
In the middle of all the classes he uses to interrupt (or if they're doing a mess) to talk about formative issues: about the importance of listening, responsibility, about how important is to be concentrated on doing the assigned task and so on.
Talking to my mentor teacher, took me to think of the importance of the importance of training in primary students because more than giving knowledge (topics) the teacher's duty is to teach them to be integrate persons.

Week #2

"The most advanced evidence of preparation is improvisation" (Mora, R.)

The teacher Alexander, for me, has te perfect perception and conception of what a mentor teacher is. He always wants me to be exposed in all the school's excercises (even teachers' meetings, evaluation...) so he includes me in almost all the clases and all the moments.
He has given me some useful tips for working with children (because I have never worked with this public) and what I like the most is the way in which he considers my opinion, my presence and my "experience" as a colleague . He thinks a teacher is never done and is always open to suggestions and mindful about what he can learn from me.
Alexander wanted me to improvise in the class, so, he thrown my hat into the ring when he presented, in the first class, the activity he had prepared and asked me to do the same he did in the next classes. I felt a little anxious but pleased of doing it.
Different from the last class: the teacher started to speak more in English. I have deduced the first classes it didn't happened that much because they were working on an institutional exam.

• Schools' everyday life is hard and demands a lot of things, but experience and commitment (and in my case, a good mentor) are keys to deal and to overcome all difficulties.

Week #1

I was introduced to teacher Alexander Valencia: mi new mentor teacher. From the first class, in 4°C, I felt at home. I was told to work with 3rd and 4th grade and I felt with them I can be myself, I mean, for attracting their attention I can be a little more dramatic and spontaneous... I love it!!

I have had the opportunity to observe:

• Classroom management: it is a little more complicated because there are, in each classroom, from 35 to 40 students and they use to be so unfocussed. Almost all the time it is necessary to repeat the instructions and rules for them, thas is why the teacher has too stop, frequently, the class to establish the order.
• Student´s attitude: the most of  them are boys and, with them, almost everything use to be a mess. At the beggining all of them felt curious about who I was and what I was going to do (although I made a short introduction about myself) 
• The interaction between the students and the teacher: students use to be so spontaneous and they always want to call teacher's attention. The teacher has to mediate among the moments of the class and the management of it (Discipline --> because it is the most difficult to manage). It is usual that students make jokes in the middle of the class or make complains about their parters attitudes, which is and obstacle to carry the class out.
• English in the classroom: these kids are in a process of closeness to the second language, so, the class is in Spanish and some specific comands are giiven in English such as: first, second, sit down, let's stop this activity, page 25 and so on.
• Students' needs: I could find some students, mainly, with autism, attention-deficit and hyperactivity. They demand a special treatment and an "extra task" for the teacher.

Encuentro #14

Una de las cosas que más le gustaba a mi tutor de práctica que yo hiciera era encaminar y apoyar a los muchachos en la lectura de imágenes que son bastante comunes en las pruebas del ICFES y pruebas internas. Por lo mismo, para este día me tomé el trabajo de elegir dos anuncios publicitarios bastante conocidos, uno de Leonisa y otro del Eje Cafetero, ambos acompañadas por texto e imagen, por lo cual establecí tres preguntas para cada uno con cuatro opciones de respuesta. Me aproveché de que cada aula cuenta con un video beam, así que proyecté la imagen y las preguntas para que entre todos discutiéramos la más acertada. Al final, después de discutirlas todas, les propuse una actividad en la que, por parejas, tomaran una fotografía dentro del aula de algún, objeto, escenario o evento que les llamara la atención y, a partir de ésta, realizaran un análisis tipo crítica del significante y el significado de la imagen. Cuando me tomé el trabajo de revisar la producción de los chicos, me encontré con unas imágenes y unos textos muy interesantes y hasta conmovedores.

Reflexión: en cuanto al maestro, pienso que está perdiendo la intencionalidad del área cuando busca suplir necesidades de alcanzar puntajes en pruebas específicas, cuando en  realidad debería estar preparando a sus estudiantes para que, a partir de lo que saben, puedan pensar, analizar y hacer críticas. Por la parte de mi práctica, me encontré con que por medio de un ejercicio tan simple y común como una fotografía, puede crearse un ambiente diferente y no sólo de asuntos estéticos porque hasta me encontré con criticas sociales, empresariales, educativas... en fin, el uso de estos aparatos tecnológicos siempre será para nosotros una excelente herramienta para salir de la rutina y para crear nuevas visiones y nuevos pensamientos.