Teaching Practice 1

My teaching experience.
Noe Antonio Coreas

14

My Background Teaching Experience. I want to start this paper giving a reflection about how importance teachers are, well, teachers are people who change other peoples live, I mean teachers influence the way you live, the way you though, therefore; teachers must be consider as one of the most important part of the society. Nevertheless, in order to become into a good teacher there are certain characteristics you must have, teachers are always prepared, are good listeners, and so on; sometimes I ask myself this question, how the world would be without any teachers? I think that it would be a completely disaster, because without any teacher; people would learn nothing. There are some aspects I am going to write about based on my teaching experience within this paper. Classroom management, seating arrangement, pair and group work, using students names, starting a lesson, and finishing a lesson. Classroom management There are some aspect that every single class has, but all the aspect depend of how the teacher uses them, the classroom management, seating arrangement, seating up pairs, starting a lesson, finish a lesson, all those aspect are involve in every class. According to this book Everything Classroom Management Book it defines classroom management as the actions teachers take to create an environment that supports and facilitates both academic and social-emotional learning, besides the classroom management is a set of rules, words, and deeds the teacher uses to keep the classroom running smoothly so that teacher and students can work, teach, and learn safely and efficiently (Groves, 2009). So, it has to do with all we use to manage the classroom, how the classroom space is organized, the classroom time, how we use our voice to talk to the students. Going back to my experience doing my social services, I would say that the classroom manage was kind of difficult to me, sometimes I did not use the correct tone of my voice when students did not get

what I was trying to convey them, nevertheless it did work out because the environment we have in the classroom was good, the classroom space was good enough, I used to create an English environment but some students sometimes were not really interested, they were doing something else like talking, playing, and even singing, so that is why I talked to them not using a correct tone of voice. Seating arrangement Another important aspect of the class is seating arrangement; seating arrangement has to do with the different ways in order students can sit in the classroom, for instance; orderly rows, horseshoe, solowork, circle, separate tables. The effective teacher assigns students to their seats on the first day of school some advantages of that are: facilitates roll talking, Aid names memorization, separates potential problem students (ellteacherpros.com, 2013). At the school in which I was doing my social service, the seating arrangement was orderly rows, I can say that seating patter is good, I mean you have clearly view of all students, you can see if they are paying attention to the class, if they are working on, and students can see the teacher. While my teaching experience I realized that the students who sit in the back of the classroom are those who do not like to be in classes, on the other hand students who sit in the front of the classroom are those who are interested in the learning process, because anytime they have a doubt or a concerning they rise their hand and ask the teacher, during my social service never came to my mind to change the seating arrangement because it was already done by the teacher who was in charge of the classroom. Pair and group work Pair and group work allows all students to practice language and to actively participate. That is why pair and group are important techniques to use in large classes, where otherwise only a few stronger or more confident students have the opportunity to participate. Pair and group work is important because it gives

students lots of practice in using a language, allow the quieter students to speak to a partner, instead of speaking in front of the whole class (Joanna Baker, 2000). This aspect is really important because sometimes teacher must assign tasks to the students, it depends on what they want to assign that is how they are going to work on, I mean if the teacher wants they learn a dialogue or a conversation, they can do it in pair, or if it is a big conversation where more than two people participates, students can work in group. Work on pair or group can help students in order they can practice the target language, because sometime you tell students to practices by their own and most of them do not do it, so if they are working on pair or group they have to practice. Based on my teaching experience I can say that it really works out to make group, once I assign a task in which they had to make some draws of some fruits and vegetables after they had to pass in front, show the draw and name it, I really liked it because they did a good job. Using students names Another important aspect when you are teaching at school is how you recognize the students, you as a teacher must learn their names, because it is really awkward when you want to name someone, and you do not his/her name. Besides, when students see that you already know their names, they have more confidence in you, they are not afraid of asking something, I remember when I was at school, sometimes students wanted to something, but the problem was that some of them did not know my name even though I introduced myself the first time I came into the classroom, so anytime they asked me something, they asked me my name too. Good teachers know the name of the students, but in my case was really difficult due to I had to teach to seventh, eighth, and ninth grades, so there were lots of students, besides my turns in the school were the whole day, in the morning as well in the afternoon, I knew some of them because they live in the same neighbor I live in, so some of them knew me, and that is why many did not respect me because we are friend, so they treat as a normal person in the school.

Starting a lesson and finishing a lesson Well, I have to say that there are many ways to start a lesson, but the most important part is that you need to plan before you teach; you have to create a lesson plan. Lesson plans are important for the development of the class, it consist of the warm-up, the beginning of the class, and then you can continue with the development of the class, then you can assign work to the students in order to realize if they have understood the lesson, the final step is the wrap-up, you can assign a homework, or make questions to the students about the lesson. In my case, I did not have the opportunity to develop the class the way I wanted to do it, because the teacher in charge of the English class did not allow me, the teacher use a book in order to give the class. He used to tell me, make the pronunciation of this dialogue or conversation, besides he used to tell me check their notebooks, and I used to write everything on the whiteboard. At the end of the class, I used to remember students to make the translation of the dialogue, and answer the questions below the dialogue. What kind of teacher I want to be? I want to be a teacher that motivates students to keep studying, a teacher who loves what he does. During my years as a student, I had have many teachers, but some of them really made reflect about what I wanted to be when I was older, so when I was about to graduate from high school, I decided to become into an English teacher, that is I am studying a bachelor degree in English. I want to be that kind of teacher that understands the students, a teacher who conveys all the knowledge, a model for students, but in order to become on what I have mentioned, I need to work hard, I need to prepare myself, I need to study more, I need to be open-mind, I need to prepare lesson plan, learn how to use the correct methodology, I am on my way to achieve that, because the social service really helped me up, now; I know how students behave, how I can treat them.

To conclude this paper, I want to say that being a good teacher is not that easy, I mean, you must to work hard, prepare yourself for everything, besides you must to take in consideration many aspect that involves the teaching process, the classroom management, the seating arrangement, what kind of methodology you will use, the technique, the approach, the strategy, all those aspect are really important in order to become into a good teacher, otherwise; you are not going to be what you are pretending to be. References
ellteacherpros.com. (16 de febrero de 2013). ellteacherpros.com. Recuperado el 09 de febrero de 2014, de ellteacherpros.com: http://www.ellteacherpros.com/home/wpcontent/uploads/2010/01/Session-3-Seating-Arrangements.pdf Groves, E. (2009). The Everything Classroom Management Book. United States of America: F+W Media. Joanna Baker, H. W. (2000). The English Language Teacher's Handbook. London: Continuum.