Reflection

When I started the teaching practicum 2, I was afraid to be in front of real students, because I had not had previous experience teaching English. For the reason, that this semester I have been taking both teaching practicum at the same time. Therefore, the first Saturday I was very nervous, I had many question about students and mentor teacher; fortunately, students were as we had previously been studying in class, which is means boys were hyperactive and noisy in contrast to the girls who were shy and afraid to participate, quite normal for teenagers between 14 and 16 years old. From the beginning mentor teacher has been very accessible to support my partner and I to develop the lesson or stage since the first day, she provided us some advices to make activities for students in order that we might able to catch students attention and to get our lessons objectives. In additions, in the first observation I noticed that I should take some time to look or create activities in which they could focus on for more than five minutes, because they were so easily distracted as well as look for a way to encourage them to participate.

My first participation was a warm up, the activity consisted in make three different teams in order to write words in the board related to the previous vocabulary, I was showing a word to one student they passed it letter by letter, team who had correct word on the board was getting points, with this activity I might notice they are competitive so much that they were cheating. For that reason, I decided to make activity where the environment could be monitoring in order to avoid losing the objective of activities for the next time. Besides at the end of the class mentor teacher advised to look for activities which students could review grammar structures in order that they do not forget it as this is reading level. For that reason one of my next activities was played “hot potato” I was counting from 1 to 10 when I said “right” or “left” students who had it she/he had to describe the person on right or left side, as a result I saw the big change because they were paying attention for their turn.

I was also responsible for teaching vocabulary and three complete lessons more. The second complete lesson is the one that I am very proud, at the beginning I was nervous as usual, that feeling that reminds you that you are still human, I made some mistakes for example, I said number instead of letter. However, I was able to moderate the hyperactive feeling from students during the class it gave me back my confidence. They were working in pairs in whole the class, students were not happy to be away from their friend at the beginning but at the same time they respected it because they knew that I was their teacher as well. They were participating voluntarily while they were getting point for correct answers, at the end of the class I gave a price to the pair who got more points it made me feel proud of them and happy for achieving the objective of the lesson. Once students went out my tutor teacher congratulated me but also she gave me feedback for those aspects I may have made better as to be sure about the number of the pages students will be working on.

During this last 10 Saturdays I felt respected for students who always called me teacher besides for the teacher who gave the opportunity to deliver complete lesson without interrupting, in which I felt nervous at the beginning but very proud at the end, I think that nervous can be modeling while you are confident about the information you will teach. For the negative aspect, the only challenge for me it was be standing up for over an hour, something physical that can be overcome, the positive aspect it would be to have a mentor, to get experience teaching, to be in front of real adolescence students, to create new activity base behavior of our students and overcome nerves.