End of term
Well, I’ve managed to get through the first term….. one down only three to go!I don’t know what happened but my last post was not published!!! I wrote it last weeek but I couldn’t get it to publish for some reason. This is rather annoying and I hope it’s not going to happen again. Last week we had to do another presentation-audiolingualim-remember? Well I was up till 3.30 working on my part and this was the Saturday that the clocks went forward, so this meant that it was actually 4.30 am when I crawled into my bed-and I had to be ready for a wedding the next day at 8AM!!!!!!! Is it any wonder I was falling asleep in the temple? This was my first Sikh wedding and it was a memorable experience. Sadly my daughter, whose friend was the bride,was unable to attend as she had been admitted to hospital. She’s fine now-on the mend, but it was another thing to worry about.
The presentations went well-although ours was not quite as professional as the others-still my thanks go out to my partner who put it all on powerpoint for us. It was a little daunting delivering the presentation, as this is not really a particularly popular method of teaching, and at one stage I had to remind my audience that I wasn’t an advocate-I was simply trying to present the facts. We also had an impromptu demonstration by another teacher at the college using Cuisinere rods. Now this is a method I would never have believed could be so effective.The man was amazing! In ten minutes-honestly-he taught five of us some German: six colours, please, thank you, can i have a _____ rod please? Can I have two/three/four_______ rods please? It was a fantastic experience, and I would love to look into this method-it is linked to ‘The Silent Way’ methodology, which was one of the presentations from the previous week. These various methods of teaching will form the basis of our next but one assignment, after the policies and procedures one, which is due in after the Easter break on 24th April.
My observed lesson went quite well. Not as well as I had hoped, but not helped by the fact that my tutor turned up earlier than planned,which threw me somewhat. I think I was too ambitious- I tried to impress her with something I hadn’t ever tried before-BIG MISTAKE! The students had to obtain information from a timetable and convey it to their rspective groups to enter on a worksheet of comprehension questions. They worked in groups , one at a time as I had put the timetables outside the classroom to make it more fun, and get them moving about more. Hmmmm! Well serves me rigt for trying to be clever-this was an exercise easily within their capabilities, yet they seemd to have all kinds of problems completing the activity.
Anyway, I had my feedback yesterday, and I was pleasantly surprised to receive some encouraging comments which i have to share, including “…….you’re obviously a very competent teacher…….” WOW! That was lovely to hear. Still it was only a softener really, since I had totally neglected to realise that when the individual students were running in and out of the room to obtain the info from the timetables, the other members of the group were………… well, what were they doing???? Er…. nothing!!! What an idiot I was! Golden rule-you must engage ALL of the students ALL of the time! This was the main area to work on. The other comment was that at one point there was a little too much Teacher Talking Time. I am always working on this, and I think I am improving. She also said that my classroom felt like a very warm and safe environment, and I had a good rapport with my students. That was nice to hear. She praised me for the (last minute) work I had done on my class and student profile, which helped her to assess and understand why I planned my activities in the way I did. Still I guess that all in all, this wasn’t a bad first observation.
March is now over, thankfully. I am going to visit my Mum over Easter, and I shall thoroughly enjoy my few days off. I’m so annoyed that I didnt save that post last week-it was so much more entertaining than this one. Oh well-I’ll recharge the batteries over the Easter break and let you know how the assignment is going as and when.
Happy Holiday!
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