Dear FLE 404 PRACTICE TEACHING members,
In this post, you need to describe TWO puzzling teaching/learning situations that you have experienced in the practice teaching school in detail, which you find hard to understand and to take action against (an event which you do not know what to do). It can be concerned with some aspects of your own practice teaching practice, the learning process of the students in your practice teaching classes, the mentor teachers' classroom practice, their attitudes towards students,their philosophy of teaching,the student behaviour in class, or your own questions about how to act in a certain classroom-related situation. You need to do this task individually.You also need to make some suggestions for TWO OF YOUR CLASSMATES' PUZZLES.
one of the things that I did not like about my mentor teacher's philosophy is that she speaks 10 to 15 minutes before every class about her daily life. she tells about her husband's illness and the places that she has gone to eat. I think that is not good for the Students. they are there to learn not to listen unrelated stories about the teachers life.
ReplyDeleteand the second point is that teacher used Turkish a lot during the lesson. it is also disadvantage for the students.
and I have learned a lot from this practice teaching in one of my teaching tasks all of the class was upset, because their friend had left the school just before my lesson. most of them was crying and they did not participated even did not speak at all during the class. so it was really bad for me. I did not know what to do.
first of all, I did not like the way the school principle treated us. Actually they did not say anything but they were like looking for somothing bad to happen. Another thing was that there were only two English teachers and one of them was good at neither teaching nor improving herself in the are of contemporary English. I did not like any of the teaching sessions of that teacher and exams she prepared. There is no standart in teaching and there is no difference in teaching either 4th graders or 7 th graders. I believe that teachers should consult each other and make the lessons more appropriate for both for the level and for the learning style of the students.
ReplyDeleteOur mentor teacher always sat on her chair during the lessons so it was a bad shock for me. I dont want to be a teacher who is sitting on her chair always. Another thing that I didnt like was the teacher humilated the students and harshly critized the students when they made mistake. I didnt like her correcting the mistakes because students didnt want to participate in class and talk about the lesson as they were afraid of making mistakes. It was very bad for them. I think all of the students should participate in class. they can make mistakes because we all learn everything by experiencing so they also have the right of experiencing.
ReplyDeleteWe were disappointed by the school manager at the first day of practice teaching.He only give importance on rules. He criticized our clothes strictly although our clothes were suitable for school environment.We did not deserve such a treatment.The other event affecting me negatively is a comment of one of the teachers in the school. We wanted to take a photocopy of a worksheet but she did not help us. She found our worksheet useless because it had pictures on it. I was surprised to see a traditional teacher like that. How can we tell her benefits of student centered lessons?How can a country progress with these kinds of teachers? Furthermore; there are projectors in all of the classes but nobody used them throughout the semester other than us. The students have opportunities but they are depried of making use of them. Finally I didn't like methods of my mentor teacher. Her lessons are like traditional ones. She used grammar translation method most of the time. She lost countless hours with grammar exercises therefore her lessons were boring most of the time.
ReplyDeleteI was really shocked when I first heard that the mentor was insulting the students in front of the other students. I still have problems with this matter because I do not want to hear any insults any more. actually, she has many unusual habits like talking to her friends in class time with her mobile and warning to be silents while she is on the phone. I would be happy if I hadn't seen these scenes in such a school.
ReplyDeleteThere were many situation which make me feel uncomfortable. There was a student named Fehmi in the class who was joined in this class to provide him an athmosphere where there are the students of the same age. However the teachers in the school mostly ignored that kind of students and did not help them and did not try to make them involved in the school athmosphere. Apart from that problems, one day the remote controlling device of the projector is lost and one of the teacher in the school called one of the students and said 'I think Fehmi took it, go and question him'. After the teacher's this treatment, how is it possible to make Fehmi combine with other students. The teacher showed Fehmi as a thief to his classmate. Also one day again the same teacher saw one of my worksheets that I prepared for the students. There were pictures and some sentences in it. she looked at it and said ' There is nothing in it'. However, this teacher didn't know English and the topic in the worksheet. Whatsmore, the amnager of the school was certainly obsessed with the rules and always looking at the clothes of the teachers.
ReplyDeletefirst of all, I felt puzzled when I witness how the teacher treats the students in the class when she said one of the students in front of her classmates "sus kapa çeneni". I was shocked. Then I got used to it because she treated all of the class like this just to"control over the class and for the sake of classroom management"
ReplyDeleteThen it was our turn... the most puzzling situaiton was the time when she yelled us in front of the students there.She gave us the pages and topics to do in the class without any preparations then we did it. In the second lesson she came to the class and asked the students if they read their writings to us and the ss said no. She looked at us and yelled at us "Siz ne yaptınız derste? Yaptırmadınız mı onları?" We were shocked and couldn't say anything for a while...Later we could express ourselves...
I am not obsessed with any methods because I believe that if the method or techniques is helpful for the students’ learning, it is the best method. Therefore, I went to the school without any prejudgments. However, the way the teacher covered the lesson made me some kind of uncomfortable. She doesn’t use any adaptation technique. She begins to read the instructions of the book from the beginning and then continues to the end of the unit. The classroom is like a reading lesson in primary school. The students answer the questions in order and they sit silently in their desk. There are no warn-up, lead in activities or any smooth transitions. It is normal that the teacher can like the course book and want to use its activities and exercises but it is really useless to cover the topics like reading a book line by line. She is really calm and tolerant and has a beautiful smiling face. I think her lesson will become more useful and enjoyable if she makes some adaptation on the activities according to the students’ interest.
ReplyDeleteThe other problem is that there is no classroom language. I mean, the students use L1 in order to ask questions or solve the problems related to the activities. With the help of formulaic language, the target language can become the medium of the language, which will help the students acquire the language. Most of the students are well in using the target language and so with the little help of formulaic language, this problem could be solved.