“Journal writing primary”

Taller de Práctica Docente- Barth María Pía- Nivel Primario- 1
“Journal Writing Primary”

Trainee´s name: Barth María Pía
Practicum Level: Nivel Primario
Group: 6° Grado
Date: Wednesday 5th, August 2015.
Lesson Number: 1
Today it was my first class as a trainee teacher in primary. As I’m doing the practicum in the
school I’m working in, I did not have to introduce myself and I knew the students very well.
I’d planned the activities very carefully taking into account the Communicative Approach
since I consider that the language has to be taught in order to communicate, and I’d also
planned the activities based on the CLIL approach. In my opinion, CLIL is a good approach
to plan our lessons since it integrates different subjects, and we can also use it to relate the
language to real life. My main philosophy when I have to start planning a lesson is to engage
my students in the learning process and help them to become autonomous learners.
During the class, I’d used different teaching strategies to cater for my students’ attention.
Firstly I’d planned activities taking into account their differences and their learning styles, I’d
also integrated the activities in order to encourage their participation. Secondly, I’d created a
relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere, but always retaining control in the class; and providing
conditions so that the students can understand the activities. Today it was not necessary to
use any of the management strategies such as the “1,2,3..silence please” because they
worked very good.
The students were comfortable with the lesson, they behaved awesomely. They were
interested in the topic of pollution, almost all of them were very conscious about the
environmental issues that are in the planet. They really enjoyed expressing their opinions
about the topic and providing possible solutions. As the projector is new in the school they
were very happy to use it to watch the video.
Becoming a teacher is fascinating, it’s an experience in which we must focus on our own
teaching skills at a conscious level as we move forward in the practicum. I really enjoyed the
lesson, I think that it was successful, and the activities were accepted by the children.
However, I found that I did not take a lot of advantage of the video, I think that it was very
interesting for the students, and I planned few activities to make use of it fully. For the next
time that I plan an activity watching a video I would like to include more activities while, pre
and after watching it.
Comentario [1]: How is this related
your choice of approaches?
Comentario [2]: learning needs?
Comentario [3]: the planet goes
through
Comentario [4]: =) How does the u
of audiovisual material enhance the
learning process?
Comentario [5]: Any bibliography i
mind you would like to consult?

Group: 6° Grado
Lesson Number: 2
It was my second day doing the practicum in 6th form at Jean Piaget School. The whole
lesson was based in the Communicative Approach and the CLIL Approach too. The general
context of my lesson plan was “pollution”.
The students showed themselves very interested in the topic. They are a nice group and
they like to do things in order to help others, so they really enjoyed working with this topic in
which they can help the planet. The activities were communicative, at first I encouraged
students to brainstorm the vocabulary that was previously introduced on Wednesday. After
that, we watched a video that introduced different ideas to help people to save the planet. I
think that students were interested in the video and topic, but they wanted more. I mean that
in future activities involving videos I have to exploit them a little bit more. In general, the
activities allow for language exploration and development of language awareness.
I’d also prepared a big brochure to model one of the activities in which students made their
own brochure to help people to be conscious about pollution. The model of brochure was
one of my teaching strategies to model and exemplify the activity. Other activities that I
applied were pointing and paraphrasing while I was explaining.
In my opinion, the activity in which students had to design their own brochures was very
effective, students were motivated to work. However it demanded extra time to finish. So,
next time I’d like to devote more time to developing these kind of activities.
Comentario [6]: How?
Comentario [7]: Good!
Comentario [8]: Great job, Pía! Ma
sure you revisit bibliography from
Didactics to further develop your less
plans and activities. :)
Cecilia

Group: 6° Grado
Lesson Number: 3
It was my third day doing the practicum in 6th form at Jean Piaget School. For this class I
based my lesson planning in the CLIL Approach since this approach offers students many
possibilities to use the language meaningfully by learning new contents through the
language, and some of the activities included in the lesson planning contribute to develop
learners’ autonomy. I also included communicative activities to foster students’ motivation
and engage them in the learning process.
Today I had to adapt some activities since many students were absent because they were
in a Badminton tournament. In general students behaved very well and they were not
disruptive. I didn’t have to apply many classroom management strategies such as writing the
word “DICTATION” and clean a letter every time that I had to say silence because they just
listened to me when I called their attention. The classroom atmosphere was nice and
students worked well. Students presented their brochures in groups, and the other groups
listened to them. I asked them to take down an important idea from each presentation in
order to have a purpose for listening to their mates. The kids were engaged and motivated
with the topic. This is a group that enjoys helping others, so they were interested in listening
to others’ ideas.
On the whole, I like the lesson that I planned and how it worked. However, I would like to
include some different activities to introduce new vocabulary and lexis since I realised that
students knew the places where I usually hide the words. I would like to introduce the
vocabulary using a new or different game. Today, I was trying to figure out new ways to
introduce vocabulary, and I remembered that Penny Ur. suggests many ways to introduce
lexis and vocabulary, so I’ll consult the book “ A Course in Language Teaching” in order to
find new ideas. For next class I will have to adapt some activities from this class since we did
not have enough time to finish them.
Comentario [9]: Indeed, Pía! They
work really well! You have establishe
very good rapport with the group!
Comentario [10]: Excellent idea! It
advisable to go back to this and othe
authors you have studied in Didactics
and to the units themselves. =D
Keep it up, Pía!

Group: 6° Grado
Date: Tuesday 18th, August 2015.
Lesson Number: 4
Today it was my fourth class doing my practicum in primary. In general the activities were
based on the Communicative Approach and CLIL. I integrated the skills of listening and
speaking by showing students a video about “Sustainability”. I encouraged students to watch
a video and talk about the meaning of the word sustainability and the ways in which their
actions can contribute to it.
The students enjoyed the video, and the worksheet that I prepared to work with was very
useful. Then we continued playing a game in which I included some movement to engage
students. The children seemed to have fun with the game that I introduced, I asked students
to put some vocabulary under the correct title. We did not have enough time to finish the last
activity that I planned, the one in which students had to complete the tree with causes and
consequences, so I explained it to them and I asked to do it as homework. The class’
atmosphere was very nice in spite of a student who did not want to play the game. I asked
him to play the game and when we were in the middle of the activity I had to stop it because
he didn’t want to play. But at the end of the class he worked properly and collaborated , I
think that he didn’t want to play since he’s having some familiar issues and he’s a bit upset
with that.
In conclusion I could say that really enjoyed the class and working with the activities I
planned.
Comentario [11]: It is important to
know about this, Pía. Good!
Comentario [12]: =)
Try to go deeper into the lesson
analysis Pía. I know this may be diffic
as they are your own students. Pleas
in your next entries, answer the
questions included in the journal
guidelines.
Way to go!
Cecilia

Group: 6° Grado
Date: Friday 21st, August 2015.
Lesson Number: 5
It was my penultimate class as a trainer teacher in primary school. This lesson was planned
taking into account two approaches, The Communicative Approach and the Content and
Language Integrated Learning Approach. I based my lesson plannings in these two
approaches since I consider that we, language teachers, cannot teach a language without
taking into account different social context factors such as culture, society and language.
That’s why I tried to include a relationship between the activities and these factors.
I included different types of activities, some of them to wake them up and to stimulate them
as oral work and the bingo game which students loved to play.I also included some activities
to calm the class down as watching a video about Global Warming and complete a
worksheet and reading comprehension questions. The CLIL approach helped me to include
activities considering social and cultural factors, for example I encouraged students to think
and reflect about the effect of human impact to the Earth. As usually, students were involved
in the activities I planned, they enjoyed working with this topic.
Some of the teaching strategies that I used during this class to help students to understand
new terms, for example “melting” or “landfill”, were modeling, exemplifying and explaining
Today students were a bit talkative so I had to apply some management strategies too, I
wrote the word “HOMEWORK” on the board and I cleaned some letters, however it was not
necessary to clean the whole word since students started to behave properly.
My biggest mistake during classes in general is that when I’m nervous I tend to speak
without thinking so I tend to make some language accuracy and language mistakes. I think
that is my biggest problem so I’ll have to improve it. Today, timing was not adequate, I
planned a lot of activities and we could not finish some of them, but I prefer to have more
activities than less… Next class I will adapt the activities which we could not finish this class.
Comentario [13]: Was this the only
purpose of the video session?
Comentario [14]: Right! What
matters is quality learning, the amoun
of activities is not that important if
learners benefitted from the lesson.

Group: 6° Grado
Lesson Number: 6
It was my last class! As usually I based my lesson planning in the CLIL Approach and the
Communicative Approach. I consider that working with both approaches as well as being
beneficial, it’s also advantageous since the learning process occurs through exposure,
communicative activities and it also promotes motivation. I tried to plan every activity taking
into account the group’s interest and different learning styles and students’ characteristics. I
also tried to include a meaningful context to raise learners’ awareness of environmental
issues.
During the lesson I applied different teaching strategies, I checked students comprehension
of instructions by asking them to repeat or explain the activities in their own words. In the
activity in which students had to close the promise to the Earth I did my promise model to
show them my own example. In general, I tried to involve my students in the activities by
showing, explaining and demonstrating each activity.
Students seemed to enjoy the class and the activities. They showed that they were
interested in the importance of taking care our planet, and looking for some ways to help and
change the World we live in. They enjoyed the box game, however, in my opinion it took too
long since I included a lot of cards .
In my opinion one of the aspects that was more successful during this class was the rapport
with students and the material I found. I think that the material was, in general, interesting for
students and they enjoyed working with the topic. I really tried hard to get new and appealing
resources to plan.
For future experiences I would like to continue improving my language accuracy and fluency
since I think it’s essential. I would also like to continue searching and investigating new ways
to introduce vocabulary and grammar in the class. I’ll revise my Didactics’ material to get
new ideas for the next practicum period!
Comentario [15]: Excellent!
Comentario [16]: Congratulations
your outstanding work, Pía! You may
now upload this file with comments to
the campus. Way to go!
Cecilia

“Journal writing primary”

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“Journal writing primary”