5th WEEK: STARTING MY DIDACTIC UNIT

Yes! I have already started with my Didactic Unit! And I must say I’m quite happy with my work, I like the activities I have prepared for them and they seem to like them too. However, I’m a bit disappointed with their homework… but, let’s start for the beginning!

On Monday, I decided to go at 8 o’clock since I thought Fran started his didactic unit, unfortunately, he was supposed to start it on Wednesday, just like me. Nuria did a review with 3th of ESO b: some vocabulary, some grammar (must/have to/should… related to school rules) and at the end of the class one student did a presentation about her town. I must say she was very nervous but the presentation was quite good, taking into account that Nuria hadn’t corrected it.

Afterwards, I wanted to show Nuria the final activities I was going to use for my UD. She thought I could start that day, so I rushed in order to have everything ready and printed for them, I started getting nervousssssssss. My office version is very different from the one that there is in the highschool, so it changes everything and I had to modify it again…
We decided to do just the first activity which was an speaking activity based on a survey, I had my PowerPoint presentation ready, I showed them an example, told them to work in pairs, and gave them a paper with a survey about fast food. One of them was going to be the survey taker and the other one had to answer the questions without looking at them, then, the other way around… They behaved quite well, but I was very nervous since I hadn’t prepared myself for starting that day, anyway, it was good experience.

On Wednesday, I observed Fran doing his Didactic Unit. And with my class, I continued with the PP presentation, we worked with some vocabulary related to cooking and food. And I gave them their first homework: write two questions for a survey we were going to do about food habits, I had created a wiki for them and I showed them how to do it. When I finished the explanation, I looked at the time and there were just 3 minutes left! I had also prepared an extra activity in case we finished before we did.
I was veeeeeeery happy with that lesson, I wasn’t nervous at all and they behaved very well, really.

I also observed a 1st of ESO because they were going to talk about mediatons. In this highschool, there are some students who have done a subject about mediations who are mediators. They try to solve problems among other students by listening to them (first separately, and afterwards, together) and making them sign a kind of agreements until the problem is solved. I think this initiative is a very good idea. The mediators, who were from 2nd of ESO, explained to them how they could contact them and what their function was.

Finally, we observed a couple of oral presentations for the research project from 2BAT. One of them was based on Disney films, the girl was pretty nervous and did the whole oral presentation in English (that was new for me), and the other one did it about Budism, her English level was very good but the oral presentation was half in English and half in Spanish, and she wanted to show too many fragments of film… They reminded me when I had to do mine, which was about Spanglish, but I did it at the end of the course, that has also changed.

On Thursday, I had a reading comprehension for my 3th of ESO a, but we didn’t have time to correct the exercises, because we had to spend quite a lot of time to explain it. Moreover, at the beginning of the lesson we lost time since I had to talk to them about the homework. Just 8 students out of 23 had done the homework… I was quite disappointed because that day I wanted them to complete the survey online with some of their questions, but as some of them told me they had had problems with the wiki and some of the questions were not appropiate for a survey, I gave them a couple more of instructions and gave them another chance to do it for next Monday. My tutor also explained to them, what they already knew, that she and I would grade the activities and everything we did in class. Let’s see what they do…

4th WEEK

Unfortunately during the 4th week I couldn’t do much at school…
On Monday, I did another observation and participation in my class with a couple of listenings and exercises from the textbook. They behaved quite well but I must admit I was still a bit nervous.

However, on Wednesday, my class had an exam that took almost the whole hour, so I could do nothing, and on Thursday we had class at 8 o’clock and I was supposed to start Unit 4. Unfortunately, my tutor forgot to mention that there was NO lesson since there was a “strike” (a nice start for my birthday…). Anyway, it was better than I thought because I met my tutor and we spent a lot of time talking about my Didactic Unit, which I had been preparing during the weekend.

Task for the weekend: finish my Didactic Unit, since I was going to start next week!

By the way I forgot to mention that, after thinking a lot about it, my D.U. is about the documentary "Super size me", that is to say: fast food, obesity... I think it's a very interesting documentary and they can learn a lot about it. I think they will like it, well, I hope so...!

3rd WEEK: LEARNING TO TEACH

Since I have almost done all the observations, this week I have focused on my 3th of ESO class, unfortunately on Thursday they had a trip, so I just could be with them on Monday and Wednesday.

I was impressed by how quickly my tutor was doing the unit they were supposed to continue on Monday, she explained to me that she wanted to finish unit 3 the sooner the better, so that I could start with them Unit 4 and have more time for my didactic unit. By the way, finally I won’t do my didactic unit about Physical Education, I’d rather choosing another subject that motivates them and motivates me, because Physical Education it’s a funny subject but when you practise it, not when you study it, or at least that’s what I thought when I was a teenager, I still have to decide what would be my Didactic Unit about, I need to think about it.

Although 10 o'clock is not a good hour, they did a lot of things: past continuous, some adverbs, and also a listening about a robbery. These kids don't write down in their notebook anything unless you tell them, they pay attention, they look at the blackboard and read the sentences or vocabulary that the teacher writes, but they forget to write it down for themselves if you don't tell them... I have also realized that it is very important where children are sitting since it has a considerable influence on the development of the class. From now on, "K", the little clown (I say it affectionately), doesn’t sit near the teacher, but at the back of the class, and guess who sits behind him? Little chatterbox number 1, I don't understand the reason of this change because it is not making any improve, quite the opposite, “K” distracted some other students who usually paid attention. I think that when I start with my didactic unit, I will ask my tutor to change them again and sit them where they sat before: near the teacher’s table. The last 15 minutes, Nuria decided to talk a bit about Halloween and La Castañada (what we and they do and eat) in order to give them some new vocabulary.

In 2BAT Nuria gave them an extra sheet about complex modal verbs, some translations and some fill in the blanks. It was amazing how different were their levels, by the time 2 girls had almost finished, the rest of the class had just started translating sentence number 2 and about students had almost no idea about what they had to do or how to do it. I can’t understand how these kids can pass from 1BAT to 2BAT, cos I mean, it is not the same as passing from 4thESO to 1st BAT… Nuria told us that they would get stuck in 2BAT, or maybe they would try to do their best on the other subjects (copying or doing whatever) and they would hope to pass 2BAT if there is just one subject, in this case, English, which they are not good at.


On Tuesday, I did another activity with my class as you can see in the picture, in this case: a listening from the book. Nuria told me that it would be a good idea to read first the questions they would have to answer before they listened to it because they will know the pronunciation of some words. Doing this activity, I realized how important is to know students’ names, I mean… I already knew that was important and I knew some of their names but when I tried to do the questions about the listening I just could remember two of them: little clown and little chatterbox (by the way, don’t take this as an insult, I know they just like to make jokes and chat, but as I cannot use their real names…). I thought that “M” may knew the answer, as it was a very easy one, but he demonstrated that he was not paying attention, or he may didn't understand the listening, I don't know. And I knew for sure that “K” would not say the right answer, even if he knew it he would say the opposite, in order to make his classmates laugh. Luckily, after these two questions they all started saying the answers at once, so it was much better. Fran recorded me while I was doing the activity: I have to improve a lot of things, I’m constantly saying emmmmmmmmm errrrrrrrrrrrr, I still have to speak louder and my tutor said to me that I need to gesticulate more, I know body language is very important, but when I’m in front of these teenagers I just forget, so I will have to work on it. It was a great idea to bring the camera, I could see myself in action and, above all, it will help me to improve and learn from my mistakes. By the way, in order the solve the problem with the names, my tutor asked the students to write their names on a paper for the next class.

2nd WEEK: FIRST ACTIVITIES

This week I had to start doing my first activities with my class. I decided to prepare a crossword about the text they were going to read on Monday in class, so I was going to do a vocabulary activity which would also test their memory. I didn't think my activity was going to be very difficult for them, but... I was not sure, I didn't know how much time to give them, and I knew some of them would finish sooner than others so I had no idea how I was going to do it.

On Monday at 8 o'clock I started my day at IES Lluis de Requesens with 3th of ESO B, my tutor started the new unit and they read Harry's story, and then, it was my turn. I was pretty nervous because of all the doubts I had, but I started: "Please, close your books". I didn't give them much information, I thought there was no need, they knew what a crossword is, so I gave them the paper sheets. I also told them they could work in pairs if they liked and that they had 5 minutes (as Nuria suggested me, cos she told me that if you give them 1 day, they will take 1 week to finish it, so it's better to say less time and then you give them more if they need it). I was pretty happy because all of them were working, even the 2 students with more difficulties! I must say I had prepared another crossword for them, well, in fact it was the same but they had the first letter of each word to make it easier for them. However, I could see that one or two had already finished while the rest had just started. I had also thought about it so I told them to put the sentences in order, so they could do something else meanwhile. I told them that the 2 students with more difficulties were going to give them some clues and they told them the first letter of each word. But the truth is that, I didn't know how to continue, well what I did not know is when I had to finish the activity and correct it, I asked my tutor, who advised me that they have had time enough so that they could correct it themselves checking their answers in the book. When the activity was over, Nuria asked them to give their opinion about me and my activity. They didn't say much, some of them thought that it had been a nice activity, but they didn't say anything negative a part from my tone of voice, which should be louder. I love this class. It was a good practice but I knew Nuria had lots of things to tell me about my activity: I should ALWAYS talk in front of the class, I should explain everything STEP BY STEP (or even write it on the blackboard), I should be aware of my body language and my tone of voice... Everything was very constructive so I tried to do it better with 3th of ESO A, my class, taking into account everything Nuria told me, and in theory I did it, or at least, that is what she told me. But I wasn't so happy as I was with 3th of ESO B, 3th of ESO A was visibly shaken, it was the last hour before they break so they are just looking forward to finish class. And as I said, even the 2 students with more difficulties in group B tried to work, but in group B they just copied, which was a bit disappointing because they also had the easiest crossword. Well, I guess there is much work to do with this class and I would learn much more with them. Unfortunately, 3th of ESO B is not reality.



Between these two lessons, I also attended a 2th of ESO, they were working with a dialogue about music. They also behaved very well, even when the teacher had to leave because she forgot to bring the listening she had prepared for that session. They worked with the dialogue during the whole hour, first reading it, then listening to it, afterwards reproducing it and finally creating a couple of dialogues with the same structure (Do you like x? I can't stand x. What about x?...) I tried to help those who needed help. My observations with a 1st and 2nd of ESO have been very similar, the lesson is done half in English and the other half in Spanish so that the children know what they are doing.

After the break I went with Fran, the other CAP student, to a desdoblament class of 2nd of ESO. There were 13 students sitting by themselves, so that they don't get distracted -told us the teacher.
Two students were expelled from class in less than half an hour, they confronted with the teacher and did not pay her attention, she threatened them to expel them, and so did she. I guess it is very difficult to control these kids when they act like this, you should have a lot of patience and that is not easy at all. I do not think these kinds want to try the teacher's patience, they just want to attrack attention and they hate to be told what they have to do, and much less if it is an order, and so they confront with teachers.
This class was doing Present Simple exercises, their level was quite low, apart from two students who where pretty good and were losing their time in a desdoblament class because there were not good at Maths and Catalan (the teacher told us that they may move these two students into the normal class). The rest of the students looked as if their minds were in somewhere else: drawing at the table, writing little notes, looking at somewhere else aside from the activities they were doing... I think here they do need to do something else, something new, something that really motivates them so that they paid a bit of attention. The teacher told us that on her last lesson, she explained to them some stories about ghosts and they were ALL paying attention and asking questions (in Spanish, but they understood the stories in English, well, maybe with some help...), and I really think that is a good start. Perphaps they could also do some Present Simple exercises but with a text that motivates them, or... I don't know, just try something different. I know theory is much easier than practice, but there is nothing to lose.

My last observation was in the Aula d'acollida, for those studens who don't speak Catalan. The class I attended was doing some exercises about the plural in Catalan, there were less than 10 studens, most of them from SouthAmerica and just one, from the United States. Some of them were working and willing to learn and a couple who weren't paying much attention... The teacher explained to me that these students spend from 10 to 3 hours per week in the aula d'acollida according to their level. They are not divided into groups according to their course, because they are not so many, but he told me he had another group with some Chinese students.

On Tuesday, we attended a lesson about Economy with 1st BAT, why? Because it was done with CLIL, that is to say, teaching Economy in English, and at the same time, learning English. The teacher tried to explain almost everything in English and if they didn’t understand then he explained it in Spanish. But, anyway, we were pretty impressed by the vocabulary these kids were using.

From 10 to 11, I observed another 4th of ESO. They were chatting all the time, and it was quite difficult to make them pay attention, the teacher had to have a lot of patience and repeat things several times in English (because their intention was to make the teacher explain it in Spanish, so that they did no have to think, but she didn’t let them twist her arm). I don’t know if it is because it was just one hour left for them to have a break , but I think that is the worst class I have observed. Their level was very low, and the ones who were good at English didn’t say a word (they just participated when the teacher asked them something by their names).

Then, our tutor, Nuria, gave us a questionnaire about becoming a teacher. We had to reflect on what was important for us, how, why… The truth is that she gave us a lot of information about what we could do if we were really interested in teaching, where we could find courses, what gives us points… It was a very useful and pleasant chat.

At 12:30 we all attended a Tutoria with my 3th of ESO A. Their tutor wrote on the blackboard everything they had to deal with during that hour: absences, interviews with parents, news (trips, competitions…), a game, activities from the dossier… It was just like the tutorias I had when I was doing the ESO, the only think that was new for me was the dossier, we didn’t have one, and it’s a shame, because it was a very interesting dossier, it dealt with important matters to discuss with teenagers and make them reflect on them, and also study techniques, which were very useful.



On Wednesday, I observed again 3th of ESO B, my favourite :P, and my 3th of ESO A, they had an exam. Our tutor has an unusual way of doing an exam, apart from doing two different exams, she makes them sit according to their English level, so that the ones who have a good English level are on one side, and the ones who are not very good at English are placed on the other side. She explained to us why: if somebody wants to cheat, instead of getting a 3, they may get a 3.5, but no more. She even told them why she made them sit like that, so that they knew there was no point in trying to copy. And in my opinion, it’s a very good idea to discourage them from cheating, I think I wouldn’t tell them why I make them sit like that, but there are not silly and they would realize it anyway. When they had finished, Nuria asked me to continue with unit 3, and so did I. We talked about compound nouns and did a couple of exercises, they were quite easy and the class behaved quite well, so I was quite satisfied. It’s a shame that the other student from the CAP forgot to record that moment :P

PS: I forgot to mention that last week the Physical Education Teacher gave me the material for topic of my unit didactic with CLIL, Nuria said I could do a more dynamic class with it, the topic is: Warm-up, but I really don't know how to do it, from where to start, etc. And although I think it could be a very interesting experience, I don't know if I will finally do it about "Warm-up" with CLIL.

1ST WEEK: FIRST IMPRESSIONS and FIRST OBSERVATIONS

My first week at IES Lluis de Requesens has been veeeeeeeeeeery busy. As I told you, I met my tutor Nuria on Wednesday. She was very kind but she gave me more information than I could assimilate by that time. I knew CAP wasn’t going to be easy but… There are so many things to do, to observe, to prepare, to work with... in short: there are so many things to LEARN. On my first meeting with her, Nuria even started to tell me about my Didactic Unit, which she thought it would be a great idea to do CLIL* (by the way, I didn’t know much about it, so she told me to get information about it, and so did I). I think it can be a very interesting experience to use CLIL, since, in my opinion, it's a very good way of teaching English without realizing that you ARE learning English a part from another subject, but the truth is that it is going to be a great challenge for me.
Nuria also told me a bit about her students, she said she had mixed ability classes, that is to say, students of the same class have different levels of English, and for that reason, I should prepare my activities at two levels.



On Thursday we had arranged at 9 o ‘clock in order to do my first observation which was going to be with 3th of ESO B. That was not going to be my class, because it was the only class that my mate Marc could do, so I could choose between 3th of ESO A or B, or even do my didactic unit with both. In theory, 3th of ESO A is my class, but we will see what we finally do, I may work with both groups.
To be honest, I was pretty scared about entering a 3th of ESO class full of teenagers, I didn’t know how they would react and didn’t really know what Nuria expected me to do in my first observation… First of all, she introduced me and asked me to seat in front of them, in fact, in her own chair, so that I could observe them. She told me to watch them carefully: the way they behaved, their English level… It was not very difficult to guess who was who. They behaved muuuuuuuuuuch better than I thought, Nuria told me 3th of ESO B was her best class but unfortunately I couldn’t be their teacher…

Next class: 3th of ESO A, where I would find my little monsters. They were not as bad I thought, I mean, of course group B was quieter, but they were not bad, they were just little chatterbox. They were more excited with my arrival (Nuria told me I was her first trainee teacher) and we also must bear in mind that it was 10 o’clock, so there was just one hour left to have a break an go to their beloved playground… Before we entered the class Nuria asked me to do the same exercise that she had done on the class before (a reading about the Woden Horse, Troyan war…), but I’m afraid I told her I’d prefer to observe my class, rather than start teaching (I wasn’t ready and I was too nervous). Before the lesson finished, Nuria had to leave because she forgot to bring their exams and they wanted to know their marks. She told them they could ask me whatever they liked, provided their questions were in English. I was in front of 25 teenagers by myself, but I tried not to panic. They started saying things like: are you married? Ask her something… But they didn’t ask me anything, so before they kept talking, I introduced myself. To my surprise, they were ALL paying attention to what I was saying. I could believe it, really. But I should have got up from the table and explained something else so that they didn’t start to talk again, but by the time they started to chat, Nuria entered the class. Now I think that she may did it on purpose, so that I had to stay just for a couple of minuts with them by myself, she told me that she likes to do that with CAP students, but anyway, even if she did it on purpose or not, it was good for me to realise that it was not as bad as I thought: I survived.

After the break, Nuria invited me to attend a pre-evaluation of 3th of ESO B. Honestly, I had never thought about it, and I didn’t know they did it like this: all the teachers got together in a classroom, including the coordinator and the tutor (who were in charge of the coordination), they had a form per student and the tutor asked questions to all the teachers in order to fulfill the pre-avaluation form for each student. The questions dealt with: punctuality, homework, behavior (if they chat a lot or get distracted easily…), studying (if they need to study more or if they were doing pretty well)… The tutor said everything about his students and the teachers discussed it one by one, perhaps some students do their homeworks for one subject, but not for the rest… Moreover, they discussed the possibility of moving a student from their class into “desdoblament”, or vice versa. When I was there, I was thinking how difficult is to take into account EVERYTHING, not only if a student is doing well or not, but also their family situation, if their behavior is better or not comparing it to last course... EVERYTHING must be taken into account in order not to desmotivate them and to do the best for them, and that is not an easy task.
After this pre-evaluation, there was another one but this time it was the pre-evaluation of 3th of ESO A, which was going to be my class, so I decided to stay in order to know a bit more about my students. I wrote down what I thought it was important to know about all of them.


On Thursday, I went to different classes in order to observe another levels, teachers etc. I observed the other 3th of ESO (group c), a 1st of ESO, a 4th of ESO and a 2nd of BAT.
3rd of ESO C was doing presentations, I was impressed by the level of English, I mean, they had some grammar mistakes but they could express themselves and the rest of the class understood them, they were able to communicate and of course, I was amazed by their memory. One of the students made a veeeeeery long presentation about Fast food without looking at her notes. When they finished, Nuria and the rest of the class said positive and negative things of their presentation such as: body language, structure, tone of voice…
1st of ESO was doing vocabulary about family. I sat down with a student with difficulties and tried to help him. He was happy to have a teacher just for him, and so he tried to work. They did a listening, which later on would be a dictate, very easy one: My name is x, I have one brother. My brother has a dog… He just catched the first sentece and a few words, and wrote “I” like it sounds “ai”. The class was working in silence, its teacher told me that at 1st of ESO you have to teach them discipline so that they behave properly.
4th of ESO was doing grammar, particularly about Past continuous. They had to correct the exercises their teacher had told them to do, and then she would explain the theory, she said to us that sometimes she likes to do it the other way around. The last 25 minutes we moved to the library so that two students could do their presentation, a very interesting presentation and an amazing pronunciation (one of the girls was native, so it was a quite difficult for her classmates to understand her, well, even for all the trainee teachers who were there!).
My tutor Nuria is also teacher of 2nd BAT, she had prepared for them a difficult exercise about vocabulary. She read an article of a newspaper about a sweatshop, they discussed it and afterwards she gave them the article but there were some words and expressions missing, and they had to try to fill in the blanks, it was not easy at all, because the vocabulary was quite difficult in fact. Five minutes later she gave them the answers in Spanish, and so it was a bit easier to complete the text. You realized that you were working with a 2nd BAT, they were not as childish as in ESO, and to work with them was easier, or at least, that is the impression I had.

On Friday I didn’t have to go to IES Lluis de Requesens, since Nuria told me it was going to be my day off and I had already seen almost all the courses and observed a lot of different levels and teachers. Nuria gave me some homework for the weekend which involved preparing an activity to do with 3th of ESO about a reading of the new unit they were going to start next Monday. I could do any kind of activity as long as it had to do with Harry’s story, perhaps a True or False, questions… I dunno, we'll see what I do…

PS: Sorry to publish this post so late...
PS2: Public transport is worse than I thought, it's better to go to the highschool on foot and do some exercise...

Welcome to my BLOG!

This is my first post on this blog about my practicum, which I will be doing at IES Lluís de Requesens, in Molins de Rei. This highschool is quite close to where I live, Sant Vicenç dels Horts, however, I don’t know how to arrive yet: firstly, because I don’t know Molins de Rei at all, and secondly because unfortunately I can’t take the car by myself yet (I’m taking some lessons in my driving school again, and I still need some more… :S). Anyway, there is public transport, so I’ll manage.

Tomorrow I have the first meeting with my tutor, Nuria Peláez, I’ve just talked to her, and we have arranged for tomorrow from 11:30 to 13:00. So, when I come back I will give you my first impressions about my new highschool and my “future students”... I'm looking forward to it!