MY SCHOOL DIARY Ivette Palau MontanyĂ
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My first week of my internship was great!
At the beginning of the week, I made the last changes of my teaching sequence with my supervisor. Now, I’m just preparing some materials to get ready to start my lessons next Tuesday. Although I have all the sessions carefully planned, I feel nervous about how it will be.
Moreover, this first week helped me to get to know all the students that have English with my teacher. They are from grade 1 to grade 6. Therefore, the methodologies used with 6 years old students are very different from the ones used with grade 6 students, and that’s very interesting and enriching for me! I only have one issue about my internship: my tutor doesn’t speak English all the time during the lessons. Thus, I’ll need lots of strategies when teaching the teaching sequence, as students will have to understand me without translating. Although I have some ideas such as making gestures, using visual supports, giving them a glossary when preparing the posters… I would like to ask my mates to give me some suggestions.
Finally, this morning my tutor gave me a surprise: next Tuesday an university student from the UK is coming to stay with us for two weeks!! I am feeling excited :)
I hope that next week will be as interesting as this one!
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This second week at school has been really exciting but exhausting at the same time.
On Tuesday, Emily, a trainee teacher from the UK, came to my school and she is attending English classes with my tutor and me for two weeks. So, we are three teachers in a class which is perfect to practice speaking and let our students work in small groups.
I started my teaching sequence on Tuesday. Students seemed very motivated and interested in creating a video for students from Trafalgar School and were so nervous about the idea of recording themselves with a video camera! The first lesson was really good, as students participated a lot. However, before we started the second lesson, I had lots of doubts about how to prepare the oral presentations and scaffold pupils’ learning. However, I realised that Emily could help us because she lives in London and she perfectly knows the British culture. So, I decided to create an enormous mental map on the board to compare how people in the UK celebrate festivities and how we do it here in Catalonia. I think that the idea was great since students were paying attention to what Emily said about England and they were also explaining to her in English what we do here (because she doesn’t understand Spanish at all). So, they need to collect and summarise the information in English.
This way, we managed to create a general mental map on the board that students will be able to use when preparing the oral presentations. The following photo shows our mental map!
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This week, I continued working on my teaching sequence about celebrations. Students are so happy to record a video for some students in England, so I think that they are enjoying a lot! On Tuesday and Wednesday we prepared the oral presentations, but we could not record them yet since students were working hard with their posters and they wanted to train their pronunciation. Therefore, we couldn't finish. However, that's not a problem because my school tutor gives us another class to do it next week.
Today, we celebrated the Easter egg Hunt and decided to record it with the video camera as well as the oral presentations. In this turn we can show both to students in Trafalgar Junior School. They really liked doing the Easter egg hunt, especially because it was an outdoor activity!
Moreover, this third week I have learnt something really interesting. As I commented before, Emily, an English trainee teacher, is staying with us. I'm learning so much from her!!! Yesterday, I asked her for some interesting websites for English teachers and she provided me with these three links:
www.tes.co.uk www.twinkl.com www.sparklebox.com
They are completely free and have really interesting resources, such as interactive power points, games...I'm sure it will be useful for me as a language teacher!
So, I think that's my week summary. I hope that my classmates are learning as much as me.
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I’ve just finished my internship at school, so I would like to explain my experience of last week.
On Wednesday, I finished my last lesson with year 4 students. We wrote the email collaboratively with all the students and sent it to Emily because she is from Trafalgar Junior School. Some students asked me if the ones from Trafalgar School could create a video for us but speaking in Spanish. I think that it would be fantastic, so I asked it to Emily and she told me that she would try to do something with her students for us. Thus, finally, it seems that my students managed to create a real video for students in Trafalgar School and that they will see it and will send us some feedback. Consequently, I feel really happy with my project and I hope that they can send us a video too.
Moreover, I would like to share the final video with you.
As you can see, some students had lots of difficulties when talking in English and I had to guide them a lot, but I am happy because I have achieved the main objective that I proposed to myself at the beginning of my internship: Students have realized that they are able to do an oral presentation in front of the others only speaking in English! I am very interested in hearing from all of my classmates’ experiences.
Best, Ivette
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