Last Teaching Experiences

During my last week of teaching I continued assisting the teacher as much as I could. We reviewed material from previous lessons because there are preparing for the extra class assignment, and then the oral exam. So, I decided to prepare an activity to review animals. I designed a very cute Animal´s Bingo for them to identify animals when I named them. It is very simple because cards contain only six animals. The idea was to have the chance to apply it on 1st and 2nd grade, and played more than once. The game was very successful at both levels, but especially at 2nd grade because they work better in pairs than 1st graders. Also, the second grade was a smaller group so I was able to monitor if they were performing the task correctly. They looked very excited and motivated about playing the game, and all of them participated a lot. For me, it was a success because the game reached its pedagogical purpose which was to help students to identify animals by pointing out through a game.

On my last day of teaching I was very sad because I did not want to go. The expirience has been amazing, and I would love to continue teaching to this adorable children. I wanted that kids were able to remind me like a very funny teacher with very cool activities. So, I decided to take advantage of the topic about traditional games to design a very fun activity. The lesson was very simple. I just had to showed them some items, and emphasize the difference between traditional games and modern games. For that purpose, I brought some real toys. Kids got very excited as soon as I showed to them because all of them wanted to play, so I had to ask them to go back to their places until we finished. So, after we were done with the activity, and after I checked their work, the teacher allows me to go outside and play with them for the last few minutes. It was very fun. 

Self-Teaching Evaluation

Going back on time a few weeks, I can be able to recognize my own strengths as a teacher, and I also realized about which are my areas of improvement. Among my strengths I would like to include patience. I like to treat people in the right way, I don´t yell and I don´t talk in a bad manner. I take the enough time to decide what I should say or what should I do before saying something that I would regret. Other of my strengths is that I am very reflective. After every class, I always analyze what should I have done better, and my observations helped me a lot to understand kid’s behavior and also to realize about their preferences or learning styles. I also work hard on researching the information I need to teach better and on designing the most appropriate activities to cover the topics. I am dedicated to my students, and to improving the teaching-learning process. I also like to use all the resources available to do something different on every lesson.

On the other hand, some drawbacks could be class management. Sometimes I don´t have the enough authority to control kids’ behavior. I believe that sometimes I lose control over kids because I like to become one of them when I teach. I like to play, and I like them to feel comfortable with me, but this could be tricky because when they see you as a friend they don´t think you have the authority to disapprove their behavior. Other drawback could be my tone of voice because children are very noise and they have trouble to listen to me sometimes. I think that to overcome these drawbacks is just a manner of practice and gaining experience because the only way of learning how to deal with children is just by doing it.