Conclusions

My Personal Conclussion

 
    Doing my practicum period was, by no doubt, the most enriching experience of my professional and personal life. Not only I put into practice all my theoretical background, but also I had the most thirlling teaching training with young children, kids and adolescents. By far, all my expectations were fullfilled: I was able to plan classes for different levels and find that, most of the times, students loved them.

        I have never worked with very young children, but I had read lots of theory about teaching to them, so kindergarten practicum was a big challenge to me. Anyway, as an overall picture, I believe that the experience was successfull.Happily, I was able to plan and conduct five classes to a group of 27 students around 4 years old with little experience with English as a second language. This kindergarten was a private instittution, bieng the only one having English as a curricular subject.Teacher Romina and the teacher of English Tiara were my local observers. This experience allowed me to understand this group´s age needs as learners and a human beings as well. Now, I can plan better classes knowing how students of this age think and behave inside a classroom. Still, I believe that I need to expand developing young learner´s language skill development. For this, I will study it thurally and design my final presentation in order to be fully aware on the subject. Even though I had done a profound research on young learners´acquisition beforehand, on the field I realized that this issue still needs improvement. So, I could say that my pedagogical knowledge was expanded in the sense that my cognitive abilities and my affective-motivational characteristics were developed during the practicum, resulting in an improvement of my teachers’ professional competence.

         Primary school offered me a completely different perspective. I taught four classes to a 5th year in which students of 10 years old had little knowledge of English. As it was a state school, their first encounter with English as a curricular subject was the year before. The topic was "Food" so it was quite inetersting for them. Through videos, games, visual material, opportunities for producing oral messages and poems, students learnt vocabulary related to Healthy and Unhealthy food. I was assisted by the teacher of English, Natalia, and their regular teacher, Fabiana. The teachers guided me, especially in regards to a student who had anger issues due to family problems. Even though the EOE group from school was taking care of the problem, I dealt with some breakdowns during my practicum period. In all, this heterogenous group of 22 students welcomed me with love and respect and enjoyed my classes. I was facinated by their interest in learning the second language, but, as they were extremely competitive, games had to be dealt with extreme care.What I learnt during this experience, was to be aware that I might face behavioural problems due to personal issues in the future´s classrooms. Franco´s case (the boy with anger issues) showed me that reality is present in the classroom as well and teachers need to be concious that they are part of our teaching context. So, we must do research whenever we have a situation like this one and ask for professional help if necessary. Teaching is a collaborative job, where all areas are interralated to look after the welfare of our students.Although, I had prepared myself to face this situation I learnt during the observation period, I believe I was able to cope with it thanks to pedagogical tools and, most importantly, with love and respect to the student. My teaching knowwledge was an essential device to plan coherently and effectively. Without my pedagogical and methodological insight I would have never deviced classes for such a special group like this one. Besides, my tutor offered me her expertise any time I looked for advice. It would have been impossible without her guidance.Finally, keeping a portfolio was an indispensable resource to keep a record on my progress, which by no doubt improved my teaching skills.

Secondary practicum period was taken place in a 6th year of a state school with a population of 26 students, only four of them were boys. The local observer teacher was Virginia. During my last period of my teaching practice, i was given the opportunity to be in contact with teenagers and experience how they feel and think. As we have read in the theory, when working with adolescents we need to bear in mind that they are in a transition period between childhood and adulthood, so many psychological and emotional changes are undergoing in their bodies and minds.As regards my teaching development, secondary school students offered me the chance of putting into practice my teaching skills, especially how to maintain motivation and fostering creativity. I still need to learn how to deal with disruptive behaviour at this age group, because I noticed that unmotivated or uninterested students at this age can be difficult to be engaged once they have decided not to participate in school subjects and in the English class as well. As I have done some research about this age group before going into class, I designed activities that involved group work as I learnt they feel more confident when working with their peers as they do not feel exposed. Also, feedback sessions aided in speaking about their feelings and needs in a safe environment.Thanks to what I have studied during the course of studies in Psychology and Methodology, I prepared lessons based on the Communicative approach that developed the four skills integrated within context. I believe that my pedagogical knowledge was improved under the constructivist approach on teaching and learning, where I learnt to integrate the skills in my lesson plans, understanding their  social, political, cultural and physical environments in which students learn. As I had no previous experience delivering classes to teens, I based my pedagogical decisions on what I have learnt , being the base for planning and teaching. Furthermore, I revisited these practice afterwards by watching the video of the lessons and analysing my strong and weak points.Finally, journal writing offered me the possibility to reflect upon what happened in class, analysed what went right and what wrong, and evaluate my teaching performance. Moreover, journal writing gave me the opportunity of generating new teaching ideas, work out pedagogical problems reflect on my successes and struggles in the classroom. So, I used my conclusions drawn from it to work it out for future plannings.
From the bottom of my heart, I thank my tutor Cecilia for guiding me in the process of becoming a teacher, for her patience and love in aiding me accomplish my most desired goal of getting teaching degree.