lunes, 8 de junio de 2009

Coming back

I went to the school a week after we took the exam and showed them to the students. I was pleased with the results, although in some particulars cases I felt disappointed because two good students didn't get a high grade, and I didn't know if this was due to a lack of interest or what, yet in class they participated a lot and seemed to have understood everything!

I told them also they final grade, brought out of a mix of class behavior, participation, homework and the exam. Only 5 students failed my unit, although few others don't have a grade because they go to the 'reforç' group and I don't have enough materials to evaluate them with the specific criteria they might need.

Once I am done with my final exams at the university I will go and see them while having the end of course activities. Since I already promised them to stop by again and say hi!

I am quite pleased having had some time back, overall now that is finals period, but somehow I miss them and how nice were in general. Oh well, I'm sure I'll see them again anytime soon during this two last weeks!

Exam

The 7th hour of my unit consisted in an exam I originally prepared for them, related to what we had done in class.
After they finished the exam they were asked to complete a piece of paper evaluating me as a teacher, answering the following questions:

1) What did you like most of the classes?
2) What you didn't like from them?
3) What will you change?
4) Did you learn anything?

The feedback was really positive, extremely. Although I'm quite aware they don't see me as a real teacher, therefore it's easier for them to grade me positively and since I'm just teaching a limited number of hours it's easier for me to make them interesting and exciting. I already explained that with more detail in my final report.

6th hour as a teacher and last!

On Monday 18th of May was my last class as a teacher, besides of the exam the class would take in a couple of days.
This class was mainly a sinthesy class, because I wanted to a review of the materials before we did the exam. We did a bit of warming up, as usual, a bit of chat about the weekend, about the soccer...Then I implemented an activity from the text book. I found a really interesting text related to computers world and the evolution of the new technologies in there. I used the audiovisual material that comes along with the text book, it was a track, where the students listened to what was said on it and then they told me what they understood from it, they answered also some questions related to it that were on the text book. That was the only time when we got to use the textbook, but I really found the track nice and clear, better than the ones I could have found.

We did another listening and then those exercises related to it. Always letting the students to participate, express their doubts and try to correct among themselves. My tutor always adviced me that is better to use example they give to us, or allow them to correct themselves, because somehow it got more "interiorized".

After that, which served me as a review for vocabulary and grammar structures we played some games. I brought from home several pieces of paper, on one hand one contained sentences such as: a scanner. And on the other hand, the rest contained things such as: is used to scan documents and images.
So they had to match the different pieces. There were three groups, and everytime any of them finished I would go over there and let them speak out the whole sentences. If it was ok, then they have a point. After, we switch pieces of paper with the group next to us. There were three groups, and they were competing quite hard among them. It ws really funny to see how they accused each other to cheat and so on. We ended up even!

Then we did a running dictation -following the same group structure- with a text about the video we just saw. I was moving around the class, in order not to give advantage to any of the teams who were closer to me. They were all sweatie and messy! running and crashing against the desks. I laughed really hard! I wish every class could be like this one.

At the end, one group got more than the first paragraph totally right, the others were a bit mess up, but it was cool. He didn't quite get the thing that need to talk among them, otherwise they are checking the first line all the time!!!

And finally I gave them a photocopy with the lyrics of Johny Cash's song, Hurt. They didn't like the song, they didn't even know who he was! I felt so indignated!! And they dared to tell me off because 'this guy isn't famous'. I just hope that maybe one or two got trapped by Cash music and I was able to open a bit more their minds.

And that was the whole session. I remind them we were having an exam next week.