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...
