Key problems

I would like to show you one of the main problems of this high school, the students don't understand the meaning of the statemens. The students of 1st of ESO had to do an exercise to fill in the blanks with a, an, or some and one student thought that "or some" was one of the option, she didn't recognize "or" as a connector.



I was very surprised and worried about this kind of problems and I don't really know the reason of them, maybe they are caused because of the low level of Spanish, or because they don't understand what they read, but we must try to help them!

Working to prepare the exam

This time I was with the youngest students of the school, the group pf 1^st ESO. They are very nice and cute and in this classroom anybody is from Spain, it’s an interesting mixture of countries and cultures, from Georgia to Pakistan!

The students must work with their dossiers, because they have an exam next week and they were very disappointed, because they weren’t allowed to go to the computer room. We tried to help them and to explain their doubts, although I have still problems with Catalan, because they had to translate some sentences… However, I feel happier, because I can understand almost everything!

Anna's lesson

I was the responsible for recording Anna’s lesson and she did it very well once more. This time there were more students in the classroom, but she managed the lesson with a lot of patience and enthusiasm. They continued working with the same song, Umbrella, but at the end of the lesson the students were tired of it and they wanted to listen to another song. Their capacity of concentration is really low! Moreover, they have difficulties to understand metaphors and the double meaning of a text and we had to explain what about was the song.

The song talks about a girl who tells a boy that she is going to protect him and to take care of him and we, the teachers, were very surprised, because one girl said that it is very strange and that the boy is the one who is supposed to do this. Núria replied her that she couldn’t be so male chauvinist! It was very interesting…

Riding out the storm

On the 20^th November I was with Núria, Àngels and my classmate, Marçal with the students of my group, 2^nd of ESO, and they are quite problematic, because most of them don’t want to work and they talk during the whole lesson or when they think that the teachers don’t see them, they touch other students or joke with them. Moreover, this group is quite large and it is very difficult to keep all of them under control It is very stressful!

This day the students were told that they didn’t go to the computer room, because they have an exam of the second unit next week and they had to finish their dossiers, but most of them had a lot of mistakes, although the exercises had already been corrected.

We tried to help them and to explain everything once again, but I don’t really know if they are interested at all.

I usually think that maybe it could be better to start from the very beginning again, because in this way they could really learn and understand everything, because if you don’t know the basics, you will have difficulties to understand the following topics.

Teacher Anna

Today my post is dedicated to my classmate, Anna. On the 20^th November, she taught the students of 4^th ESO for the first time and she did it very well! Congratulations to her! I also was there and I hope that she felt comfortable with my presenceJ. This lesson is focused on learning English through songs and the level of the students is very low and they have still difficulties to speak Spanish or Catalan.

Before the lesson, Anna prepared a survey to know the favourite artists and songs of the students and she asked for three volunteers to help her during the lesson and to choose the activities that they were more interested in. Finally, they decided together to work with the song Umbrella by Rihanna.

The important day arrived and Anna did it wonderful! During the whole lesson I recorded Anna and it was very interesting to see the students through the lens of the camcorder. The video clip of the song that is hosted in Youtube was projected in the wall and the students must order the different fragments of the song and hang them out on the wall, while they were watching it. Afterwards, they had to do some exercises related to the song like one to fill in the blanks, another to link different sentences, etc. Everybody was very motivated and at the end of the lesson they wanted to listen to the song again, although the bell had rung. Good job, Anna!

Keeping my eyes open...

Once again I was with my students and it was quite normal. This lesson was focused on grammar and the students had to do exercises online about present simple. I’m very happy to check that things have changed and that we are taking advantages of new technologies, because children can waste less time if they practice grammar in the computer. Moreover, it’s more attractive for them and they could do it at home by their own.

I have discovered another strategy, although I’m sure that it isn’t new. If you say that you can’t speak Spanish, the students would make an effort to speak to you in English and they could get used to speak it. However, you have to listen to things that you don’t really want to, but I believe that it would be only for the first time.

I keep my eyes open…

Aula d'acollida

This was a very good experience and I would like to thank the teacher of Technology, because he was the one responsible for this lesson this time and he explained to me very how this kind of lesson works.

Aula d'acollida is a kind of lesson to help children, who have just arrived in Spain, to help them to adapt themselves ot our country. In this lesson, students are from different ages and courses, they worked a low level on the different subjects, and they pay special attention to vocabulary topics. During the year, when the children have already a certain level of Spanish and Catalan they incorporate into their group. They are assessed about language aspects and in the courses that they attend.

This time there were 25 children in the computer room and they had to share the computers and this fact complicated more that the children worked. The students were from China, Pakistan, Filipinas, Poland etc. and they were among 12 and 17 years old. At the beginning of the lesson, the teacher explained with a projector which website they had to use. Firstly, I thought that it was very useful and it would help them to know exactly what they must do, but it was like every day, the children needed help and we had to tell them again the objective of the task. The main problem of these students are their difficulties to understand the language, but they helped other students who are from the same countries or who speak the same language, they do as translators.

I took advantage of being there and the teacher explained me many topics in which I was very interesting. The first of them was the abseentism in this high school. At the first hour, one teacher is responsible for checking in each classroom who is absent and afterwards someone of the staff phones the family to let them know it. Moreover, this high school is trying that the students are punctual, so the ones who arrive late are not allowed to come in the classroom and they stay with a teacher.

I realized that the main problem of children is at home, but this does not happen only in the case of students who have an immigrant background, even if we could notice it every day with families from our country. We can read in the newspapers that parents go to school and hit the teacher or even the student self. Nowadays, there are many parents who don't believe the teachers or don't want to believe them and they don't help them to bring up their children.

How can this problem be solved?

Overbooking

On the 12nd November it was quite stressful, because we were three students of the CAP in the classroom. This time the teacher started checking that all the students had done their dossiers and in case that they had not, Núria wrote a negative note in their agendas and when they had already three, they had a negative mark as well. I noticed that while she was checking this, the majority of the students had not any task to do, so they talked to each other and the classroom was quite uncomfortable. However, some students were filling the dossiers at this moment. Moreover, I realized that the more time the teacher needs to do something, the louder the students talk.

Afterwards, the lesson started as usually and the topic of this lesson was a dialogue. The teacher asked some students to read different parts of the text and she repeated the words that they did not pronounce properly. The following task was to answer some questions about the dialogue, but this time the whole classroom did it together and the students seemed to be very motivated and they raised their hands when they knew the answer. Moreover, the lesson was interrupted many times and the teacher had to ask for silence.

I would like to say some interesting aspects that I have observed. Núria spoke in English when she had to talk to everyone in the classroom, but when she talked to an individual student she spoke in Catalan. From my point of view, it could help the students not to believe or respect the teacher, because if they could get things easier, they would try to get it every time and not to make an effort to understand English.

On the other hand, I have still some problems to know how to explain a word without translating it, because the children have a low level, they have some difficulties to understand English, and we need more time to say something.

Any suggestion?

The other side of the coin

This lesson was quite different, because the children talked from the very beginning of the lesson and they were not interested at all in English.

The first procedure of the lesson was to write the date on the blackboard and Núria ask for the students’ help to do this. I think that is a good procedure to learn it.

This lesson was also focused on a gramar topic: the plural. Firstly, the teacher read aloud the theory that was written in Catalan and afterwards, the students had to do some exercises.

On the other hand, I would like to reflect about the language that is used in the classroom. I think that the best for the children is that the teacher speaks in English from beginning until the end of the lesson, but I’m not really sure if the students are able to understand the grammar if it is explained in English. Maybe we would need more time to explain it, but if we do it every day I think that children could get used of it and it would have been worth.

Reward and motivation

On the 8^th November I went to the school after long time and I was with the students of 1^st ESO in the computer room. I was with my classmate and two teachers and I noticed that when students go to this room, the classroom is a mess at the beginning, because they don’t know what they have to do, they can’t find the website where they have to work… This lesson was dedicated to a grammar topic about the use of a/an/some. The students had to do some exercises online and afterwards, they had to write the answers down in a piece of paper. I realized that I feel more comfortable with them and I’m more able to explain them the questions that they have.

On the other hand, I noticed that some students have problems to translate sentences, because their level of English or Catalan is not very high and some of them feel a little bit embarrased for this reason. I tried to make light of this problem and helped them with the vocabulary.

The students were very motivated and Núria told us the reason of this at the end of the lesson. The children try to do all the exercises and finish very soon, because she rewards them with a sticker with the following statements: Fantastic! You are the best! or Good job!

A nice idea…

Second time with my own students

On the 30th October it was the second time that I was with the students to whom I am going to teach and this time I was able to participate more and I tried to help the students to do the exercises and I tried to speak in English the whole hour, but I had to speak very slow and I noticed that I had to try different ways to explain the same thing, because they had some difficulties to understand English. During this lesson they surfed on this website www.isabelperez.com/grammar.htm and they had to read a text and do the exercises about the present simple. I think that this website is very interesting, because the author had taken into account that the different colours make the text more attractive to the students and they waste less time if they type than if they write.

I felt more confident and I tried to do my best to help them, so I think that in this way I could make the most of my Practicum.

To say something stupid like I love you...

This time I was with another student of my group on the 30th October and we were seated with one student and we tried to help them to develop the activity. The song for this lesson was Something stupid and the first activity was the same as every day, the students listened to the song three times and they had to order the fragments. After that they had to do some grammar exercises related to the song, they had to find the opposite of some words, to look for the personal pronouns and the adjectives in the text. They had a lot of problems with the category of the words, because they don’t know which words were adjectives, verbs, etc. Moreover, they continued having difficulties to look for the words in the dictionary and they need a lot of time to do it.

English songs

I took part in this lesson again on the 25th October and I can say that I really like it, because it’s a different approach of teaching English and children are elder and more motivated. They were ten students in the classroom and this time the song was I will always love you from the film ‘The Bodyguard’ (1992). The methodology of this lesson was the same as the last time, the students listened to the song for the first time and they had to order the different fragments. After that, they had to look for the meaning of different words in the dictionary and they had a lot of problems to do it, and I had to help them, because some of them told me that a word didn’t appear in it, but it was because they didn’t know that the dictionary was a bilingual one and that it had two parts, but they looked into the Spanish part.

This time, 2nd of ESO (Group B)

At the beginning of this lesson on the 25th October I was quite afraid, because I didn’t know anything about them and this was my first "normal" lesson in the classroom. Moreover, I expected that my tutor would have told me something about what I had to do in the lessons, but she didn’t. In this group I could see the reality of this high school, because all the students come from different countries and there wasn’t any Spanish one. The children were in small groups of people from the same country as them.

The first problem that Núria had to solve was with a problematic student who doesn’t want to be in the high school and he arrived in the classroom and didn’t open his book neither take part in the group activity. Núria told him that he could go away if he didn’t want to be there and he left the classroom and he slammed the door, so Núria had to write a note for the principal of the school to try to solve the problem.

After this incident, we started the lesson and the first activity was a warm-up one. It was a kind of memory game who Núria has developed to adapt to different lessons, but this time it was about animals. We hung different cards with the letters in the blackboard and they had a picture or the name of an animal on the back and the children were in groups to play this game. They had to say two letters and try to find the correct name for the correct picture. It was very funny and the children were motivated and very active, they liked it so much, that they wanted to play it again, but this time they had to write sentences to describe these animals and at this moment I participated and helped them to understand the activity. My problem was that I didn’t know in which languages I had to answer them, because the teacher told them in Catalan or Spanish the meaning of the words and I was told that I had to speak in English.

Helping the students to discover the wonderful world of reading

Nowadays, the students are said not to read so much and it’s very important for this kind of children, because they have learning difficulties and their languages’ skills are not very high. The stuff of the high school has decided to reduce the lessons five minutes in order to have time to create a new lesson where students must read a book in the language they want.

Congratulations to the stuff!

Computer room

On the 13rd October I had the first contact with the students to whom I’m going to teach. They are the group A of 2nd of ESO. They were about 25 and I had the feeling that they were quite childish, although they were about 13 years old. However, we have to take in account that some of these children have problems in their families and some difficulties to learn.

This lesson took place in the computer room and I would like to say something that I find very interesting, every group go weekly to this room during one lesson and they do some exercises related to grammar and reading topics in a “virtual lesson”. I was very surprised, because every child has a computer for his or her own and it shows that things are changing nowadays, because when I went to the school we had to share the computers in pair or even in groups of three and it made more difficult to work.

The students work in the following website: http://www.iestarradell.org/moodle/, where they have to do some exercises online and after that they have to fill a piece of paper with the answers and hand in them to the teacher.

Now, I would like to talk about Núria’s methodology, because I think that it’s very interesting. Due to the financial problems of the families, a lot of them couldn’t afford to buy books or some material to their children, so Núria decided to photocopy each unit of a course book and give them to the students. When they finish the lesson, the students have to give in the exercise book in order to be allowed to do the exam. What about the royalties? The book is not sold anymore and the editorial allowed the high school to photocopy it, because of the financial situation of these students.

During this lesson I was with my classmate and two teachers, Núria and Àngels, in the computer room. They had to do a virtual lessons and it consisted of doing a reading and some grammar exercises. In my opinion, it is very positive that children can work with computers, because they learn to use them at the same time and they are more motivated. During this lesson I got in touch with my students, because they asked me some questions about the meaning of different words and I tried to explain them in English. However, I felt quite nervous, because I have doubts about the language that I had to use, because I can’t speak Catalan, so I decided that I tried to use English and Spanish as well, when they had problems to understand it.

Let's reflect about the first impressions...

I'm writing this blog almost one month later after beginning my practicum, so I'm using the notes that I wrote every day after arriving at home from the high school. I disagree with the methodology of this CAP course, because I think that it could be better if we have attended the lessons about theory aspects first and after that we would do our Practicum, because in this way we could put into practice what we have learned, but it couldn't be changed...

Firstly, I would like to reflect about my own beliefs. Oriol told us that many beliefs about school come from teachers' experience as students and what our teachers did, influence our teaching behaviours. This is one of the reasons why I would like to become a teacher, because I would like not to be as the bad teachers that I had and I would like to try to improve the teaching techniques. I agree with this statement and during this last year I have taken notes about what my teachers did, because I thought that it would be very useful for my own experience. I studied in a normal school, were almost every one came from Spain and they had a normal life, but now I feel a little bit envious, because I would like to be in a classroom like the ones in the Miquel Tarradell school, because I think that we could take advantage from everyone and we could understand better how the world is changing nowadays.

From my point of view, I think that there are a lot of differences all over the country, because I'm from Galicia and I believe that there the situation is changing slower and they need more time to adapt to this society. I'm very hopeful about the situation and I think that inmigration and integration could work in this world, but I think that the following generations of inmigrants are going to have it easier, because they have brought up in a different society than their parents or grandparents and they could understand better how to adapt and to integrate themselves in this world.

Now, let's talk about the first impressions of my experience in the high school. The first problem that the teacher has to solved is the name of the students. Teachers have to make a great effort to learn their names, because they are very different from the Spanish ones, but it is very important to know them. One of the most important problems is the high rate of absenteeism in the school, so the teacher has to check every day if the students are or not in the classroom. However, I don't really know what happens if the students don't come, but I would like to talk about this with my tutor. I was very surprised, because I have thought that this high school was not really a rich one, but my teacher checks the attendance with a PDA and it's very useful, because it's faster and less paper is wasted. On the other hand I have learned that it's very important to have some procedures and routines and maybe it could be better that the students have something to do while the teacher is checking the attendance, because it helps the students not to waste their time and to keep quiet.

In my opinon, I think that it could be very useful if the teacher writes in the blackboard at the very beginning of the lesson what they are going to do that day, because it helps the students to know what they are expected to do and due to the diversity of the classroom, the children who have a higher level could go through the next activity in case they finish sooner and don't get bored.

The first day

My first day in the school was on the 23rd October and the first students who I met were in 4th of ESO.

Everybody is afraid when they have to do something for the first time and my case wasn’t an exception. People tend to be nervous when they have to do something that they don’t really know, but after the first experience you start to feel more relaxed. I arrived at the high school very early and I came in the classroom with my tutor, Núria Laporta. The first impression was very good, because there weren’t a lot of students in the classroom, because this subject was an optional one. They were seated in pairs and it was like an image of the contemporary society, everyone comes from a different country: Pakistan, Spain, Morocco, etc.

Núria Laporta is an experienced teacher who have had to change her methodology for three years because of the new background of their students. She discovered that students are more motivated if they can learn English through songs and games and this was what she did.

This lesson was dedicated to Imagine , the John Lennon’s song. The first exercise that they had to do was to order in pairs the different fragment of the song while they were listening to the song. After that Núria gave them the lyrics and they had to fill some blanks with words that they had at the bottom of the page. And the last task was related to some grammar topics. I was very surprised, because when Núria asked about the questions, everyone answered her and they seemed to be very motivated and participated.

Núria had a present for the Arabic students, because she played the song once again, but this time it was a version with fragments in English, Hebrew and Arab. During the whole lesson, you can notice the immigrant background of the students due to the kind of questions they ask or the languages they speak.

My high school

I decided to do my Practicum in a high school called Miquel Taradell that is situated in the Raval district in Barcelona. Oriol and Mª José told us that this is a special school, because the 90% of the students are inmigrants or have an inmigrant background and it was what attracted to me, because I'm really interested in the new concept of society and everything that has to do with multicultural society. I lived in Germany and I realized that we could learn a lot and take advantage of this mixture of people. I thought that this experience could help me if I decided to go to Germany to teach Spanish or simply to work there and before doing that I would like to know how I could cope with it.

I sent an e-mail to my tutor, Núria Laporta, and we made an appointment to talk about everything related to my Practicum. I was a little bit upset, becasue I didn't really know how I could do my Practicum and attend my lessons in the University at the same time, but she did everything she could for us and I decided that the best way to do it would be to start as soon as possible...

Why?

Trying to find my way

Could you let down your hair
And be transparent for a while
Just a little while
See if your human after all
Honesty is a hard attribute to find
When we all want to seem like we've got it all figured out
I may be the first to say that I don't have a clue
I don't have all the answers
And god I pretend like I do just
Trying to find my way
Trying to find my way the best that I know how

Well I haven't memorized all the cute things to say
But I'm working on it
Maybe I'll master this art for today
I'd I qoute all the line off the top of my head
And you'd be
I dont understand all of these things Ive read
Im just trying to find my way
Trying to find my way
Trying to find my way the best that I know how

Well I havent drawn it or figured out quite yet
But even if it takes my whole life
To get to where I need to be
And if I should fall to the bottom of the end
I'll be one step back to you
I'm trying to find my way
Trying to find my way
Oh, I'm trying to find my way
Trying to find my way

Understand what you want...

From the very beginning...

The beginning is always a way full of doubts and fears, but at the moment that we set a foot in it, we have to forget everything and try to do our best - and that is what I'm going to do in this period. When we are afraid of something, we sometimes think about why we have decided to do it, but every effort has its reward and I only hope that I have something to teach someone, because I know that I have a plenty of knowledges to learn.

When I decided to do the CAP, I was in a mess, because I arrived in Barcelona two months ago to finish my degree here, because I really love this city and I wanted to live here whatever it takes, so I decided to turn my life upside-down and to take the most advantage of this city. Luckily, I didn't have to look for a flat, because I had already one with some friends of mine and it allowed me to waste more time to solve the bureaucratic problems. I was told that I had to do a lot of "Libre elección" credits and when I was thinking about which courses I could attend, I realized that I could do the CAP in order to get them. I had already thought about doing the CAP, because I had some experience as a teacher and it was really great and rewarding, but I thought that this was the right moment to do it.

... Let's go!!...