A Wearable Motorcycle?

The Tuesday session was a bit stressful, because I wanted to talk about 3 cities, and also, due to technical planning I had to play the final PowerPoint presentation to review all the contents that we had been working on. Conclusions: too many things for a 55 minutes class! I know it! But as I considered that the presentation was more important because I’m going to use it to check out what they’ve learnt, we worked on Philadelphia, Washington DC and Las Vegas veeery quickly!

Like the first presentation, this one was also very successful. They could locate all the cities worked in class and they recognized all the photographs. Even students with more difficulties to learn English were really engaged with the presentations.

On Friday, for the last session, I prepared an exercise to work on groups based on 4 different texts. Three of them were about the Greenest American cities, and the last one had nothing to do with US cities, but I chose it because I thought that it would catch their attention. It is called A Wearable Motorcycle. As a matter of fact, it attracted my attention when I was looking for interesting readings for my students. So I decided to adapt it to their level and made them watch the video related.

The session was great, but a bit messy at the end. During the first half an hour they worked more or less concentrated and in a relative silence, but gradually they started talking and getting distracted.

I’ve noticed that working in small groups is more difficult than it could seem, because you can’t be everywhere at once. Maybe with a couple of assistants...

Do you know where is Grey’s Anatomy set?

They couldn’t tell me which recent very important political figure was senator for Illinois and live in Chicago, but obviously, they know where is set Grey’s Anatomy TV series, in Seattle, of course!

In this session I introduced a new exercise that I hadn’t planned at first. The day before I assisted to my practicum mate class, who was implementing his Didactic Unit about cinema with 1st of Batxillerat students. One of the exercises that they made was a Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana) song in which they had to fill the gaps with conditional tense verbs. It was a very successful exercise so I decided to do it myself and implement a Nirvana song at the end of my session, as I was going to explain them that grunge was a musical subgenre that emerged in Seattle during the mid-1980s. So I thought that it would be a great opportunity to play a Nirvana song, The Man who Sold the World.

As expected, the song was a very successful activity. To the point that they started suggesting me a lot of songs for other sessions. At the end, I had to tell them that I would like work with all these songs, but that this was the English class, not the Music one.

Gangsters and the Gold Rush

On Tuesday afternoon we should have started working on Chicago, but instead, as I already mentioned, I brought my laptop and made my students watch the US cities PowerPoint presentation that should have seen in the first session. They really liked it! They paid attention and were very concentrated on the projection (even made me questions like Why it’s called Golden Gate Bridge if it is red? or But the Chinatown is located in New York, isn’t it?). In the last part of the presentation, there were all the photographs mixed, and they had to recognize them according to what I had just explained, and they did it! All of them! That showed me that they had been paying attention to what I had showed and explained... Wonderful!
Then we kept on working on Chicago, the Windy City. I had prepared an activity about gangsters to work in groups of 4 students. It was a communicative activity in which they had to speak and compare their answers with other classmates, but the main problem was that because of having to play them the PowerPoint about US Cities, we had less time than planned and they didn’t have time to write the final summary agreed with the group.

On Friday we talked about San Francisco. The main activity that I had prepared was an exercise based on a audio story about the Gold Rush. I was a bit surprised, because I was sure that they would know what the gold rush was (I mean, in Catalan, la febre de l’or), but most of them didn’t know it. So I think that it was even more interesting for them because they could also learn something about history or general culture.

My first session or When I clashed with technology!

This Tuesday I’ve started implementing my Curricular Unit and I made my debut facing up to a technical hitch! I was a bit nervous because it was going to be my first experience leading a classroom. On Tuesday they have class in the “Aula d’Idiomes” which has a projector, Internet connection, loudspeakers, etc., so I had prepared two PowerPoint presentations. The first one was an introduction of my Unit in which I explained what we were going to do, which were my objectives, how I was going to assess them and so on.

I started with this PowerPoint, and the first strange thing occurred! I'd created some animations to catch their attention, like little cars moving through the US map, and I'd configured transitions effects in paragraphs and through the slides according to the speech I had planned, but most of these effects didn’t work!! I didn’t expect that, so I had to adapt my speech to the presentation.
Then I had prepared another PowerPoint file to start talking about US cities. It was a presentation with the cities that we are going to work with located in the map and full of photographs of their landmarks and characteristics points, so that they could be able to identify them.

– So, let’s start talking about US cities.... mmmm.... nope! Wait a moment.... the PowerPoint doesn’t seem to work... lets try it again... (1 minute.... 2 minutes...)
– Do you want me to ask the computer specialist that is right there? -Mercè asked me.
– Ok! (At that point I don’t know if I was nervous or furious with technology)
– Which version of PowerPoint have you used? -the computer specialist asked me.
– 2003.
– Ok, that’s the problem, many 2003 effects don’t work on PowerPoint 2000, which is the version that we’ve installed here! I’m sorry, but you must try to convert your files to PowerPoint 2000....

This is more or less a summary of what happened. So, what did I do for the remaining 25 minutes? Fortunately I had brought the activities that I had prepared for the next session about Chicago, so we started with an introductory listening about this city.
At the end it was all right, but I must admit that on Tuesday I clashed with technology!!
I felt a bit sad and annoyed because it was my first session and I had prepared and worked a lot with these two PowerPoints, but instead, the session was splitted and obviously, the next session about Chicago was also splitted.

But well, we must be flexible, isn’t it?

Polishing up my unit for next week!

This week Mercè prepared a Find Someone Who activity that was quite funny, but I realized that they are not used to this kind of activities. Mercè got out of the class for a while, and they remained seated reading the questions and asking to the classmates besides them. I told them to ask all their classmates but they were a bit confused. “Come on, stand up, walk around the class and ask all your classmates!” Then they start moving along and the chaos began! I think they really had fun with this activity.

Next week I’ll start implementing my Curricular Unit which is about USA Cities. My intention is no working on American Geography, but on specific famous US cities that we all have heard in many movies, TV series and so on, but we don’t know exactly were are they located. And being the US a so huge country, if you think that, for instance, Seattle is located in the East Coast, you may be making a mistake of almost 5 thousand kilometers. Being also photography one of my passions, I also expect that they would be able to recognize these cities through photographies of their landmarks.
So this is my starting point. I’ve decided to work on 10 cities: Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington DC and Las Vegas, although we are also going to talk briefly about Boston, Miami, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Salt Lake City (I want to relate these two last cities to Olympic Games, that they worked with Mercè last week).
Of course, I would use the topic of the cities to introduce listenings, readings and activities related to them. For example, in the first city that we are going to work with, Chicago, they will listen to an introductory audio file that, among other things, talks about gangsters. So I’ll use this to introduce an activity about Al Capone.

Implementing an ICT activity... Done!

Finally this last Tuesday I could implement my ICT activity! Well, at least we did it in the class, even though no one had time to finish it. The main problem of my Treasure Hunt (about Broadway) is that most of the questions (6 of 9) were based on a 9 minutes podcast. I’ve realized that they have a lot of problems for being concentrated for 9 minutes listening to an audio file in English. I must also say that the quality of the sound in the headsets was very poor (very low) and this doesn’t help.

I told them to finish the exercise at home and deliver it to me next week. I think that with their own loudspeakers or headsets in a quite environment, they could be more concentrated in the speaker.

On Wednesday we assist to a “Claustre” session as a part of our tasks outside the classroom. The teachers have to elect a representative for the school’s board. The election process was held quickly. Afterward, they were informed about the annual fire drill that will be conducted in the next month.

Finally, a teacher (we suppose that he was the person in charge of computing) explained to the others how to use the new PDA that they have received this year to manage students assistance, assessment, incidents, and so on. I personally think that this is very interesting for teachers. I don’t know if in practice this would be helpful or not, but in theory, as he explained, it could be very useful! I would like to have one of this PDA for me!!

Trying to implement an ICT activity...

On Tuesday they started their oral presentations about cities of the world. Nearly everyone brought their posters to the class, and the most of them were really great.
As supposed, they didn’t have time to finish all the presentations in one hour. The rest, more or less the half of the class, did it on Thursday. Some of the students that talked the first day did it really well; they spoke about their cities without reading, trying to be communicative. Other, of course, just read what they have written in the poster.

On Friday, we (Aaron and me) were supposed to implement our ICT activities. As the “Aula d’idiomas” only have 10 computers and in my 4th of ESO group there are 25 students, our coach reserved another class with more computer (maybe not one for every student, but more or less). We’ve planned to do both activities in the same session, half an hour for each one, starting with Aaron’s one. Now I must to admit that we committed our first time planning mistake. Apart from the excitement and the mess of being in front of a computer, a lot of time was lost for getting into the Internet and writing the Treasure hunt page successfully. I also must admit that these wizard4teachers.org addresses full of id=?/124... and so on are not really helpful!
At the end of the session they had not even started my activity, but hadn’t finished the Aaron’s Treasure Hunt about the British zoos.

So we are going to implement my ICT activity on next Tuesday, in the “Aula d’Idiomes”, with these 10 computers. We’ll divide the group in two parts and they’ll have to do the activity in half an hour. Let’s see if they can do it!

2nd week: oral presentations and exam!

The 2nd week of my practicum is already over and I’m quite pleased about it. I’ve definitely chosen the group I’m going to monitor, 4th of ESO, and even though this week I’ve been attending to all three groups, from now on I’m going to focus on mine.
So, what has been going on in 4th of ESO during this last week?

On Tuesday Mercè asked the students to do a project about a city in order to present it orally. This will count as an oral grade, so it’s important. They’ve to choose a city of the world and look for information related to it, such as the population, what is known for, facts about it, important facilities, etc. Then they’ve to create a handwritten poster and present it to the rest of the class. At first, it was supposed to be done in a week, but they were a bit reluctant to do it and try to get more time. So at last, Mercè gave them an extra week.
They had to collect all the information needed and bring it to the Thursday class in order to work in the classroom and show it to Mercè so she could correct it. Some of them did it, and other didn’t. The ones who did it, kept on working on the computers (Thursday class is done in “Aula d’idiomes”, which has some computers, a projector and so forth) and the others had some exercises to do. I think they’ve to do their presentations on next Thursday, so I’ll explain you how it develops.

On Friday they had an exam! I helped Mercè in proctoring the exam and it was quite funny because some students wanted me to help them and asked me if an answer was correct or not, just as if they were children! I had a quick glance at what some of them were writing while I paced around the classroom and I noticed that some of them were making a lot of grammar mistakes. We’ll see how it goes!

Observation task and...

During this first week we were supposed to do observation task in the classroom.... but it wasn’t that easy!!

This year our tutor teaches 4th of ESO, 1st of Batxillerat and Cicles formatius. Though she had let us choose the group we want to monitor, this first week we’ve been observing the tree groups.

Our first experience was with Cicles formatius and I must admit that after the first hour I was a bit scared because even though the group was split, they were only about 10 students, they took at least 15 minutes to “be quiet”. They spoke and made a lot of noise for the whole class. What I’ve noticed is that their level was really low, and the teacher had to speak in Catalan/Spanish most of the time. It was very difficult to get their attention. The first thing that shocked me was what a student told her just at the beginning of the class: “profe, pero si ya sabes que no te entiendo!” Wow!

The next group was 1st of Batxillerat, and fortunately, the situation was very different. Though it’s a very large group (39 students), they behaved and, in general, their level of English is not bad. They are reluctant to speak in English, but the teacher can do it most of the time and they understand her quite well. What I also noticed is that when she wanted to be sure that students understood her, she repeated what she had said in Catalan. I think that this is a good group to work with, but the problem is that it’s such a big group. My practicum mate, Aaron, is going to monitor this one because of the schedule of the Didactics class at the University.

On Tuesday, we had class with 4th of ESO. That day we had another teacher in the classroom, Kieth, a Scottish student that helps English teachers with conversation tasks one hour a week for each group. I think it’s very interesting for the students, so they have the opportunity to listen to a native English speaker. He read a text and they had to do some exercises related to it. This group is not as big as the 1st of Batxillerat (26 students), so I think it could be easier to implement some activities with them.

On Wednesday, our third day, we were supposed to start participating in the 1st of Batxillerat class but I think we did a step forward. The group was split, so some of them had to work with Kieth and the rest remained with Mercè. The problem was that Kieth didn’t arrived, so Mercè asked us to do the class with these eleven students. Wow!! We had to read aloud a text that we haven’t previously read and then they had to answer some questions related to it that obviously we haven’t answered ourselves. I felt a bit nervous when I started reading, but I must say that it was a great experience. They behaved, they listened and worked in silence and the class developed without problems. A great third day of practicum!

Warming up the engine...

Hi everyone!

This is my new blog focused on my CAP course, specially on my Practicum experience.

The school I was assigned is IES Joan d'Àustria, in Sant Martí, Barcelona. I've just set an appointment with my tutor, Mercè Roman, for this Thursday, and I must recognize that I'm a bit nervous about the upcoming meeting. I mean, I want to start right now in order to see what is all about, how is my tutor, the school, which course I'll monitor, etc., but at the same time, I feel scared about all this... It's a bit contradictory, I know, but it's what I feel now!
I'll explain you how does all this go on!