My Practicum is almost over…

Today I have finished my teaching unit. I’ve done my sixth hour of class with the 4ESO students and, to tell the truth, I feel happy and sad at the same time, because I’ve enjoyed working with these children very much, and I’ve lived a really nice experience while observing, learning, teaching and getting to know how a school works.



I’ve developed my unit plan in six hours. As I said the previous day, I introduced the topic by showing them a PowerPoint presentation and talking about music preferences. I’ve tried to work particularly the communicative competence by writing and expressing their personal likes, dislikes and opinions using activities with different kinds of approaches and resources.

Some of the activities worked out really well, others didn’t, but at least I think they’ve practiced a lot and they’ve talked very much in class. That’s what I wanted from them, because it seems to be a class where they do grammar and other exercises from their course book and not many tasks where they can interact and speak.



I’ve also tried to use different methods and resourced, such as ICT activities (although resources are very limited here), exercises in which they have to work in pairs or groups, activities where they could go moving around the class asking their classmates, interviews, songs, etc… I’ve been assessing all the activities they’ve done (in the way that I know who has participated more, who has tried their best and who hasn’t done the tasks) and I gave them a final project which would be an important mark; they had to write a poster with biography of their favourite music group or singer. We played the “who is who” game with that too, and I’ll be marking their works this week.



So, my experience as a trainee teacher at IES Joan d’Àustria is almost finished. Now, we still have two more “out of class” hours; that would be a meeting with my tutor in order to consider how my Practicum has gone and the “avaluació final”, where the teachers will talk abut each student and group and we’ll be able to see how this kind of meeting works. After that, I guess I’d still keep in touch with my tutor, but we won’t go to the high school anymore… well, I might set foot in this school some day as a teacher, but not as a teacher-to-be anymore (hopefully!).




I just want to finish by thanking my tutor, Mercè, who has been very nice to both me and my colleague; to Marta, from whom I've also learnt a lot and with whom it's been a pleasure to work with; and to all the students, to whom I've gotten very attached to. It's been a nice and enriching experience and I'm sure I've taken a lot of advantage of it!

Let's get to know about MUSIC...

Today I did the first hour of my teaching unit.
While my colleague was recording me, I introduced the topic by telling them a very short story about a concert of my favourite music band that I went to see last weekend. That was just to involve them in the subject.

.

After that, I asked them some questions just to check whether if they understood everything I said and talked a bit about their musical preferences. Then I showed them the Power Point Presentation I had prepared for this day. I wanted to show them the different music styles, some musical instruments, and basic things about Music for half an hour.
It worked really good and they seem very interested and engaged, maybe because I knew some of them play musical instruments and also because I knew a bit about their musical interests. They spoke a lot, mentioned groups that they like and characteristics about music styles and they even dare singing and playing some instruments the following day. What a success!!! I felt very happy because I saw they were participating and they liked the topic, and even if singing or playing some instruments in class was not in my plans, I really found it a very good idea. Let’s see if we can make it!
:)

Finally, I gave them a photocopy with a couple of dialogues and more vocabulary. We read them together and then some volunteers read them aloud. They asked what they didn’t know and then, in pairs, they had to create a new dialogue, similar to these ones, but including all we had seen during the lesson.

Some did it very good, others’ compositions were a bit short or simple, but they all tried their best and that’s the important fact! I have to say that I was a bit nervous at the beginning of the class, since I didn’t know whether if they would get engaged and it would be the first time I spoke in English for the whole hour. I guess they understood everything (although some are very shy and it’s hard to make them speak) and even if they tried to speak in English some of the times they found themselves a bit lost because they didn’t now how to express what they wanted to say.

Wow! I feel much more confident now, once I’ve overcome the first hour of class because this was, for me, the most difficult stage and I’ve already got through it.

Tomorrow I will present them an artist’s biography, we will go through it together and then I will explain them what they are supposed to do. Since there won’t be a final exam, I want them to create a project, and this will consist of writing a biography about a singer or group, and from there, we will do some funny and nice activities, like an interview or a “Who is who?”. We will also do a crossword and a treasure hunt and we’ll listen to a song but I will let you know more about how my teaching unit is going later on.