Journal Week 8

Journal #8

In this week the students reviewed the adverbs of frequencies and habits. In one of the activities, the students classified healthy and unhealthy habits. The advantage of this theme is that students will become aware of the life habits they have. So these activities help children learn new vocabulary that is used daily and in their environment and how they can modify their habits of a healthier way.

This week I put a text for students to learn to understand the texts and thus have the ability to take general ideas. The paragraph is about a boy named Roberto who had unhealthy habits. Then the students wrote a paragraph about the healthy habits Roberto should have to always be healthy and energetic.

Students learn to code information and be a little more critical of the reality around them.

Journal week 7

Journal #7

When you are a child, you always dream of being a professional person, for example, I want to be a doctor to help the sick. This has been one of my favorite classes because the topic motivates students to obtain a goal. Start the class by asking them Do you like to help? How would you help someone? It is good to make students aware of the importance of helping others through community work.

We analyze some types of jobs, for instance, being a firefighter, helping to put out fires or lowering cats that are trapped in tall trees. Through this exercise, they can identify their skills to help others. For this, I asked them to choose a profession and why they decided to choose it. Some students wanted to be a police officer, to lock thieves in jail; They drew themselves like cops.

And for the students to live the role of that work, I asked them to create a dialogue and to act as that community helper.

It was a very cool activity because the students lost their fear of acting and had fun. 3 groups could not present due to lack of time, but I qualified them for the effort they made and during the break, they presented me with their dialogues.

Students who speak English but with family activities must be encouraged to feel safe and motivated to work in class.

Journal Week 6

Journal #6

My students like to play a lot, and I thought we could play in the playground and put English into practice. Taking advantage of the fact that in that week students were learning the interests and hobbies in English and of course using the "I like" (Example, I like swimming). I decided to play "The king likes". The king likes running and all the students ran; but if a student was wrong, he had to say an interest or hobby in English.

Students liked this activity and I noticed that they learned a little. Sometimes we as teachers are a bit selfish and do not share with students in a more playful way and not necessarily be in the classroom. We must bear in mind that students are children and they need to be entertained with some activity, this is due to their imperative.

One of my students told me "Professor, I like English classes", it is a good reward for the teacher to know that his students are motivated and that they enjoy the classes.

What makes a good teacher?

What makes a good teacher?

Being a teacher is one of the most difficult jobs in the labor market, but it is also one of the most important jobs. A teacher must be patient, glider and recreational. Some teachers want to show fear to the students to take control of their behavior and shape them in their way. A true teacher has love, went through teaching and looks for the way for the student to have fun learning and to have critical thought. 

Before, the teacher was the boss and the only bearer of knowledge, and the students had to think like him. Now the teacher is only the guide and students are free to think as they think it is. Thought must be critical and not in the same mold for everyone.

Bicycle metaphor

Bicycle metaphor 

I compare the bicycle with the learning process. A child is not born with all the knowledge but he or she learns during he or she grows. This happens the same with the bicycle, when you are going to ride a bicycle for the first time, you will fall because you do not know how to ride one. Through practice, you will learn to ride a bicycle and you will gain more experience. If you read a book or study on your own, you will learn a lot and maybe more than other people. The person who helps you hold the bicycle and impulse you would be reflected as the teacher who guides you along the path of knowledge. I would also compare the bicycle in a competition, because in our lives the more knowledge you have, the more valuable and valued you will be. It should be noted that in this life it is a competition, and wins the best as in a bicycle race.

Autobiography

My autobiography

My name is Bryan and I was born in January of the year 1998. I was born in a beautiful and small city located in the south of Colombia. I grew up in a humble family, we didn't have enough money but we had plenty of love. When I was a year old, my mother and I moved to a town far from the city. I finished my primary school at Don Quijote de la Mancha school, but I also studied a part of the elementary school at Loma Linda school, and my childhood memories were trapped in that small town. There I had my first good friends and with them I learned many things, for example, to ride a bicycle.

After I finished elementary school, we moved back to the city where I was born. I felt at home again and made new friends. I lived with my mother and two younger sisters. Unfortunately, I did not receive help from my father; In Latin America, it is normal that fathers do not help raise their children and this has meant that the number of mothers head of household has increased. I forgot to say that my parents divorced when I was 1 year old. I studied sixth grade at Oliverio Lara Borrero school and then they changed me when I was in seventh grade, at Inem Julián Motta Salas school. When I was at Inem School, my academic performance began to deteriorate, and my grades were very low. I changed in this school, and this happened because I did not make good friends, and they just led me astray. That year I lived with my grandmother because my mother had moved to a town near the city. My mother, to prevent me fail the school year, decided to change schools. I finished my seventh grade at Ecopetrol school.

Later, my mother found better opportunities in the city of Bogotá, so we moved to the capital of Colombia. There I started studying at the Republic of Mexico school, I was in eighth grade. It was a very difficult year for my mother because we were alone, we had no family there. We sometimes had to get home after school and cook our food because my mother was working. At the end of the year, we decided to come back to my hometown because our whole family is there. I finished high school at Oliver Lara Borrero and wanted to enter university.

I wanted to study medicine as my older brother but unfortunately, my state test score was very low, so I had to decide for a bachelor's degree. I liked biology and my highest score was in biology. But I decided to study English because I always dreamed of living in the United States of America. I liked to study for a degree in English but because I wanted to learn another language, but I didn't want to be a teacher.

When I started taking subjects in pedagogies and mini-practices, I began to hate this career. I did not want to be a teacher because it is a very difficult job, teaching 35 or more students is a great challenge. My challenge was more difficult, because I am a short and thin boy, so I appear to be a school student and not a university student.

Last year I started working in an elementary school. The first months for me were very boring and stressful, not only for the students but for the parents. The teacher was the bad guy, the hateful one who didn't love the student, but it isn't. I began to change my way of teaching, so I focused more on students being motivated to learn English than to put high marks. Now I am proud to be a teacher and I am passionate about teaching. I am aware that the role of the teacher is very important for children because we are the ones who cultivate that seed of knowledge in their minds and we are like their second father or mother.

I am currently finishing my degree in English and working in a school. I am not only teaching English but math and Spanish.

Journal Week 5

Journal #5

The role of the teacher is very important in the student, because the teacher is responsible for cultivating that knowledge. In order for the student to feel motivated to learn, the teacher must find a way to get their attention and for the student to learn while having fun. The students do not practice oral skills very much, so I made the students play a role play. The topic was about descriptive and personality adjectives, and the best way to put it into practice is in a conversation. I looked for a guide about the description of the zodiac signs and that, based on this, they created a dialogue where one of them would interpret the sorcerer and the other student the consultant.

The first part was a bit difficult because students were not used to these types of activities and were afraid of making mistakes in front of their classmates. They did  the dialogue, of course with my help. The first group showed a lot of fear, but the following groups broke the ice and did so with less fear. All students could not present their dialogues due to the time limit, but I think the most important thing is that they have worked in class.

Students also learned the types of accidents that can occur anywhere and how we could prevent them. The advantage of these accidents is that they are very common in everyday life, so the students assimilated it very quickly.

Journal week 4

Journal #4

As an English teacher, I would like to teach children in a more recreational way. The classes of these students are a bit boring due to the grammar-only approach and repeating texts from the book. Students can learn faster if they are interested in the class and for that, the teacher must motivate them. Even that can also happen to us as an adult, if we are not interested in something, we simply ignore it. For this class I brought a human body where students must locate each part of the body and paste balls of tissue paper to fill in the blanks; In this way we substitute colors for paper. This activity not only helps students learn English but also strengthens their motor development.

This activity worked because as a teacher I managed to get the attention of the students and that they were interested in working in class, and of course, in learning English. For students it is a great change, because each teacher has his way of teaching, his pedagogy and they like the way like I teach. I really like working with students from sixth grade because they are still children and you can do many activities with them.

Journal week 3

Journal #3

To know if the students are really learning, I did a mini quiz where they had to complete the sentences with an adverb of frequency. The results really vary depending on the student, because each sentence was a daily routine. One student had breakfast at 7:00 a.m and another student had breakfast at 8:00 or a student always played video games or another student never played video games. The purpose of the quiz is for the students to put into practice what they have learned. One of the best ways to teach English is to teach within a social context. So I made the students in groups of 3 students, create a dialogue using the simple present, either through daily routines.

Students are not used to speaking in English, this is because the teacher does not focus on this skill but on grammar and vocabulary. Maybe the ability of speech has not been so important because the government does not evaluate it. I think students must learn to speak in English so they can create their own ideas or express ideas of others and most importantly to hold conversations with native and non-native speakers of English.

At the beginning it was not quite a success, because the students felt very limited vocabulary.

Journal week 2

Journal #2

The students already know the grammatical rules of the simple present. The advantage of they know the grammar rules is that they can already do sentences (affirmative, negative and interrogative) and they could even form sentences without knowing exactly the meaning of each word.

After the students learned to use the "simple present" tense, I wanted to teach them the adverbs of frequencies. For this topic, I did a pyramid in straw cardboard and then I divided this pyramid into 6 parts. In each part, I wrote an adverb of frequency (Always, usually, often, rarely, never). It was the best way to teach them because they could differentiate each adverb according to the size that was divided into the pyramid, for example, the end of the pyramid is the largest, so students identify it with the adverb "Always". So I understood that students also learn with drawings.

As the next item was the clock, I decided to do a clock and they also did one. To teach them to tell the time, they must first know the clock's parts. For example, the clock has 3 hands, the first-hand dials the hour, the second-hand dials the minute and the third-hand dials the seconds. This way of teaching helped me a lot in that the students understood the topics better. The error of a teacher is to teach the class without taking into account the "background" of the students because even some students do not know to tell the time in their own language, in this case in Spanish.

Journal week 1

Journal #1

Teaching is one of my passions because in it I can share my knowledge and experiences. When we want to work with a specific grade, the first thing we should do as teachers is to know the students and know what they want to learn and how they would like to learn. Some teachers think that being the grumpy and selfish teacher is good pedagogy for children; This way would only serve to maintain class control taking into account that students obey out of fear of the teacher. But where is the pedagogy? Will children learn English? In my lesson plan, I started with a greeting and a big smile. Then, I introduced myself and made them introduce themselves with their names and their expectations in the class.

Later, we made some agreements to fulfill them in all the time I will be with them. One of the agreements is the participation in class, fulfill the tasks and hand homework on time, be early in the classroom and good behavior in class, for my part, I will not be a grumpy teacher and be as flexible as I can with so that they learn. That exercise was very good because the students looked at me like "The good teacher" and I could notice the desire to want to learn more.

In the other classes, we did several activities in order to learn to use the simple present in everyday life (Topic that the students were seeing that week). It was a very nice experience and how a good stimulus can make them change their way of behaving in class and motivate them to work in class.