https://plus.google.com/101139101341930180954/posts/QKqC1HbpDis
https://plus.google.com/101139101341930180954/posts/QKqC1HbpDis

Last day of social service (I can´t believe this is the end) L

This is the last day but I don´t think it would be the last post related to the work done as part of social service in a beautiful place located in the mountains of Chiapas. I am satisfied with the effort the students made to commit to the class and the activities and sometimes the things they haven´t done due to some lack of engagement activities. I really appreciated and valued those moments too, because they make me find and try strategies to motivate them to attend classes and find English language interesting, fun and meaningful, moreover contextualized to their background, traditions. Empathy was the key for successful completion of social service, with this I refer to try to use some the words from their mother tongue to present content and meaning.

The things I need to work on is TTT, one of my weaknesses which directly affect students’ performance on productive activities, I don´t provide opportunities to express what they have learnt.

 What I have learned through this experience is how motivated you come to a class, with planned activities, designed and adapted material to foster your students to achieve the goals; I mean, as a teacher I always will have big expectations about their performance, but then you realize that besides all the things you have planned and designed, sometimes it is not enough to engage them to the activities. Moreover when a group was a huge success with a group and a totally disaster or time consuming with another group. But this is part of the teaching practice, it won´t be lineal, adaptations, seating rearrangements needed to be done by taking into consideration students interests, learning styles or just previous class they had.

I am very thankful to all the people who were part of this wonderful and learning experience, and who were always supporting me and encouraging me to do my best to make a difference on whatever I do.

I hope we can work together again, students, colleagues, facilitator and e-mates; you were part of this significant journey that is still contributing to my teaching practice and I will take with me everything I learnt from you all.

Sincerely,

Paola

Extraordinary exams

As part of the social service I was required to design the extraordinary exam for first grade. So here I have attached what I have delivered to the academic coordinator in order to fulfill with the assignments as part of the school duties.

Peer observation

As part of the final activities needed to carry out before finish the social service period, a class observation is a must. Therefore the best option to do this was to find a colleague who was available to visit my classroom and do peer correction. This is not new to me, and I usually take part of projects that PhD students do and ask me to help them by coming to my classroom and carry out observations as part of they research. I find this very important to my teaching practice, because I can learn something from what they record or take notes.

Due to the place where my school is located, the best option to be my observer was a colleague who has been teaching for more than 12 years in rural and urban areas. I told him to be honest and that I definitely won´t feel bad is something wrong came out, because the good thing about peer observation is to learn from others, to have another opinion. It is not the same to observe yourself if you watch photos or videos recorded by us, so it means we are being both judge and interested party at the same time; then it wouldn´t be objective.

He told me that my voice is too loud and it might scare students sometimes and won´t be willing to participate or volunteer. Also regarding coverage of students, he suggested not to loose attention to all the students, don´t focus on just some and include all of them.

When giving instructions, he suggested asking students to model or repeat what they have to do, so it is a good opportunity to us the target language and focusing on the class. And something that he considered very important for the future is to avoid TTT; he told me I needed to teach my students to produce and become autonomous.

He liked the activities because it promoted interaction and collaborative work, he congratulated students because they were very engaged to the activities and always willing to contribute to the team and asking the teacher what they needed to do next.

The recommendations were to manage time between activities, because it took more than expected and it is important to manage in order to reach the objectives of the lesson, otherwise, students would be going home without a task unfinished.

Partner Professional Dialogue

Last week a colleague and gathered in order to have a professional dialogue. She agreed to meet me after her morning work; she has been teaching English since 2007, she works with indigenous students too, but the main difference is that she has these students in a city, they all have came to work and study to get a better lifestyle.

Since I have given the lessons plan before meeting her, the first thing she did was to show me the comments she have written about my lesson plan and this feedback helped me to notice something I missed during planning.

She pointed out that maybe due to the kind of activity, community involvement was not present in the lesson plan. But at certain time, it would be a good idea to arrange parents to visit the language classroom and provide an opportunity to share what they know (experiences), about their context, which will and motivate students to compare with their native language (i.e. tales, traditions). At the end students will be sharing about their context, which represents what they really are.

What she liked the most was the joint productive activity regarding preferences, how students work collaborative and engage to the task. But the only problem she found was that if ss design the chart, it will be time consuming, because, they have to cut, paste, etc, for sure Ss will work as a team, but it will be better to bring the chart prepared.

Here is when I told her that I have implemented with a group, and that was exactly what happened to the class. The teams did not achieve the goal because they ran out of time. So I agreed that it would be better to recycle what the first group did and ask other groups to use pencil to mark the answers so they can erase once they finish.

The content is contextualized, because the vocabulary included is easy to identify by students, sports they all practice. But she asked to stick to sports with balls, just to avoid confusion among students.

In conclusion she found the lesson plan well done and provides students opportunity to interact among them, work as group.

4th of July(singing)

Hello peers, I want to share with you a video with my students practicing the song we want to perform on July 4th as part of cultural part of the English class. I hope they can learn by heart the song, we still have a week. They are actually working at home on their American flags.

Joint productive activity (Sports-likes and dislikes)

Since joint productive activity relates to teacher and students working together to experience language learning process. It is recommended when the teacher and the students are not of the same background, the reason it applies to the place I am doing social service. My students are indigenous people whose mother’s tongue is tseltal.

The first session was designed to introduce the topic likes and dislikes through sports.

The activities in the second session were designed to promote interaction and cooperative learning while focusing on content (expressing preferences).

Students were motivated to work in teams, since they already know each other; I allowed them to group according to friendship. But when I saw teams with an extra member, I asked to get together and group another team. Actually I asked some of the irregular students to work together in order to provide an opportunity to work hard and make the effort to achieve the goal. By the end, they were the last one to finish, but they did it by their own, and I was monitoring and asking if they need any other material (tape, scissors, or glue).

Likes and dislikes

For this class I planned to bring authentic material with me. So, what I did was to bring a soccer ball to introduce sports and how we express preferences about them.

Students were actively involved during the brainstorming part. Then during the second part, they participated with enthusiasm showing me their preferences according to the question I have asked. Finally, they produced written task by answering 3 questions. (Do you like swimming/soccer/horse riding?