Pedagogical Artifacts

Pedagogical Artifacts

Stage 1: Observation Stage During the first weeks of observation I had the opportunity to observe that classes were always interrupted by other teachers, studendt from other classes and even the inspector interrupted the class. One particular day, the teacher was explaining the students the story that was told in the listening comprehension with mimicry, for the students to understand it better, when suddenly someone knocks on the door and open it. It was the inspector, that needed that any student lend him a maths and music notebook. The students said; “we do not have neither a maths nor a music notebook here today”.The inspector insisted on his purpose and the teacher, Frabrizzio, started to push the students to lend a notebook to have the possibility to continue the class. The students told the inspector and the teacher that they did not have any of those notebooks at school, but they were not listened . Passed around more than 8 minutes, the inspector gave up asking for the notebooks and left the classroom. The teacher had to explain the listening task again. It was such a annoying situation, and was not the only I had to face during this period. In that moment I wondered; Doesn’t the inspector realize that he is interrupting a class? Doesn’t he realize that the schedule is so tight to waste time looking for a math and music notebook? Why he enters the classroom without asking for permission, or apologizing because of the interruption? Effective schools do not allow interruptions in the avaliable time to teach. The available time to teach is such a sacred period that should not be interrupted by anyone at any time. As teachers we all know that gaining students attention sometimes is difficult, so maintain it is a real challenge, and how can not be respected by someone else? People that works in schools as inspectors, should know that they does not have to interrupt classes. I made a comment of this particular situation to my guide teacher, and he told me that it was really annoying for him, but that it used to happen all the time, and that it was a constant complain in the teachers meeting, but that the attitudes toward this issues have not changed at all at school. So I wonder how to deal with this issue in my teaching stage, and I thought that putting an announcement on the door’s window could be a good strategy, something like ; “please do not interrupt our learning time”

Stage 2: Team-teaching Stage In the team teaching stage I was asked to play the recording of one of the formal English test called “certamen”. When I entered the different classrooms to play the recording I realize that the students were all mixed (7th A, 7th B, 8th A and 8th B). The all had an assigned sit and had to answer the test in a pen score. My first impression of it was; “don’t you think they are too young to experience that kind of formal tests?”. But I realized that for all the children it was too normal, and it was part of the routine of the school in a test day. After the examination I could not avoid asking my guide teacher what did he think about this formal way to take the tests for the children, and he explained to me that they were not consider as part of the elementary education by the school organization, 7th and 8th grades were considered part of secondary education. Furthermore, this modality to take tests prepares them for the future opportunity to take international o national standard tests as PSU, SIMCE and PET or FCE (in case of English). The children get used to it, and then do not make the common mistakes as answering in a different way from the test in the pen score, not giving the personal information on it as name, subject and ID number, etc. I understood that it was a really positive strategy and very innovative. I really liked and I also learnt to deal with it. I had to prepare multiple-choice tests, go around the classrooms answering possible questions from students during the tests. Paying attention to the attendance lists and also paying attention to gather all the pen scores after every test, because every supervisor teacher was responsible for the test in every particular class.

Stage 3: Teaching Stage During the teaching stage I had the opportunity to develop different kind of activities. My students were really hectic, so it was a challenge for me to develop active classes for them. My students and I were in the test feedback class, checking the answers of the “certamen” and paying attention to common mistakes, so we got to the second part of the test that had to do with some collocations I taught them. Most of the students from my class had right answers and suddenly Mathias Sanchez said to me; “this part of the test was really easy miss! I remember the answers because of the song we learnt in classes” and Mathias and some other students started singing the song I taught them. In that moment I felt very proud. As I said before, my class is very hectic so, I decided to create a way to make them remember some collocations I taught them in a easy and funny way, so I created a song (with a hip-hop rhythm) it was really easy and fun. They had to make the rhythm of the hiphop song with their hands and follow the song instructions (it was interactive; the teacher and the student had their own part in the song). I remember that as prospective teacher I made the commitment of being creative when creating activities and it really worked. The song was really simple but helped them to learn in a new, easy and funny way. Teachers should be creative all the time, I know that creativity also brings time consuming activities that we must prepare with a lot of anticipation, but it is important to fit students learning styles and try different kind of activities to make your class being involved and committed with their own learning process.