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The end of my practicum has come!

From Monday, 17th December to Wednesday, 19th December 2007. On Monday afternoon, just before starting the class, I thought 'Just two days and I will have implemented my last two sessions'. When you have been doing a task for a long time, you feel as if it will never come to an end. Now I have finished my practicum at all, my feelings seem to be divided. On one hand, I feel relieved because, believe or not, teaching can really become exhausting and, on the other hand, I have the impression that I will miss all the kids a lot because I have been working with them for two intense and absorbing months. I will always keep them in my mind because they are kind-hearted, honest and hard-working students (except for a few of them, of course, who are extremely lazy!). In general, I can affirm that my teaching experience at a secondary school has been good and interesting. I have learned lots of things about the centre, the meetings, the classes and so on. Teaching at a public school is actually quite different from teaching at a language school, where I have been working since I left university. For instance, secondary school students' backgrounds are heterogeneous, which is hard to cope with in the same class, while students' backgrounds at the language school are practically similar. Anyway, this new experience has allowed me to broaden my mind and discover other ways of learning that for me have been unknown so far. I wish I had been able to enjoy these new technologies when I was studying. I hope I will use them in short as a secondary school teacher, not just as a CAP student!

Implementing the lesson plan

From Monday, 10th December to Friday, 14th December 2007. I started my lesson plan on Monday afternoon at half past four. I was really excited and nervous because after having made a great effort developing the activities of my 'unit', I didn't actually know if they would work well or wouldn't work so well with students. In fact, I felt really impressed at the end of the session because they had enjoyed themselves very much and, moreover, they had taken part in the activities. It was very rewarding for me as I couldn't imagine their reaction. They showed enthusiasm and motivation with the powerpoints I presented because it was an absorbing visual way of learning for them. The powerpoints helped me keep students' attention and get them engaged as all the information was focused on the screen.
On Wednesday, I had a lesson with half of the group, as usual. The class was devoted to speaking and listening skills. The fact of teaching only fourteen students on Wednesday mornings allows the teacher to concentrate on those abilities and skills which are more difficult to put into practice with the whole class. So I took advantage of this situation and I prepared, apart from some introductory oral activities and a listening -suitable for their level-, a role-play based on travelling. I divided the class into holiday makers and travel agents. Holiday makers had to decide where to go for a short holiday. In order to know what kind of holiday they were looking for, they had to fill in an individual questionnaire, which would be useful later on so as to choose a destination. Travel agents' job consisted of selling different holiday resorts around the world. Every travel agent -there were four travel agents with different stalls around the class and offering different destinations- had to convince the customers to buy their destination. I enjoyed this activity very much and kids seemed to have fun as well. When I finished the lesson, I felt satisfied with the result because apart from learning some vocabulary about travelling, they had been able to create a friendly atmosphere and they had enjoyed simulating a real situation that may be useful for them when travelling. In the afternoon I attended an 'assessment meeting'. It was interesting to know what teachers usually talk about at these meetings. They talked about strategies to carry out by teachers as a whole and they also made reference to the attitudes and aptitudes of some students.
On Thursday I had fun, too. I prepared for students a great variety of activities, all of which were involved with different countries around the world. After having looked up information about the population, the currency, the climate and the most important places of interest of a list of countries, they had to identify the country and the place of interest of a number of photographs. After this task, I showed them a powerpoint on a tribe who lives in Thailand, called the giraffe-women or the long-necked women. As I went to Thailand so many years ago and I had the opportunity of getting to know their lifestyle, their traditions and their village, I showed them different pictures about this tribe's daily life -I also included some beautiful photos of children at school. The lesson was a success because students took part in the speaking task actively. They were really engaged when they saw me among the giraffe-women. I also brought them different objects that this tribe tends to sell so that they could touch real things from this Asian culture. They enjoyed themselves a lot and some students even told me to repeat the experience with another different country.
On Friday, the lesson was a chaos. Students were out of control. In fact, the class started at half past eleven and they were tired after the recess. The lesson I had prepared was really interesting but I didn't manage to finish it because they were shouting and chatting all the time. Anyway, I have survived so far. Just two more sessions and I will have finished. Wow! I can't believe it.

I took part in the assessment of an oral exam!!

Monday, 3 November 2007 / Wednesday, 5 November 2007. I went to the secondary school as every Monday afternoon. It was a quiet day as students had already finished their exams except for one. On Wednesday they would have to do the speaking exam and since it would be the first one in their lives, they felt a bit nervous. Anyway, on Monday they didn't practise for this oral exam. Instead, they were told to finish the 'revision' exercises they started doing last week.
Wednesday was a really more exciting day. My tutor had planned to do the oral exam in an hour just with a half of the students. I felt very glad when she asked me to take part in it. The class, which consisted of 14 students, was divided into groups of two people. Every couple had to prepare a dialogue where they had to include some information required by their teacher. They had half an hour to develop their dialogue and after this period of time, my tutor and I started the exam. I was given a sheet that I had to fill in with the following information about each student: fluency, clarity, pronunciation, use of vocabulary, grammar, etc. The sheet was actually very complete. The exam consisted of two different parts. The first one was the dialogue, which they had to learn by heart, and the second one was a list of questions we had to ask them in order to assess every student separately. So it was an exam where both cooperation and individual work were assessed.

Solving doubts

Thursday, 29th November 2007. The lesson consisted of a revision of what they had learned so far. In fact, students were asked to do a series of different grammar activities in order to be aware of the contents required in the exam they had to do on Friday. My tutor and I spent the whole lesson going around monitoring students' work and helping them solve some doubts.

English Seminar Meeting

Wednesday, 28th November 2007. On Wednesday afternoon at four o'clock I held my first seminar meeting. It was a good opportunity to get to know all the English teachers of the centre. There are six teachers in general, one of whom is an auxiliary teacher, who helps the other ones in speaking lessons or supports a particular English teacher in the same class (especially in groups A and B, where there are troublesome teens or immigrants who have difficulty in learning skills). My tutor, who is the head of the English department, addressed the meeting, where they talked about the following agenda. First of all, they commented the development of the programme in the different courses and groups. They talked about some specific arising problems when implementing a lesson and they agreed that this year it would be really important to strengthen the oral, writing and reading skills. They also talked about including CLIL activities in the class because these tasks make students think and learn a topic throughout the English language. They also made reference to the fact of buying necessary material in order to get to the great diversity of students (for example, audiovisual material mainly focused on students belonging to groups A and B because they don't feel like learning and it is a good way of motivating them through the image by showing them a variety of documentaries and other kinds of interesting facts happening around the world). Another point they talked about was the Pla Experimental de Llengúes Estrangeres 2007-2010 (PELLE- Teaching and Learning curricular contents of a non-linguistic area in a foreign language).
Since the English department has decided to take part in this plan where the subject implemented in English will be Physical Education , the government has given them 2,000 Euros to invest in necessary materials. In fact, two teachers are in charge of this project and they have to attend weekly lessons in order to work on the curricular contents of this subject in the English language. It is a tough but rewarding task, though. The meeting took about an hour and fifteen minutes and we, the CAP students, felt really involved in the meeting because the rest of the teachers required our opinion as well. It was certainly a nice experience!

'Guàrdies' and 'guàrdies'

Wednesday, 28th November 2007. On Wednesday I spent more than five hours at my secondary school. When I woke up, I went to IES Damià Campeny with a lot of energy and enthusiasm. My tutor had told me that they had the listening and reading exams. I felt a bit nervous and impatient as if I were also a student who was about to do an exam. I quickly understood why I was feeling this way: I had been following their progress since the end of October and going there practically every day. So I had the impression that my 3rd ESO students had become an important part of my training as a teacher. I felt myself as a second teacher for them and I also felt that their successes or failures in the exams were partly my responsibility. Perhaps you will think that I am too exaggerated but I've got involved in their learning and I appreciate them a lot! Anyway, when I met my tutor at school, she suggested me not go to class because it would be boring to stay there without doing anything. She offered me to attend a 'guàrdia' so that I could learn more about school management. Of course, I accepted because it was something new for me as well. My tutor introduced me to Mar, another teacher, who was very kind to me. She told me that there are two sorts of 'guàrdies': the 'recess' ones and the 'inside' ones. In the first ones, there must be three teachers placed in different strategic points to see that children come to no harm or to avoid possible problems or fights among them. In the second ones, there are different tasks a teacher of 'guàrdia' has to carry out. For instance, a task consists of walking up and down to check that all the students are in their class and there is a teacher with them. If a teacher doesn't come to school and he or she misses a lesson, the teacher of 'guàrdia' will record his or her name in the computer to show evidence of his/her absence. The teacher of 'guàrdia' is also in charge of those pupils who present a supporting document from their family when they have to leave school because of an appointment with the doctor, the dentist, etc. The teacher must make a photocopy of this document and give proof of it by reporting the incident in the computer.
After the recess, I wanted to stay for another hour and as my tutor had also prepared an exam for another group of 3rd ESO, I decided not to go to class. I remained in the teacher's room where I met another English CAP teacher who invited me to go with her during her 'guàrdia'. So I repeated the experience. Anyway, this time was a bit different because she showed me the school and I could take lots of photographs. I hope you will like them!