Taller de Práctica Docente IIIFinal self-assessmentNivel: secundario Escuela de Educación Superior Nº19(ex 344)Siriaca Palao de Laspiur Año 2015Andrea Alejandra Cantaroni

INDEX

Introduction…...................................................................................3

Thinking Back....................................................................................4

Thinking Forward..............................................................................5

Thinking Inward................................................................................5

Thinking outward.............................................................................6

Conclusion….....................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION

Some time ago, I asked for permission to do my teaching practicum at Secondary School Nº 19(ex 344) “Ciriaca Palau de Laspiur”, because it is a very appreciated and recognized institution in the community. It is an institution supported by the State, but many other institutions supported as well, such as "Sindicato de Obreros Metalúrgicos".

The principal of the school is Adriana Tassara, who assigned me to the third year of secondary school and introduced me to the teacher in charge of the group, Valeria Pulion. They were very kind and helpful with me throughout this period.

The group of students was formed by twenty-four students aged fourteen and fifteen. It was a nice group of adolescents and it was my third teaching practicum experience. Another important characteristic of this group is that they were well -behaved, this helped me organise and develop the activities in a better way. I could see that they worked well when they were participating in different activities and also they enjoyed working in class using materials such as visual aids, pictures of cities and animals, they loved animals and they worked on the activities about wild animal. They felt motivated when dealing with different pictures of animals and cities. They liked and enjoyed talking about them.

In order to work with the group, I focused on the students’ characteristics that helped me to plan the classes according to the students’ interests and abilities and apply different strategies that I learnt during the course of studies.

In my lessons, I used a variety of topics such as discovery using grammar awareness and the cities that they knew or they wanted to know in the future, a variety of animals because I could see that they loved speaking about animals and they were very interested in learning more about them. I worked very hard in order to plan a lesson according to their age, their learning style and their knowledge about the topic.

I realized that planning the lessons carefully was a fundamental and basic step in order to reach a successful result in my teaching practicum. I spent a lot of time preparing the lesson plans, the classes and the different resources in order to use them affectively. I could see that when I planned and organised carefully each stage of the class, the result of the class was more meaningful .They wanted to learn and they did the activities with enthusiasm and had a positive attitude all the time. As a result, this attitude encouraged me to go on improving the following classes and to feel I was doing a good job

THINKING BACK

The day I started my third teaching practicum class, I felt worried and eager about it because I had a lot of expectations .I had to face an important part of my course of studies, my third teaching practicum. I realized that the theory I had learned about how to work with adolescents helped me a lot at each stage of this teaching practicum. At that moment, I was afraid of being in front of a group of adolescents teaching them a foreign language and being observed and assessed at the same time.

The original aims of my experience was to learn how to apply the different concepts and teaching beliefs learnt throughout the course of studies as well as the different point of view of Penny Ur and Jeremy Harmer. I focused my lessons on these linguistics ‘points of view such as how to work with adolescents , what they are like their interest ,their motivation and the idea of providing them with attractive activities .I also used the communicative approach so that students could communicate real meaning and work with authentic material. The sentences they produced had suitable context and they were doing something meaningful with the language.

My main challenge was the organization of each class in order to stimulate adolescents to work and feel comfortable when they are learning a second language. For this reason I organized the class using the five stages, first the warm up where I started talking about our city and other cities in the case of the comparative adjective and I told them about my experience in Buenos Aires zoo in the case of superlative adjectives. As regards the presentation stage I gave students information and pictures so that they could infer the idea of comparative and superlative adjective and it really worked because they could understand and use the new target language effectively. In the case of the production stage students were supposed to talk about cities and animals and they dealt with this activity successfully .Finally, in the closure stage they had to search for information about other cities and animals to make brochures and posters. I could see that they were involved in the class because they worked and participated very well in each part of the class. During this experience, I think I reached my objectives, because when I presented a new topic related to cities, I did so taking into account meaningful context, because I worked with cities that they knew very well, such as Bahia Blanca and their home-town, Buenos Aires, Sierra de la Ventana, Tandil, so on in the case of the animals I showed some photos of the animal at the Zoo and they were impressed.

THINKING FORWARD

Now that I finished my teaching practicum at secondary school, I feel that I have learnt a lot about how to deal with adolescents and how to improve my lessons in the future. Each lesson at secondary school helped me to learn how to work at this level in spite of the fact that they are adolescents and they face different typical conflicts of their age such as lack of enthusiasm, development personality search. And also how to use the different pedagogical materials that I have learnt during the course of studies such as visual aids, games and brochures. I enjoyed working in class with students because they were eager to work. The group was very demanding; they did not want to wait for their class mates to finish the activities. They wanted to learn more about the topic and they enjoyed doing activities.

In the future, I would like to be more dynamic and give more interesting activities such as using at outcome contexts where I can work using visual aids, board, notebooks and stimulate them to participate all the time because when a group finished the task, they asked for me to check it. This experience of teaching at this level will influence my future teaching career became it overcame this different challenge and I feel more prepared now. I think that I have to adapt my objectives according to each group of students and their real

contexts. In the future I‘d plan the activities according to students, their interests, their ages in order to be successful. Also, the motivation and stimulus are very important in the adolescence period because in this stage sometimes they reject to do the tasks and work in class .As a result, I have to encourage the students to work with a positive attitude and enthusiasm and I have to show them that learning can be fun and enjoyable.

THINKING INWARD

My personal belief about this experience is that it was meaningful to me as a teacher because I learnt a lot in this level. I learnt how to apply different skills such as speaking, reading, listening and writing skills in my lesson plans. I have also learnt how to adapt the lesson plan according to the group of students. I have enjoyed a lot working with students, but I consider that have to prepare and plan each class very well in order to be successful. It is important to use a variety of pedagogical resources and suitable activities to make students get involved in the learning process.

THINKING OUTWARD

My practicum at Secondary school was an important part of my teaching career. In order to do the practicum, I was helped by the forum and the tutors' corrections.

At the beginning of the teaching practicum, it was a challenge to take into account so many things at the sometime, it was so difficult to me but then I started to learn how to organise each part of the class or how to correct the lessons plan in order to reach the requirements provided by the tutors. I shared many doubts and difficulties in the forum, for example, how to follow the guidelines, because I read the instructions many times, but it was difficult for me to organise myself because sometimes students did not like speaking in English. For this reason I stimulated them to do oral work, and they participated a lot. Now, I can understand the instructions more and I am also trying to follow them carefully.

In the case of the forum, I could say that I shared many experiences with my peers and tutors. As a result, I began to feel capable and to be able to follow some suggestions from my mates. I consider that all the situations that my peers faced are possible problems that I may face in the future, so the forum was very useful.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, this third period teaching practicum has been a great experience for me as a future teacher. It was a difficult task to get through but I did well taking into account the knowledge learnt during the course of studies and the tutor’s guidance .I think I am more qualified to keep on working with future lessons plan.

To sum up, this third teaching practicum has-been a great experience for me as future teacher. Now, I know that I can use different tools that the course of studies provided me to improve all my teaching in every course that I have to teach now and in the future.