Why did we choose the current name for our

e-folio?

We as a group chose “Teaching-learning process as an invaluable treasure” as our blog’s name because it involves a lot of definitions and ideas that are very interesting. For example, we can say that teaching is one of the most challenging task because a teacher requires to have lots of characteristics such as: patience, responsibility, compromise, creativity, humbleness, enthusiasm, among others.

For us, teaching is more than just a job and it is not only about money or work in a great school; for us teaching is a big commitment because we as teachers are the ones that are in charge to prepare next generations and that is not an easy task to accomplish. Besides that, teachers have the responsibility of educate children when parents do not do it at home.

Also, we can say that it’s a treasure because it is an amazing process in which both parts are able to learn from each other. It is not just that students can learn from teachers or that teachers can learn from students. It’s a treasure because education is one of the most valuable things children can receive. If they receive a good education, they will succeed as students and teachers will succeed as well.

As a result, children will be ready for facing any challenge in life and the only reward a teacher hopes or expects from these students is for them to finish studies and more-to be able to get a good job and earn a living on their own in the future.

INTRODUCTION

The first teaching practice is something that is very important and memorable for every person that is into the fascinating teaching world. In this electronic folio we are going to share our first teaching practice that we started this semester. It is very important to mention that been a teacher is not an easy task to accomplish but we decided to take this difficult but amazing road. In this E-folio we will share some pictures and documents of our practices thay may be very useful for you.

I. THE YOUNG LEARNER        

• What’s to be a young language learner?

When we start learning a new language, many of us believe that this will be easy. Over time in our own experience, we could see that the process of learning a new language is not an easy task. After being used to speaking in Spanish, students are accustomed to it; then, we switch the way that we speak into English.

Therefore, we commit spelling-to-spelling or spelling-to-sound errors, and we begin facing a lot of troubles because the mother tongue influences the acquisition of a new language. Learn the mother-tongue-language is innate in every person because we acquire language through subconscious process during our childhood and we acquire grammatical rules unconsciously. In order to acquire a new language, the learner needs natural communication with people who are in this process only by practicing.

A person who has memorized the rules of the language may be able to succeed on a standardized test of English language, but they may not be able to speak correctly. Also, English can’t be only learn by memorizing grammatical rules, but also by writing, speaking, listening, and reading, which are the four macro-skills that students can develop in the English learning process.

Now, talking about teaching children, we can say that it is not an easy task to do because for making this work possible, we as teachers, have to know that we can use a lot of techniques according to children needs.

Besides that, the learning process must be very organized, especially with kids because they learn a lot of new things every single day and the good or bad knowledge they acquire depends on us, so it determine how good or how bad is the education they received.

Also, it is so important to mention that a teacher has to be prepared for whatever it comes during a class. That is why we as teachers have to be creative at the moment of teaching, and also we have to be as more comprehensible as possible because we have to remember that children need more attention at the moment of learning since they are consider as young learners, what means that their ability to learn is a little bit different from others.

 

 

II. CLASS MANAGEMENT AND ATMOSPHERE

• Provide a snapshot of your current teaching practice.

To teach young learners is an activity that I really enjoy. My students showed me a lot of good attitudes inside the classroom such as obedience, willingness, and enthusiasm, etc. The thing I like the most was my students showing me some lovely attitudes because it is a pure feeling. Despite they really enjoyed working in my activities, they now and then behave rather mischievous making the class a real challenge for me. Bonding with people is not a challenge for me, and I really get well with people especially little students that I had in the kindergarten.  I believe that a teacher must have a relationship not only teacher to student, but also a teacher can show empathy with his/her students’ problems. The teacher should put himself/herself on someone else’s shoes to solve classroom problems, and he/she needs to listen carefully to his/her students to inspire confidence. The teacher should create a good environment and use a variety of methodologies (TPR), (The Grammar-Translation Method), (CLL) in order to help the acquisition of knowledge and to enhance the students’ participation. The tutor must orientate the methodology based on the objectives that he/she wants to reach according to the students’ level. I myself as teacher must monitored my students to see in which way they learn better (pair-work, group-work, or public meeting).

By Andrea Arana

I was teaching children during two months in which I could teach five topics (the alphabet, greetings and leave-takings, colors, numbers and animals). I applied some techniques that I have learned from the teacher to whom I was observing; they were very useful. Also I took into account some details about the arrangement of desks and the use of colorful materials. In some classes I decided to sit the children on the floor for getting a major attention from them.

For teaching, I made the topics with letters of different colors. When I was teaching the colors I wrote my children’s names in sheets of paper of the same color, to children appreciate it better. Later I showed the children some illustrations and pictures in which they could watch the colors. I made some activities for children to apply what they have learned, and identified the colors by themselves.

For every class, I tried to use different techniques. I used colorful pictures and materials of different kinds. I drew things in color paper and I decorated them because I had noticed that children like colorful things. In the last class, I made a review about all the topics I taught for two months, to look how well children have learned.

In conclusion, there are many factors that help to the teaching-learning process in very young learners, but also it is necessary to improve some of them, for example to give the children the chance to know and familiarize better with this fascinating language, English.

However, this was a very interesting experience, and I could realize how difficult is to be a kindergarten teacher. They have a great responsibility, but also it is really pleasant.


 

By Jessica Rodríguez

When I started to teach in the school that I went since the first day I paid a lot of attention in every children in the classroom, in my case there were 16 students. Each of them were different in the way they speak, write, and so on. Every kid had different skills and my role as their teacher was to find out what their skills were. For example, some of them were very good at speaking, some other were better at writing or drawing etc. I used their abilities to improve their knowledge as much as I could and it worked it out a lot! At the beginning it was not that easy but with a lot of effort it succeeded.

Rapport was an important area in my teaching practicum because it helped me a lot at the moment of interacting with the kids because I was very careful with children. Remember that rapport is very important because it helps you to create a good bound between you and your students and I applied a lot of techniques that were very helpful to establish a good rapport in the classroom. Also, grouping was so helpful because it is a good tool to make your students work in little groups and together as a team they can give a lot of good results.

 

 

 

 

By Ernesto Azúcar

• How can you adapt your own style of teaching to accommodate to the needs and motivations of young learners?  

I believe the teacher must adapt to his/her students’ needs. Therefore, to plan the work before giving a class is so important. And you can adapt your own style in order to accommodate the exigencies of your learners. In my case to be an involver teacher is the best choice to transmit a topic. And you can use a course book material that can be very useful at that time, and make an activity rout map in which you can organize step by step every activity that will be developed and it can help to rise the motivation of students. It can be achieved reading didactics books, articles on the net, and watching teaching videos about how to teach and be creative in the classroom.

 

By Andrea Arana

My teaching experience has been really helpful, interesting, and pleasant, but at the same time I have realized how difficult and compromising is to be a good teacher. During my teaching experience I have learned many things about the children’s behavior and the way in which we have to solve some of the most common troubles with them.

 Thus, I consider that I as a teacher have to accommodate myself to the needs and motivations of young learners because If I do it, my students will feel comfortable. However, I also have to develop my own style inside the classroom because in this way, the students will know very well how I am with them in order to give a good teaching process.

In my opinion the characteristics of good teaching are the motivation, interest and effort that the teacher has in doing his/her material. All these are reflected in the way and kind of activities the teacher prepares for his/her children.

On the other hand, the characteristics of not so good teaching are the lack of importance and interest we add to our projects.

I also consider that the role of the teacher is essential in everything, but also the teacher has to perform an appropriate and correct role because sometimes we, as teachers, tend to exaggerate in performing our role. We have to have a harmonious relation with our students and try to be always in communion with them because according to the rapport we have, we are going to get better results.

In conclusion, I can mention that we teachers must know the importance of creating our own style because If we do it, we will know what to do in any situation.

 

 By Jessica Rodríguez

• Explain your short- and long term goals as an elt practitioner, and how you plan to reach them.

In a long term my goal as a practitioner is to teach and help students to potentiate his/her abilities in the English language and to achieve that goal, I will increase my own knowledge in the language putting in to practice the four macro skills in every lesson delivered, reading articles (http://www.teach-nology.com/tutorials/teaching/teachingskills.html) and watching videos (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwI-mNRW9Mc&feature=youtu.be) to enhance all the principles acquired in didactics subjects.

In a short term I will adapt myself to this new experience called “teaching” attending all the practices related to didactics subjects and involving myself with the educational environment.   

By Andrea Arana

 

It is clear that in any situation, we as a teachers, want our students to achieve good results. For this, teachers must have goals. In my case was kind of difficult because my children had never received English classes. However, it was such a great experience because I learned a lot from my little students and I’m sure that they learned something from me as well.

By Jessica Rodríguez

 

Along these weeks I have been teaching English to children as a foreign language and it is a very good experience.. I have made some goals that I want to achieve for and with them. For example, I want to be a very good practitioner for them, a creative person that is able to make them learn in the best way as possible. I want to be a responsible teacher because kids deserve it and it is necessary to be a good teacher. I want to make children learn in a deductive and inductive way, because both are necessary, at the beginning they learn from what I teach to hem but later on if you apply good techniques in order to make a good education progress they will be able to learn by their own based on the things that I have taught them.

 

By Ernesto Azúcar

 

"OUR CHILDREN NEED TO BE TAUGHT HOW TO THINK, NOT WHAT TO THINK"