Entry 3: Seating Plan and Simple Past Tense

March 13th, 2014 Seating Plan

 

 

As I mentioned earlier, there are 11-12 students in classes. A perfect classroom environment is available for learning English. However, the students' seating plan doesn’t seem okay for me. Since they split the class into two because they want to increase interaction during English lessons, this kind of seating plan doesn’t fit their purposes at all. The students sit wherever the like, when the half of the class leave. When we look at 4C, we see that at least they arranged the desks for the group activities, but at 4G, the desks are arranged in rows, classic seating arrangement. (The classroom 4G used is narrower when compared to the one 4C used.) Also, the girls sit next to girls, and the boys sit next to the boys generally. It is clearer in 4G. The students sit randomly and there is no specific seating plan. When I look back on my experiences from last semester, there were boys and girls in each and every group and there were plenty of group activities which require their interactions with each other.

Simple Past Tense 

When we move on the lessons, I have so much to talk about. The topic of the day was Simple Past Tense. They just started to learn the topic. Maybe, they had an idea, but they didn’t know it consciously. The teacher has an activity which is called Broken Eggs. The eggs are cut from the lines in the middle. (19 different verbs like in the example. She pasted the upper part of the eggs on the board, asked the students the meaning of the verbs, asked some nouns, phrases which can go with these verbs. (e.g.: eat an apple, eat in a restaurant, eat slowly). Then, she pasted the bottom part of the verbs, which are the past forms of verbs. Students tried to match them. I liked the idea of teaching past forms of verbs, introducing the topic. When I was a student, the teacher gave me a list and I memorized them, just like everyone else. I have never thought that we should really spend time on that, but when I see the outcomes of it, I absolutely think that we should. There are some problems, though. For example, some students said “ates” (eats –ate) a couple of times. I thought this was quite normal because of overgeneralization. Our mentor teacher reacted differently and said "Where did this come from? Have I ever said something like 'ates'?" She looked so surprised, which is very surprising for me. The teacher kept asking “Do you understand?” during the lesson. This is not an effective way of seeing whether the students understood the topic or not. As expected, none of the students said “I didn’t understand.” even if they look so confused. The teacher said we have a song today, but she meant something else and the students got excited, but when they realized that it isn’t a song but it is just a rhythm, they kinda got disappointed. One of them, Baha, even complained and said this wasn’t what he expected when he heard “song”. The rhythm involves two taps on the lap, two claps, and two clicks, one of them was for saying the present forms of verbs and the second one was for saying the past forms of the verbs. Interestingly, the students couldn’t manage to keep that rhythm. I thought it is because they didn’t like the activity, so they don’t try to do it correctly or so. According to our teacher, they aren’t good at kinaesthetic activities because of computer games. When they pronounce the past forms of verbs, they had difficulties. They confused “were” with “where” in terms of pronunciation.

Entry 2: First Day at School

March 6th, 2014

Since we didn’t know our mentor, we waited for her outside the class. Some teachers were passing by and every time someone comes near the class, we thought it was our mentor teacher, then they enter another class, and we knew that she is not. We felt uncomfortable because we won’t be able to recognize her or she won’t recognize us. I was afraid that this will leave a bad impression. When we met, I saw that she was okay with it, which was a relief for me. We entered the class and seated ourselves at the back of the class to observe the class. 

Let me tell you about the learner profile first. There are 11 students (4C) in one class and 13 students (4G) in the other class. That was really surprising for me. It was great news, as well. Actually, the classes are split into two in English courses. There are English classrooms opposite of every class. The half of the class moves to that class and they have a different English teacher. I didn’t just like that practise, I fell in love with it. That must be every teacher’s dream. Instead of dealing with 30 students, 12 would be a perfect number for language classes. You can monitor the students easily. You can assign them tasks and control them whether they are doing or not. Above all, all the students have the chance to SPEAK in the class. That was something which was different from 5^th graders (22-24 students in each class). Also, they don't like kinaesthetic activities as much as 5th graders do. They rarely move away from their desks since our mentor teacher is very authoritative. Considering their age, they should be more energetic and lively but they are very passive in the class. Of course, this doesn't mean that they don't participate in the classes. They love to speak English. They are very eager to do activities. I will continue to compare them with 5th graders because their age is so close to each other. Observing that they show great difference in behaviours and attitudes towards learning English has really surprised me. In this case, this situation may stem from teacher behaviour and attitudes, I guess.

Entry 1: First Impressions

February 27th, 2014

I am doing my internship at METU College again and I am really happy about it. However, this time, I will be observing primary school students. I am sure that it will be quite an experience. Before meeting the school management, I was very excited since I didn’t know which grade I will be visiting. I have worked with 5^th graders last semester and they were lovely. This time I wanted to work with 2^nd graders, just to see the difference. I was also wondering what it’s like; teaching English to students at such a young age. It was something which I am not familiar with. 

When we went to the school to meet our mentors and to arrange a time for the school visits, we found out that our mentor took that day off and we couldn’t meet, which is very unfortunate. We asked whether we can see her schedule at least to decide on a day to have an idea. Thursday mornings were the only available time for both of us and our mentor teacher. As a coincidence, 4 hours in a row, we are supposed to observe the students who are in the same grade (4^th graders), which was the case last semester (5^th graders). By the way, our mentor teacher conducted the same activities differently for us because she didn't want us to get bored. Besides, she gave us ideas about changing the same activities according to class dynamics. 

At first, I didn’t think that 4^th graders are so different from the 5^th graders, but it would be helpful for us to see the difference between the levels. (I didn’t know that I couldn’t be more wrong back then.) There was also a problem with arranging the time. Since we meet another teacher other than our mentor, she rushed us to make our decision immediately when we are checking the schedule of our mentor. We got very disappointed. Since our expectations are high and we were very eager to go to METU College, this kind of behaviour implied that they don’t take this internship seriously or the student-teachers.  I know that I shouldn’t jump to such a conclusion by just looking at one person’s behaviour but I couldn’t help it. There was one thing that I need to mention, which I find very rude. When we meet the school principle and the other teachers, the manager didn’t shake our hands (the student-teachers). When she was talking, she wasn’t looking at us or addressing us. I just felt like I was on a field trip; it was so uncomfortable. Maybe, I am exaggerating it or they were really busy, I am not sure; but I can say that my first impressions weren’t so good.

Since we couldn’t meet our teacher, we decided to email her about the time when we will be visiting the school. I told her that we can come on next Thursday if it is okay for her, and she said she was fine with it. So we will be going to our school-visits without even meeting her. I hope it wouldn't be a problem to leave such an impression.

 

Who am I?

Hi!

My name is Nesrin Gökmen. I am studying ELT in Middle East Technical University. I am a senior student. I am doing my internship right now and I want to share my observations, ideas and thoughts with "teacher-to-be"s. I know that people get nervous even when they first begin to do micro-teachings. When it comes to the internship, real students, and real classroom environments, I know that you have some concerns. That's why I am here. :) I have been through all of this and I want you to benefit from my experiences. I hope you enjoy reading my blog.

When it comes to my teaching philosophy, I can say that I love working with children. ı have done my internship with 5th graders at METU College and this time, I will be working with primary school students. I am very excited about that. I love their energy. They always smile and they are ready to learn at any time. They enjoy learning English with songs, rhythms, games and so on. As a learner who has rarely spoken English until I came to university, I think learners need to speak as soon as they learn English. Communication is really important for me. They should be able to express themselves and share their ideas. Learner autonomy is also important for me. We should be able exchange ideas because they know how they learn better, not me. Also, I should be flexible as much as possible when something doesn't work in the class. Besides, class dynamics can be different from each other even in the same graders, so I believe teacher should be initiative to make necessary changes if necessary.