TEACHER’S SELF-EVALUATION
FORM (Journal)
JOURNAL #1
The practicum at
this time is necessary in order to improve your ability to teach a lesson, to
improve your way of teaching by reflecting on what you already have done.
This week was the first one to start my practicum. I will be working with ninth-graders from the Liceo de Santa Librada School. During the first week of
observation, I did not have the opportunity to analyze how they are learning
English and what is the methodology of the teacher because they did not have
classes. In addition, this week they are ending the third term of the scholar
year, so they are negotiating their grades and also doing the last project of
the term. Talking about the last project of the term, they were asked to make a
recipe and explained it. So they are in stands and using the target language
explained the name, the ingredients, and the procedures. I was there for the
whole week listening to them and analyze how can I teach them, knowing them and
constructing the rapport. They are all girls, they are kind of quiet and
flexible to accept a student-teacher because they used to have one. During the
process of listening to those presentations and knowing them, I got the idea of
how much they know and if they like or not the subject. Finally, I set a
set of students who love English rather than others who hate it. Also,
there are some girls who have a very high level of English and they are
interested in learning more. My cooperative teacher told me that it is important
to work in an adequate way with them because they learn but in a specific
time. To end that, I noticed that students are very participative in class.
JOURNAL #2
During this week
of practicum, I struggle so much in terms of starting the normal development of a
class. It was difficult to start having control of the class as if I were
the main teacher. Students are not interested in a class or in learning something
new from me, they were just wasting time asking the teacher for their grades
and talking with classmates. Additionally, the teacher did not do anything to
let me start the class, on the contrary, I think she did the same of what
students did, waste time. Also, I have
to be honest, the teacher did not give me the opportunity to guide the class.
The previous is to say that she was in charge of start teaching the new unit of
the last term. I did not have the chance to guide the class as I was planned.
I have planned
many activities for this week unfortunately just 3 or 4 activities were done
during the whole week. Regarding me as the student-teacher, I did not develop
this role at all. Next week I have planned to have a serious talk with my
cooperative teacher in order to let her know that I am worried about my
practicum. I am thinking of talking with her to give me ideas and to let me
start guiding the class or do the activities I am going to plan. Finally, some
advantages of the experiences I had this week are:
- I did an analysis of the students’ English levels.
- I realize how the teacher starts teaching a new unit
- I create some strategies to implement new activities which
catch students’ attention.
JOURNAL #3
Good news for this
week!
Fortunately, I
have the opportunity to guide a complete class. Actually just with one grade. I
planned some activities regarding the topic of the fourth module to the coursebook that they used. My intention with the activities was that they got
interested in the English class. I started by using English during the whole
class, it was so difficult at the beginning because they did not understand
anything, but later they started to get the message, to understand what I was
saying to them. This moment of the class was amazing because I realize that
it´s about practice their listening skills in order to develop the class as I
wish. There were some discipline problems because students talk all the time,
so what I did spontaneously was to create a new activity to make them talk with
an academic purpose. In one of the two hours classes I was interrupted by the
teacher just to her guide the class, but the rest of the week was me how did
it.
It is important to
reflect on what I learned during the program and what the reality when
teaching in a class is. I remember that the idea is not to teach grammar
directly in a class but using other approaches to teach grammar deductively.
During this week I realize that it is so easy to say it but in the practicum is
a little more complex. I have a preference to teach using the communicative
approach but it is so difficult
JOURNAL #4
This week was amazing for me, even though I had many problems
regarding some pedagogical aspects. During the courses that I have taken in the
program, I learned that it is important to let students be exposed to the
language. So for that, during my classes this week, I tried to speak in
English all the time during the class but I realized that students were not
understanding the instructions. For the first activity I played a video, it was
a short one, which has some sentences following the comparative and superlative
rules. The main purpose of this activity was to teach grammar in a deductive
way. However, when the video ends not all students had understood the content
of it. I cannot generalize because there were some students, like 6 or 7 who
understood the video, so they helped me socializing the content. Additionally,
I was happy because though they did not know the content of the video, they
realized those highlighted words which are the focus of the video in
order to work on the grammar. Later, the following activity was about reading a
photocopy with a short text with some comparative and superlative sentences in
order to complete the idea of what is the main topic of the class. This
activity was a total disaster, I have just one copy and I pretend one student
to collect money to go and have a copy for all of them and later start working
first on vocabulary, later on, the reading skill and finally in the grammar
structure of some sentences which were highlighted. The worst mistake was not
to bring the photocopies ready to the classroom because in this issue much time
was wasted. So, when I wanted to start the reading activity the time was over,
students got bored and they just want to go to the classroom, because this
class was developed in the lab. Something that I learned and that I am pretty
sure I am going to change is the way in which I gave instructions, get ready
the material to be implemented in the class, the types of activities I am going
to work with the different sources of materials and have a higher enrollment of
students in the class.
JOURNAL #5
After a weekend of
reflexion on how I guided my previous classes which were the first week. I
spent much time thinking about what activities I can do with them in order to have
more dynamic classes, also encourage them to learn and enjoy every lesson.
Before plan my activities I had my tutoring section with my asesor and I forgot
mentioned it in the previous journal. Last week was the first visit observation
from my asesor. Talking about the feedback section, He told me aspects to
improve such as the use of the lab, the use of the material, activities that
were implemented, and that I should try to plan activities in which students
have more participation. For this week, I decided to work with the same reading
from the previous week. During these classes, I started the class with a
dictation exercise. This warming up was so enjoyable for them but also very
difficult. The struggle too much with the pronunciation of some words so it
spent more time than the expected one. After that, I chose students randomly to
read out loud some sentences after I read them in order not only to improve the
way of pronouncing some words but also the meaning of the sentence. In this
sense, I took more advantage of the reading. Finally, I should say that I
implement many activities that involve students talking in English or using the
language for real purposes. From this practicum week, I strengthen my
relationship with them. So students started to work better and understanding
the topic. I was so happy because there were too god doing grammatical
exercises that they can share with all their classmates the correct answer of a
worksheet. Something that may I would change is the way of asking them if they
understand what I mean or when they had doubts and I answer or explain again an
exercise.
JOURNAL #6
It is not a secret that many of students who
entered to the teacher education program have not the intention to become a
teacher but I think that having experiences regarding teaching helps us to build
our identity as future teachers. For example, this week was amazing for me. A debate was the main task planned for the lesson for this week. During the
explanation of the instructions to be followed they were excited to participate
in the debate and for me was wonderful. Therefore, they understand the instruction given in English and participate actively in the class. Regarding the
pedagogical aspects I love how lessons were developed because from this week I learned
that I really enjoy what I have decided to do for the rest of my life.
