This document is a final report from a primary teaching practicum completed by Naiman Lorena at Colegio del Sur in Ushuaia, Argentina in 2015. It discusses observations from three English lessons with a fourth grade class. The report notes that the students had a very good level of English from receiving daily lessons. It also highlights the excellent classroom management of the teacher, Mariela Waczynski, and how she was able to create a respectful environment where students were organized and on task. The report concludes that good organization, mutual respect, and partnership between schools and families are important for effective classroom management.

1. LENGUAS VIVAS DE BARILOCHE
FINAL REPORT
PRIMARY
Naiman Lorena
Taller de Práctica Docente
2015

2. Introduction
The institution where I did the primary practicum was Colegio del Sur. This school
offers private primary education and it is located in Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego.
I chose this institution as I work in it too. I work at first and second forms and I did
the practicum with the fourth level. The institution offers a complete school day,
students start lessons at 8 am and finish at 16:40hs every day. The school’s curriculum
includes several extra subjects as chess, visual arts, dancing, music, technology, and
they are trying to include theatre. The subjects that are given the most importance and
attention are physical education and English. The school presents important projects
regarding those two areas and it is well known in the community because of the
education it imparts.
I had the chance to work with fourth level students at public schools, but I`ve never
had the opportunity to work with this school fourth form students. I could see them
every day at the entrance assembly but I had no contact with them not even with their
teacher as we work differently.
As the English lessons last three hours I had the chance to do the practicum only
with three lessons; one for observation purposes, and the other two to give my own
lessons. Although it took me less time than the conventional, I had to plan 120 minutes
lessons which took me a long time and were difficult to deal with.
The original aim of the project was to get familiar with the group of students and be
able to adapt the way I give lessons to the student’s needs. Sometimes it gets difficult
to create a rapport with the groups of students because of the short time we have to
work with them. I would have liked to get to know the group a little bit more, but I think
that will happen to me with all the groups. I’m too curious and I like having good
relations with my students.
The pedagogical perspective I followed was the Communicative approach, and to be
able to comply with this approach visuals, comprehensible input that is a little bit further
than the students level and interaction are a must. I tried to use flashcards, word -
cards, videos, and digital presentations; I used English during the whole lessons and I
also encouraged group and pair interaction.
Development
The lessons are long and the teacher has enough time to practice communication
and develop all the necessary skills. These students have English lessons every day,
so their level was very good. There was a boy who has been living in Europe for many
years, so he had a native like accent; I really enjoyed talking to him and the rest of the
group was very interested on what he said. Besides, the group enjoyed working with
the video and with the presentations, they are used to working with ICT though. They
also enjoyed the book stories they find in their course book, and I think I helped them to
assimilate the vocabulary they were working with as they could make connections
between the words and the pictures. I also offered another story to work with, that even
though it wasn’t a myth, it was a fable, students enjoyed it the same and worked with
the meaning and message of the story the best they could.

3. I believe that the group teacher, Mariela Waczynski, bears a great relationship with
the group, something that lets her trust her students and the other way around. She
even teaches students some relaxation techniques that let students get in contact with
their bodies, the earth and the significant other, all that before beginning the lesson so
that they get ready and clean their minds. The teacher also showed a great ability to
manage the group, students were trained and were aware of the need to keep up to the
training. Therefore, I had a great example to follow, so I decided to work as organized
as I could and to follow the same structure of the lesson that the group teacher had.
During the experience I learned that time management, self-organization and group
management are really necessary to work such a long time per lesson, every day, and
to be able to offer a lesson that is worthy for students to attend to. Personally, time
management was a drawback as I got lost with the activities, but at the end I made a
great effort to overcome that drawback.
This experience has been deeply meaningful to me as I got the chance of working
with a group with an advanced level of English of about only eight or nine years old. I
mean that they are really young students going through the learning of a new language
who showed a good manage of the language at such an age. The possibility of offering
more opportunities to use the language and also to present different materials to work
with regarding the topic the group was working with was like lighting up the lesson,
adding more meaning and why not, more enthusiasm to work with the material.
I believe that the lessons I offered the group were good lessons that gave students
the opportunity to talk a little bit more and to participate more. I had a great time
working with this group as they behaved very well and were organized in the way they
worked. I’m satisfied with the lessons I gave but I think that I could have adjusted the
time limit for each activity a little bit more.
I think that observing the teacher working in such an organized way made me think
that working through good organization and mutual respect in the classroom is
possible. Sometimes I find myself working with groups that are difficult to manage as
they include students with different difficulties and also because in state schools there
exists a different reality, and we give very few lessons in comparison with private
schools lessons. However, group management is necessary in both situations, but I
feel that if we don´t get constant training, group management could also be influenced.
Conclusion
Nowadays, group management is one of the most important aspects that the
teacher should be able to cope with. However, it is one of the most stressing factors
when working with children.
Sometimes it happens that families tend to believe that they send their children to
school and that is enough. Working with values and morals is one of the factors that
influence group management. Respect is another aspect, and if students aren´t used to
respect family members, they won´t respect their mates. If families don´t take
responsibility of their children´s behavior, we as teachers won´t be able to do so. The
school and the families work hand in hand, the families should impart respect, morals
and values, and the school should do the same and add the teaching of the necessary
knowledge that will enable our students to cope with life in the future.

4. Therefore, I admired the group teacher’s ability to manage the group and I was
surprised by her intentions of teaching or opening the lesson with relaxation
techniques. Those two aspects put together, and the importance that organization had
during the lesson made me realize that I could actually work with the group offering
them a wide variety of options in my lessons. I felt even better when I saw that students
behaved really well. The lessons I gave were very different from what the group was
used to work, but I tried to take into account all the group teacher’s strategies so that
students didn´t lose the track of the lesson and didn´t modify the way they were used to
work. My idea was to keep emphasizing respect, organization and a good timing for the
activities but offering a different perspective to work with the language. And I think I
finally did it.