Notes from the teaching practice

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLTQZ9taZBo This week I’ve decided to watch a video focusing on phonological awareness. For that reason, I’ve chosen a material from Susan Jones. Before that, I watched a short video explaining the distinction between phonics, phonemic awareness and phonological awareness. It was done by the literacy specialist from a youtube channel called Learning at the Primary Pond.  I’ve noted down the main idea behind each of these concepts: phonemic awareness - awareness of the individual sounds, e.g. identifying sounds, manipulating phonemes phonological awareness - all ways of working with sounds, e.g. rhyming, identifying separate words in sentences, syllable blending, phonological awareness includes phonemic awareness phonics - connection between letters/letter combinations and the sounds, e.g. knowing what sounds the letter may represent Going into the second video , I was more conscious of what it was going to be about. Knowing what it means, I ...

MY CHALLENGES/ AIMS FOR THE FUTURE What are the areas I still have to work on? What is my action plan? What/who will help me to achieve my goals? I always feel insecure when it comes to classroom management. I still have too little experience in this area to not feel anxious when a new situation occurs. So I need to work on that, and also get used to this feeling of discomfort while approaching something unknown. I feel that now I’m more sure of the path I would like to follow and the importance of new experiences. I want to find my voice and my way of forming relationships with students and working in the classroom. I believe observations are a great way to learn, however the best way for me is to try out the difficult things and actually reflect on them. Because of my own insecurities, too often I settle for something I know how to do. I wish to take on more challenges and step outside of my comfort zone. I want to experiment with different approaches and methods, not only those I en...

 ATTITUDE TOWARDS PUPILS Can I maintain classroom discipline? Am I respectful and kind towards all pupils? Do I correctly recognise and assess pupils’ skills and needs? Do I differentiate instruction according to pupils’ individual profiles? During my Bachelor studies, I really struggled with classroom discipline. It was partly due to students’ age and the behavior that was accepted by their teachers. The other reason was my lack of self-confidence. I wasn’t sure what I was doing and it showed. This time, I got a chance to work with disciplined students, who were mostly willing to listen. I once wanted to befriend the pupils and they didn’t listen to me and didn’t treat me as their teacher. I believe this time they treated me as an outsider, and it helped me maintain a different relationship with them and gain respect and trust. I still struggle with the discipline but I know new ways to pull myself together and find useful solutions. Being respectful and kind towards pupils was an...

 MY POTENTIAL AS A TEACHER   My professional attitude. Am I interested in entering the teaching profession? What are my attempts to perform competently? Am I creative and flexible? Am I mature enough to work in this profession? (work under pressure, accepting criticism, being open to others’ needs)   Before these studies, I didn’t have a clear plan about my future. I knew I wanted to work with children, and that was really the only clear thing for me. After past practices, I thought I’m more shaped for individual work or with small groups. I didn’t feel comfortable in the classroom, where I had very little control over students. Now, I got quite a few chances to test myself in different situations and I got better at it. I’m not sure if I want to teach English, but I’m certainly interested in working with CLIL. I’m amazed by how different learning English can be from what I remember from my school days. Each time I’m asked to do something, I try to do it as well as I can....

source: own presentation   On Monday, 11.04 I conducted my fifth and final lesson. As in previous days, there was a fellow student observing my class alongside my mentor teacher. It made me a little bit more stressed than usual, though I then managed to focus on the lesson. Remembering how just a few days prior it actually helped to have more adults while supervising the group work, I’ve decided to use it to my advantage. I was excited about this lesson, as it was going to be the first time I was conducting a math lesson, and it was in English. What was the lesson about? The topic of this lesson was connected to practicing addition up to 100 and solving mathematical tasks. Lesson aims included: revision of the structure I have … asking and answering How many … ? questions revision of the vocabulary: fruits ( strawberry, watermelon, orange, banana ) and vegetables ( pumpkin, cucumber, onion, tomato ) revision of mathematical vocabulary: addition, plus sign, equals sign, answer cate...

source: own presentation The second post will cover three lessons, as they were thematically connected and were conducted one after the other (during two visits - on Thursday and Friday, 7th and 8th of April). This time, I asked for a challenge and after discussing it with my mentor teacher, I’ve decided to prepare lessons about adverbs of frequency. This time, I felt really unsure about the amount of knowledge students will acquire. I spent lots of time trying to choose the most fitting words for them and explaining these terms in the most understandable way. What were the lessons about? The topic of these lessons was introducing adverbs of frequency. Lesson aims included: introduction of new vocabulary: adverbs of frequency ( never, rarely, sometimes, often, usually, always ) revision of the vocabulary: everyday activities ( read a book, watch TV, do homework, listen to music, call a friend, go to school, play with friends ) introduction and practice of sentences with adverbs of freq...

source: google images, own presentation   The next three posts will be about the classes I conducted during my practice. The first post is devoted to the first lesson, while the second one covers lessons 2-4 and the last post talks about the last lesson I got to conduct. After a series of not-so-challenging microteachings, I started with a topic that I found a little bit difficult, especially when it comes to explaining it to young students fully in English.   What was the lesson about? The topic of this lesson was connected to introducing new verbs. Lesson aims included: categorizing words into verbs, nouns and adjectives identifying the verb in the sentence naming previously introduced verbs differentiating new verbs ( build, make, grow, fall, watch, bring ) making collocations with each of the new verbs What I planned? I planned a few stages of the lesson: warm-up - identifying objects, animals, people and places, reacting to instructions introducing the topic - naming verb...

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3d2U01e71I The video I’ve decided to watch this week focuses on activities to teach phonemic awareness. As the one in the previous week, it’s by Susan Jones - former literacy and early education teacher. She talks about various activities to introduce to learners at different stages of phonemic awareness. Susan Jones introduces six types of activities for phonemic awareness: Phoneme isolation Blending Segmentation Addition Deletion Substitution At each of them, there are specific activities for learners. For example, blending the phonemes requires students to connect the sounds they hear to make a word. Once they’re able to do so, the teacher asks them to name the separate phonemes. Then, new words are created on the basis of those previously taught. Most of the activities proposed by Susan Jones are short and not time-consuming. It’s important that students work with words listened to and not written down. These activities don’t teach them to ...

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRuuvC-vmU4 This week, I spent some time on sight words, which is the topic I started exploring last week and wanted to know a little bit more about. I’ve decided to watch a video of Susan Jones, former literacy and early education teacher talking about working with young learners. I listened to the video of her talking about sight words and examples of activities for classroom use. In this material , she talks about three different activities: phoneme mapping, multi-sensory approach and comparing, sorting and matching words by sound. The first activity she introduces is phoneme mapping. She: shows the word and asks students to repeat it out loud segments the phonemes in it asks students to separate each phoneme in it (finding them in the written word) extends it by introducing sound boxes - choosing correct box, fill it (e.g. with play doh, cubes) Second activity is based on a multi-sensory approach. It’s supposed to further practice what was in...

source: https://katahdingroup.com/melissasblog/2015/9/14/8cc8ysylm067e0irepa6qfo1febkd2 Yesterday, me and my colleagues had a chance to attend another webinar. This time it was a lecture about executive functions conducted by Mr. Ben Shifrin. The presenter is a headmaster of Jemicy School, set in Maryland. Its goal is to educate students with learning differences, including dyslexia. Mr. Shifrin has experience as a special education administrator and engages in various organisations, such as Learning Disabilities Association and National Association of Independent Schools. The presenter started the webinar by explaining the connections between neuroscience and learning. He also briefly introduced dyslexia and dyscalculia. While talking about executive functions, he first listed some of the most important ones, cognitive processes needed for them to work correctly. Then, he described the development of EFs and how and which EFs contribute to building reading skills. Mr. Shifrin spent so...

source: https://www.twinkl.es/blog/what-are-compound-words   Before conducting the whole lessons, I started with some chunks of them - once it was just a 15-minutes introduction of new vocabulary, when the other time it turned out to be the whole 45-minutes. I got a chance to conduct microteaching activities, starting on 13th of January (while still observing the class) and finished on 14th of March. Two times I introduced new vocabulary (film genres and animals and their homes), once I introduced a new concept (compound words) and the last time was me conducting a reading session (introducing the topic of music). While observing the class, I really wanted to see how students interact with the teacher and each other. I tried learning their names - though it worked only partially - so I made a graph with classroom settings and pupils’ names. I also paid attention to possible disruptive behaviour and ways in which the teacher keeps students focused and engaged during the lesson. All ...