JOURNAL NO. 1

I.E. EL ROSARIO - TESALIA

7TH GRADERS

MAY 2015

The advantage of working at I.E. El Rosario is that you have your own classroom. So students get to respect things that they feel are not their belongings (as it happens in normal classrooms). The class started when students arrived at the classroom and found words in the board. Those words were organized randomly all over the board.

The first task for them was to create a five-column and three-line piece of paper, where they would choose words at random. Those words were related to physical appearance, occupations, places, food and hobbies. A total of 40 words were written in front of them, since they had to choose only 15 for their bingo chart.

The activity seemed really attractive to them, since a kind of competition was created to win the first place: The one who completed the whole chart before the others.

As words were coming out from a plastic bag, I was teaching them the meaning through mimics, small drawings and short explanations. Sometimes they couldn’t get the meaning of the word, so I had to use Spanish for them to feel comfortable during the activity.

At the end of the activity, the student who completed the chart first was the one who had to remind the classmates about the meaning of those winning words. When doing it, some kind of positive tension was created, since the student showed some willing for completing the task.

After 3 students trying to tell the 15 meanings of their own chart, a student was the one who remembered those meanings, finishing the activity. This vocabulary game allowed my students widen their vocabulary in order to complete a task called FAMILY TREE. In this following activity, they had to present their family in terms of physical appearance, likes and dislikes, and occupations. In so doing, students felt comfortable since they already know the meaning of the required vocabulary.

JOURNAL NO. 2

I.E. LUIS CARLOS TRUJILLO POLANCO

8TH GRADERS

FEBRUARY 2015

Working in a new place is challenging since you have to face students from different backgrounds, without even knowing their behavior and their attitude towards English. So the class began when the teacher (me) entered the classroom. The students were skeptical since an unexpected silence dominated the classroom. I started greeting my students in a very basic English, noticing their faces when realizing the teacher was speaking in the target language.

Some of the students started pronouncing some words to get in touch with the new environment, although most of them were afraid of doing it. Rules were set to facilitate class participation, and a numbers introductory activity was explained.

Students began to participate counting numbers from one to ten (1 – 10) challenged by certain rules. After noticing how enjoyable was to participate in those activities, students felt engaged to use the target language with random vocabulary. The following exercise was creating a huge snake shape, where everybody was lined up, with a head and a tail.

In the order they were seated, they had to say a word in English, following the sequence and remembering all the previous words said by their classmates. Students felt the tension of saying words in English at the same time they were struggling to avoid forgetting the words in order.

When a student broke the sequence, there was an empty spot at the snake’s tail, so that student had to move there. A very short Penitence was waiting at the tail of the Snake, and was just to introduce themselves with name, age, likes and dislikes, besides some additional info they wanted to say.

This was not that high-order thinking activity, and maybe students could not remember those words a week before, but I feel I managed the objective: To show them that English is not something to be afraid of, to make them feel they could use the target language in a very harmless environment.

JOURNAL NO. 4

CIUDADELA EDUCATIVA COMFAMILIAR COMFALAGOS

9TH GRADERS

MARCH 2011

One of the things I find really hard is to face a population where different incomes influence the classroom population. So the class has its ups and down since English level was easily influenced by the students’ background. Some of them came from private institutions and some of them, from a very low income public institution.

A very basic vocabulary for describing places was set to do the activity. They had to describe a place in terms of size, elements of it, surrounding places, colors, shapes and so on. After practicing inside the classroom, and giving them a basic structure to create the explanation, they had to prepare the oral presentation of their place.

By couples, they had do create a drawing in which they had to explain to their classmates the place they were in charge of. Without writing any word in the poster, the just needed to make the classmates understand the specific place. After creating the poster, I gave the instruction of taking all the materials needed to start a small tour all over the school.

Since we were visiting so many places, the idea was to stop in those selected places and perform a mini-presentation. The students in charge of the place just had to stand up (everybody else had to sit down) and present their drawing, comparing it with the real location. After some places had been presented, I started creating some discussion questions in terms of using comparatives and superlatives.

Since the school was so big, at the end of the activity students were tired of walking around, but engaged with the activity.