sábado, 22 de junio de 2013

My First Teaching Experience




During this first week the teacher assigned me to help her to introduce food vocabulary to 1st and 2nd grade and parts of the house vocabulary to 3rd grade. My very first experience was with 3rd grade, and I was so freaking nervous! I didn´t expect to be that nervous, but I believe that my biggest fear was not being able to manage kids behavior. So, on 3rd grade I presented some parts of the house with a big poster that the teacher gave me. I just had to explain the name of each part of the house and what do we do on each of them. For example: This is the bedroom, there is where we sleep on our beds. I used a lot of mime and different examples to be as clear as possible, but it was hard to make them pay attention. They were very distracted. I think that they were not paying attention because they didn´t see me as a figure of authority as they see their current teacher. So, I continue anyway and after the explanation they had to work on the book identifying some house items like the table, t.v, refrigerator, toilet, etc. I was monitoring their work, but many of them didn´t understand what they had to do, so I had to helped them.
Even though my 1st experience wasn´t as successful as I expected, I learned a lot from it. 
This same week, but on other day I was ready to teach food to 2nd grade. I brought my own flashcards, and I presented them in the same order as in the book. For each item that I presented they had to color the one in the book. When I asked them “What is this?” they answered in Spanish on the first flashcards, but then they started giving me the right answer on the next ones. I was surprised, but then I realized that they were just repeating the word from the flashcard. That was how I learned that maybe is not such a good idea to write the word on the front of the flashcard. Anyway, it was fun and after we cover all the items that the teacher needed I draw on the board one column of likes and other of dislikes, then, they came to one by one to draw one food item that they like and other that they dislike. After this activity I asked them to repeat with me the name of each item, and they did a very good job. The teacher was surprised because they behaved very well, and also all of them were willing to participate in the activity. She said that they were one of the most difficult groups to manage because they never stay on their places, so I am planning a very dynamic activity to reinforce this topic on next class.       

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