Entry 11: Final Teaching

                                                                                                                           

May 29^th, 2014

Unlike my first two teachings, I was really nervous this time. Maybe, it is because it was literally my final teaching as a student. The idea that this is my last chance to cover up the teaching skills which are problematic for me was very discouraging. I won’t have another chance to practice my teaching skills. I mean, of course, I will continue to develop myself as a teacher when I am pursuing my career. When I become a teacher, I should be perfect and this was the time when I learned how to do to that. When I have my own class, it will be a good thing because we will have our own class culture and everything will be settled then; but I know that when I make a mistake in the beginning there is no turning back. At least, I feel that way. 

 When I move to the lesson, I can say that I wasn’t completely happy about it. It was a writing lesson (postcards) and there was a reading activity in the pre-part. Students were supposed to read the postcards and answer the questions in the chart below. It was a total chaos for me. They didn’t understand the instructions. I have always had that problem. I would forget the instructions part and distribute the handouts and they wouldn’t listen to me. Yet, I made sure of it this time. I believed that I calmly explained what they are supposed to do while showing the postcards and charts. Then, I arranged the groups and started to distribute the papers. Some students insisted that they want to be with their friends in the group but I didn’t let them. While I was distributing the papers, some students were asking their friends what they were supposed to do. After I explained it one more time, they began reading. However, some students were standing and having conversation. No matter how I tried to make them sit and read the postcards, they weren’t listening to me. I was going to each group and following their work. They were so slow. Since there was only one chart and they couldn’t write quickly, that made them slow down. I need to hurry because that was only the pre part. I told them to go back to their seat because this activity is over and we are going to answer the questions. There was another problem waiting for me. Their groups split and they couldn’t read each other’s writing, even their own writing. We lost so much time with that. This was the worst teaching that I have ever experienced. After this part is over, things got nicer. I explained the instructions and I asked them “Is it clear” a couple of times to make sure of it. I showed the fictional places where they pretend to be writing from. That was the moment I caught their attention, I guess. They were excited and enthusiastic about the lesson, which flared my enthusiasm to teach. I told them they can ask me if they don’t know a word, which was a huge mistake. I wrote each and every word on the board thinking that I was helping them, but I wasn’t. Actually, I knew that I should lead them to use dictionaries and find the words they need on their own. Yet, our mentor teacher does it all the time. Once, she warned us about how we should use the board. When students ask some words, she would tell them and write them on the board randomly. And she said “don’t write like me, be organized.” She said nothing about the vocabulary part. Then, I thought it was okay to answer students’ questions. When I was in Ankara Gönüllü Takımı ( a voluntary action to help the poor kids with their lessons) when my students ask me each and every word in his course book, I wouldn’t tell them directly. I would tell him to look up in the dictionary or make use of the words which he already knew. By making connections…. And I knew this when I was a sophomore. Sometimes, we learn good things from our mentor and sometimes we don’t. I cannot completely blame her but the fact that she was the one who says I can fail a class observation in a job interview with this attitude has really shaken me. 

Entry 10: Present Continuous Tense

May 22^nd, 2014

This week, the students started to practise Present Continuous Tense for the first time. It is really unexpected because they have already covered Past tense. I don’t know why they follow such a sequence. I cannot think of a reason, either. As far as I observed, they frequently forget the auxiliary. Is it because they just learned the topic or is it because of “Simple Present Tense – Simple Past Tense – Present Continuous Tense” pattern? Maybe, their perception of present and past may be interfering with their learning process. All of the activities are controlled. They just need to change the form and fill in the blanks. As I mentioned earlier, students need to form full sentences, which is very dull. For example; 

A: Is Rose doing her homework now?

B: No, she isn’t doing her homework now. She is cleaning the house.

I know that they should get used to the structure but this isn’t realistic. As a part of lesson, teacher showed a PPT presentation which is about simple present vs present continuous. The PPT was about Simpsons and their life.

e.g. Bart always ________(play) football, but he ________(study) now.

One of the examples was confusing for the students. They said Homer does both of these all the time.

Homer ____________ (eat) all the time but he ____________ (sleep) right now.

Besides, they get carried away by the popularity of characters. We design our materials according to their interest and hobbies. We try to include their favourite characters, games, movies into the lesson as much as possible just to attract their attention, just to engage them in the lesson more, but sometimes they are more concerned about these things than the lesson. For example, every time teacher move to the next slide, they got surprised when they saw the different characters in Simpsons and they started to talk about them with their friends. That’s not something unpredictable but we have to set the boundaries.

Towards the end of the lesson, they wanted to play Hot Seat, which I mentioned before. Since they always play Hot Seat, their teacher made them play another game called English Wizz. (http://lingual.net/game/english-wizz/) It is like Jeopardy. They were really enthusiastic about the game.  They answered the questions in turn. Sometimes, some students got angry when their friends couldn’t answer the questions correctly, because they lose points when they give incorrect answers.

Entry 9: Reading Activities

                                                                                                                               
May 15^th, 2014

This week the lesson began with checking homework. There was a reading passage and the students read it aloud one by one. They were supposed to listen to their friends because a student should continue reading when someone stopped. Teachers use this method for centuries and I don’t know why. It isn’t meaningful. When students follow their friends, they cannot focus on the meaning and they can’t catch all the details. Apart from that, the comprehension questions were well-prepared: Multiple choice questions and cloze tests. I really believe that cloze tests are effective in learning. They can be a bit challenging because any word can be a question. Also, there were some referential questions in the worksheet. (What does “them” refer to in para/ line …?) I got surprised a little bit because I didn’t know that they ask this kind of questions in 4^th graders but I am happy about it. Referential questions are a good way of measuring students’ understanding of the text. It can be really important to know the agents of actions in some contexts.

They did the same writing activity. She wrote ten questions on the board. Since they will have an exam next week, they try to develop the students’ writing skills. I didn’t understand why they did the same activity twice but I think it is going to be the exam question. They don’t write too much. The main focus is always grammar unlike secondary school in METU College. 

Entry 8: Vocabulary Activities

May 8^th, 2014
 

This week, our mentor teacher made some vocabulary exercises with the students in the first hour. She introduced some unknown words to them and she gave them some keywords. The students tried to guess the meanings and the contexts where the words are used. They did semantic maps for each word and she asked them what comes to their mind when we say ……..? Students tried to draw some objects which can be useful for remembering the words. For example: a beaker for “experiment”, which I find very entertaining. Since they are young learners and they like drawing, this can be very useful. Some of the students may not like drawing like me but they can write related words next to each newly-learned vocabulary item which is similar to semantic maps is always a good way of remembering words. All students have their own style and it increases the diversity.

In some of the activities, she gave us a chance to “come on the stage”. At some point, she left the class to get something and I was leading the lesson. I realized that students haven’t grasped the meaning of “charity” correctly. It was pretty surprising that they think charity means poor. I tried to explain it without using L1 and it was like a big revelation for them and it was very funny. When our mentor teacher left the class and I took charge of the class, İdil asked me “Can I share something with the class?” I asked what it’s about. When I realized that it was something else, I didn’t let her. I feel like she always tries to manipulate the lesson when our mentor teacher isn’t around. Since she is a very strict teacher, she won’t put up with anything unrelated to class and the students try to use their chances when we are present.

By the way, the students have a class before their regular classes called “paylaşım saati”. In that hour, the students made an experiment about ants and they put their products in front of the window. When our mentor teacher saw that, she asked what they are. The students explained and our teacher said “You see? This is an experiment.” I was very impressed by that. It was so spontaneous, but very appropriate example. Then, she asked further questions about this experiment and she kinda drifted away from the lesson. The students are always ready to manipulate the lesson and they came to near the window and show the jars which belong to them one by one. 

Hot seat…….

I think it is a nice game and the students love to play it. The procedure is like this;

The teacher picks a volunteer student. S/he sits in a chair facing the rest of the class. T writes a word on the board and the students try to explain it. Another student comes and the one in the hot seat writes the new board. 

It is a very simple game, but they are dying for playing it all the time.

In the second hour, she gave them a writing assignment. They were required to tell about their last vacation. She wrote some guiding questions on the board such as:

•    Where did you go?
•    What did you do?
•    What did you see? 
•    With whom did you got there?
•    What did you drink/eat?

These questions were quite helpful. When students answer these questions one by one, they will end up having an organized paper. They need to use some conjunctions, but she also reminded them to use “firstly, secondly, finally” etc. considering their age and level, I think this is enough. 

 

This writing activity showed me that some activities can’t be done in all kinds of schools. I mean, these students have so much to tell. They have been to Paris, America, England etc. They tasted different foods and drinks. They have seen so many places. So writing can be a fun activity for them. They can enjoy what they share. However, the students in public school can’t go abroad to have a vacation, not even out of town where they live. For example, when I was in primary school, I used to go our hometown every summer and I used to do the same things. And I hated it when we come back to school and our teacher made us write about our holiday in Turkish class in the very first class of the semester because mine was always the same.

Entry 7: My Second Teaching

April 17th, 2014

Last week, one of the students said she read 9 books the previous day. We were really surprised at first but we learned that the books are online stories with pictures, so they are really short. There is a website called Bug Club which they need to pay for at the beginning of the semester. It has lots of books in its memory and the students can read as many as they want. The students told us that they really like reading short stories. That’s why we decided to do a reading lesson with a short story this time.

This time, I had a lesson with 4G. They are more motivated than the other class. By the way, I had written the “Today’s Plan” on the board at the beginning of the first teaching, which was something I learned from my mentor teacher last semester. 4C wrote it for us on the board but they wrote “Game” in each and every line, so they complained that there aren’t any games for this time and gave us a really hard time. Let’s move on with the lesson. I began the lesson with a vocabulary activity; just pictures and words. I think the pictures are quite clear for me but they couldn’t grasp the meanings of the words immediately when they saw the pictures. However, that was okay because they tried to guess some of them and it was more fun and effective. After their guesses, I explained the meanings clearly and I formed sample sentences. For the word “edge”, I said “I hit my head on the edge of table this morning.” And one of them said “Is it true? Did you really hit your head?” I was trying to think what I should say, because I didn’t hit my head. One of our instructors said “Don’t give an example of something if you didn’t really experience it. For example; when you introduce simple past tense, don’t say “I watched a movie last night” if you didn’t. At first, I didn’t quite understand the reason behind it but now it sounds so reasonable. You are going to share some of experiences with your students and build a relationship. We won’t just enter the class, teach and leave. They will never know for sure which one of our stories is true and some others are made up for teaching purposes and they will lose their trust on you.  Let’s go back to the problem I had in class. So when I was thinking what to say, one of the students said “Don’t be silly. Of course, it is an example.” Then, I was relieved and was able to say it is just an example. Why was I so concerned about this? I don’t know but when she asked if it is true, I felt like I lied to my students and I was exposed. 

For the reading part, I think I was so unlucky. Since they know the story from another course, it didn’t attract their attention. I tried to draw their attention with an origami crow which I made for this teaching. It kinda worked actually. However, I was planning to give the first half of the story to make them guess what is going to happen in the second half. This activity was also necessary for the post activity, because they will be making use of these ideas when they were writing an alternate ending. Since they knew the story they couldn’t generate ideas and I had to skip to the comprehension questions. When they were doing the exercises, they asked a lot of questions about the some words’ meanings. I wasn’t expecting them to ask “far”, “reach”, give up” because they know more complex words. I think it is coincidental to know those words and it changes according to contexts. Also, they asked “be able to” but I admit that it is my mistake. I should have seen that coming. After checking the answers, we were supposed to move on the post-reading activity which is “writing an alternate ending to the story”. I had to cancel that because they didn’t come up with any solutions and I realized that they still had troubles in pronouncing the words which were given in the beginning of the lesson. I decided to make them play a game called “Disappearing words”. For those who don’t know this game, let me tell you about it shortly.

1. Firstly, you write the words on the board or you can stick them to the board as I did.
2. You need to pronounce them and make the students repeat them a couple of times.
3. Then, you expect them to pronounce the words by themselves without your help. You need to do it randomly, without following the pattern on the board.
4. Then, you erase or take one of the words each time and make them repeat randomly until there is nothing left on the board.

Remember to draw a line instead of every word you erased/took because the students can get confused since they don’t know which word you point to. It was quite fun to play. They were more motivated than I expected. Sometimes, I forgot the words but they didn’t. They were truly fascinated by the activity. I enjoyed the lesson very much. I didn’t even notice the time, we used 2-3 minutes from the break time and the children didn’t care they wanted to continue, which was very encouraging for me. 

One last thing for this weekend… After my teaching, our mentor continued her lesson with “means of transportation”. She asked them how they travel. She wrote transportation on the board and wanted students to give examples. Some students said “hot air balloon, rocket, and sledge”. I was very surprised by their answers, especially “sledge”. When the time passed, the student who said sledge” asked the meaning of it. Then, I understood that she saw it in the book and didn’t know the word before. Then I got more surprised because she knew how to pronounce it even though she didn’t know the word. METU College students will never cease to amaze me.

Entry 6: My First Teaching

April 10th, 2014

I made my first teaching today. It was very exciting but I was very confident this time. I didn’t get nervous. Last semester, the teachings felt like a play to me. We wrote it first and then we rehearsed it several times and finally we were on stage with real audience. I had a morning class before my school-visits last semester. Every Friday, I left the dormitory as a student and I came back as a teacher. I was the student in the mornings and I had students in the afternoons. It was so strange. Because of this; teachings were nothing more than presentations for me. However, I didn’t feel like so this time. It was like I left my own apartment and took my books from the teachers’ room and had a little conversation with my colleagues and then headed to the classroom where my beautiful, bright students were waiting for me. I am sure that this isn’t realistic at all but I felt good and confident. That is what really matters for me. 

I want to talk about the lesson in detail. It was a grammar lesson, for one thing. They were still studying on simple past tense, so me and my partner decided to do some exercises because we don’t need to teach it again. As a warm-up, we referred to last week’s exercises. There was a person called Sam and the exercises were about his last weekend. I thought it would be clever to refer to that, but our review was oral, so our mentor teacher warned us that oral grammar reviews don’t work, especially in young learners. Using the words “regular” and “irregular” confuses them so it wasn’t a good idea for that part.

Apart from that, I think the lesson was quite good. First, they did an info-gap like speaking activity. They asked questions to each other and shared them with class. Finally, they played board game. They can move only if they form correct sentences with the given verbs and time expressions. Also, for those who come to the same square, there were extra questions. They really enjoyed it. Also, I made colourful dices and tokens for the activity and they liked them, as well. However, the ones who lost the game got upset. For example; İdil said she didn’t like the game. When I asked why her friend said because she lost. I should have said "Nobody lost, everyone is the winner." to encourage them. I should have motivated them somehow. Games can be tricky in such cases. The students are so obsessed with winning that they forgot that this is a lesson. Games are great tools for teaching English, but we shouldn’t let the students be distracted by them.

Here are the materials I used in class.