My 3rd class in Basic English level

It was on Monday 18^th the day I taught my last class in the basic level. I felt I was prepared, and, this time, I felt I was comfortable. I had to develop two activities. One was a fill-in-the-blank activity, and the other one was a free practice in which they had to write a paragraph about themselves. The topic was Daily Routine activities.

As a warm up, I put some pieces of paper in a plastic bag which contained some daily routine activities. Voluntarily, every student was going to pass and performed what the piece of paper said. The warm up was successfully done since they were practicing the simple present, and at the same time we all were having fun with the mimics the students made. I spent 10 minutes in the warm up.

Once that they were familiarized with the topic, I put them to work in pairs. They were to complete a fill in the blank activity. I gave a reasonable amount of time for them to complete the exercise. Then, I checked along with the class. I did the first exercise, and they kept solving the rest. I asked individual questions. In this exercise I took around 15 minutes. I still had approximately 20 or 25 minutes to develop the second activity, which was about daily routine activities; however, (again) my tutor did not allow me to finish my class, so basically that was all I did in my third class. I think I did a good job. Nevertheless, I got like a disgusting feeling because I was not given the right time to develop the class. I think that that also affected my grade. Anyways, I tried to give my best when teaching and I know grades are just a parameter of what we do. Hope you all guys had better experiences.

2nd teaching practice

In my 2nd teaching practice, I was not confortamble with the first activity since ,under my view point, it was sort of complicated; furthermore, I knew it was going to take lots of time to be developed, and I did not understand it at all. I started the class with a general greeting asking about the things my students had done on the weekend. Then, I kept on developing the activity which was about family members. I told my students to work in pairs but then, because of the time I did not complete the activity. For sure that I knew that the teacher was going to notice that the activity was not achieved as it should  have been. I spent about 15 minutes on it. The next 15 minutes were spent in the presentation part. Here, the students had to used the book. There was a reading about the description of some people which matched with a picture of them, and the class had to inferred to which member of the family in the picture  was the descritption they  were reading. As I said, I was not comfortable since the beginning. I must say that my second experience on teaching was one of those that are good because of the mistakes that you obtained from it, so that next time you take them into account for  you to improve, modify or  totally change everything. Even bad things have positive points.

I will not give more minutiae of the lesson. What I can say is that there was not coordination of some points in regards with what I was supposed to teach due to the miscommunication that I had with the teacher. I also want to say that I did not have the time I was supposed to have to teach my lesson. I was given only 30 minutes. Sincerely, this was not a good experience at all since there was no flexibility or freedom to teach the lesson. I could not change anything in the lesson plan (this does not mean the lesson plan was wrong) and since that moment I had bad sensations about it. Anyways, it is done. I want to believe that next time will be totally different.

Voicethread vs Voxopop

Voxopop enables you to start an asynchronous discussion with other people using their onwn voices. You just send them the link to your created discussion.




Voicethread is similar to Voxopop, also good for a synchronous discussion, the difference is that this one allows videos reponses and also it automatically plays the whole sequence of speakers one after another.

Both of them are wonderful tools. Personally, I prefer to use Voicethread because I think it is more interactive than voxopop. You have the alternative of making a comment either recording your own voice, recording a video, or by simply texting. So there is flexibility in that sense since not everybody might have the equipment necessary for recording a video or recording their voice. So, in case this happens, you can perfectly type your comment which is something that is not possible in Voxopop.
Voxopop does not have that versatility. It gives you no choice, while Voicethread gives you more than one altternative. In Voicethread you can even upload an image,  a Power point Presentation and even sharing videos from youtube adding your personal opinion about it. I would say that both are useful, if we see, both provide the chance of  developing the speaking skill, and at the same time listening. Depending on your view point, conditions, and purposes you might make a choice between them. It's up to you.

The hardest skill to develop

The listening skill is mostly the one that is hard to develop for the majority of people. As it is a process which does not have rules to be learned or developed, people find very difficult  to cope with this skill. The accent tends to vary from person to person, so this makes this skill even harder to be developed at the beggining. However, people always find many ways to train themselves on this skill.

Listening to music helps a lot to develop this skill. Teacher might include some music or singing sessions to make the process dynamic and easier.

Watching movies in English is also helpful to train your brain and develop the listening skill. When these sort of activities are taken to the classroom the results are better.






As we can see, there are probably many other resources to  develop this receptive skill in a more attractive and easier way. These above mentioned are just the most common. It's a matter of creativity of each of us; however, if we have a teacher who provides ideas like these one is cool. We're surrounded by this beautiful language, so there's no excuse to develop this skill.

The lack of interest due to misuse of technology

Experts debate whether today's kids are helped or hindered by their immersion in technology

Nowadays, there are many factors that might hinder directly and indirectly the teaching learning process; one of them is technology in general.  I interviewed a teacher and asked her to respond these questions:  is there any problem in your class that affects directly the teaching process? What do you think the possible reasons could be? Taking into account those reasons, what might be done in order to avoid the problem?  What would you recommend to do? Her answers were pretty nice, under my view point. To start, she mentioned that one of the main problems is the lack of interest and the time they (the students) spend developing activities which do not contribute to the learning process.

She said her students do not usually present their activities on time due to they have been playing videogames, chatting, playing in the computer, etc. To this, she attached the fact that the time spent on these activities is not controlled by any of their parents or caretakers; “at least it does not seem to be like that”, she said. At the same time, this causes their students to be sleepless on class which also affects their attention and, therefore, their performance goes down. She said that this is a problem which affects the process from both perspectives, directly and indirectly. Indirectly because it affects the students outside the ongoing process that takes place in the classroom; however, this same reason has a negative impact when being in the school.

In order to keep away this problem, she said it is something that might be achieved gradually along with their parents. They need to educate or re-educate their children in that sense, but first teachers need to educate parents; “it cannot be possible that children state how things must be done at home”. She said that making reference to the fact that nobody says anything at home of how and when to use the computer, or playing video games before doing homework, etc.  She says that it would be right if parents get aware of this problem by putting maybe a schedule at home so that the child gets used to it, and in that way, they would start noticing that in order to play or doing any other activity, they must follow and respect that schedule.

Finally, she gave me her general view point about this topic saying that it can be easily noticed that technology is something necessary in these times; however, it might have an undesirable impact in our life if we do not educate ourselves with the use we do of it. At the same time, she added that parents need to establish rules which constructively help their children not only in the teaching learning process, but also in a general manner in which gradually the child becomes disciplined. To finish, she told me this “remember that a child who is going to school is a responsibility not only of teachers, but also of the whole community which is involved in the process while this one is growing up”. It is important to be aware of what is happening not only in schools, but also in the environment which surrounds the child.