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Reflection on the first teaching practicum

On January 4, 2017 I visited Community Based High School Sultan Abad to take the first

class with grade 9 as the part of my teaching practicum. According to the time table of the school

I had to take the first period, hence, I reached the school at 8 am. But after reaching the school I

came to know that due to some adjustments the English class has been shifted to second period.

After waiting for 45 minutes I entered the class, greeted the students, introduced myself and

briefly shed light on the purpose of teaching practicum.

As planned I started my class with warm up activity, in which a vocabulary chart

(containing the vocabulary of city and village life) was displayed in front of class for students to

read and guess the topic. Afterward, I started the main activities. Since, I was intended to teach

free writing in first lesson therefore, I discussed pre- writing/ brain storming and free writing. It

was an overcrowded class with no space to move chairs to form groups that is why I had to

consider left side of the class as group A and right side of the class as group B. after identifying

the groups the students were asked to close their eyes and visualize village and city life. Group A

visualized city life and group B visualized village life. The students were given three minutes to

visualize and collect some ideas in their minds. Soon after the visualization, the students were

asked to jot down their ideas in bullet points in the given sheets. Since, it was free writing

therefore, I kept encouraging them to write whatever came to their minds without any

considerations of grammatical rules. Subsequently, the students were asked to put their points

together and write a text/ passage. Once they done with their writing, they read each others text

to give feedback. Towards the end I randomly selected three students to read their text to the

class so that I could give feedback in general. At the end of the session I gave them home task to

write five sentences about that particular class.

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In general the class was interactive throughout 45 minutes. All the things were done

smoothly and according to the plan. The students willingness, responsiveness and active

participation made the teaching and learning process more interesting and learner centered.

Throughout the class the students maintained their interest alive. Assigning the students to the

groups made the class more interesting, there was a sense of competition and all the students

were trying to write their best taking help from the vocabulary charts. Using multi modals made

the class interesting and interactive for the students. Reading vocabulary from charts, visualizing

city and village lives, writing their ideas in bullets points, putting them together, reading each

others text and sharing their writing in front of class all were thrilling activities for them.

However, it could have been made more interesting and interactive if small groups were formed.

Displaying pictures of village and city with vocabulary items would have made the lesson more

interesting and would have grasped the students attention more. I was too much conscious about

time I completed the lesson 6 minutes earlier. In remaining six minutes I asked the students to

share their problems regarding writing and share their expectations from my teaching practicum.

The students openly discussed their problems and also shared their expectations from my

teaching practicum. I enjoyed the discussion a lot because every student wanted to share their

problems related to writing.

After taking the class I found contradiction between the students writing skills and the

teachers perception about their writing skills. In my first meeting with the teacher, after class

observation the teacher told me that the students are too poor at writing, they even cannot write a

single sentence properly. In discussion with the students I came to know that the teacher has

made writing a scary thing for them. The students are confined to the grammar rules. Before

writing a single sentence they take care of every bit of grammar. As a teacher I have observed in
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my classes that whenever, the students are asked to write a piece of writing they think of

grammatical rules and sentence structures which stops them to initiate writing, and make writing

a nightmare for them. Until we motivate and encourage our students we cannot achieve our

desired students learning outcomes. According to Stephens (2016) teaching without motivating

the students is just wastage of time. He further says the teachers motivating words make the

learning an easy task and move the students towards the desired goal and objectives.

Since it was the first lesson, I was afraid of proper execution of the lesson because the

context and the students were new, the class was overcrowded and congested. But with the help

of multi modality I managed to deliver the lesson in a proper way. Reading vocabulary from the

colour charts, visualization, pre- writing/ brain storming, free writing, peer assessment,

presenting the text in front of class by the students, teachers feedback discussion were used to

make the lesson interactive and interesting.

As a teacher I need to take care of the minute mistakes which occurred in the first lesson

to avoid them in future. I hope, I would teach in a better way if I get a chance in future to teach

the same lesson.

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Reference

Stephens, T. L. (2016). Encouraging Positive Student Engagement and Motivation: Tips for
Teachers. Retrieved March, 4, 2016.