Journal 3

Creating Positive Peer Relationships in the Classroom

Two of the classes I have observed this year were preparation classes. One of them was the 6^th graders who have come from different schools and the other one was the 9^th grade classroom which also consisted of students who have come from other institutions. Thus, the environment in these two classrooms was different from that of the 5^th graders who have known each other for a long time. In these two classes, peer relationships were considerably different from that of the 5^th grade classroom.

At the beginning of the year, the students in these classes were usually hanging out in very small groups or individually. Especially in the 9^th graders, maybe because they are teenagers, the students generally preferred to be alone or with the only two or three people they knew. This situation affected the classroom environment negatively as well. For example, no one wanted to do group activities very willingly as they felt like strangers.

In these two grades, this problem was solved with different methods. For the case of the 9^th graders, the school organized an orientation program which they organize every year to make the students familiar with each other. Throughout this orientation program, the students joined some trips and sports events all together. These events were invaluable opportunities for teenagers to know each other better and to socialize. They made new friends and knew each other better after this orientation period. After this orientation program, the environment of the classroom changed considerably and we could observe more positive relationship patterns among the students. The English teacher also implemented some activities which helped them know each other better such as “Find someone who….” game.

For the case of the 6^th graders, the school did not have such a comprehensive orientation program. Rather, it was the teacher who prepared some activities and games to make the students more familiar with each other. For example, she always prepared fun group activities for them. She made them paint a picture, prepare a poster or define each other with the adjectives they have learned in the class in groups. After some time, she also added some language contests to her class which made the students feel more connected to their groups and added another dimension to their friendship.

To sum up, I can say that it is a challenging job to teach a class of students who are not familiar with each other. Thus, we should try to create positive peer relationships using all the sources we have. If the school can help us with an orientation program as in the case of 9^th graders, it can also be a very good opportunity to create a friendly classroom environment.

Journal 2

Do We Really Use Technology Effectively?

All of us have the chance of observing the use of technological tools in our practicum schools. These tools include over head projectors, computers and recently there are a lot of smart boards available in most of the private schools. At Eyüboğlu Schools, there is a smart board in every class. All of the teachers make use of these smart boards in their classes. However, there is one point I am curious about: Do they really use the smart board technology effectively?

Before answering this question, let’s look at some advantages of having a smart board in the classroom. Smart boards are great for demonstrations, they can appeal to learners with different learning strategies, they can maximize the use of computer technology in the classroom ( if there is only one computer), they are interactive and they allow for the use of multimedia resources and internet with a whole class. After reading all of these advantages, one can easily dream of a perfect classroom environment created by the touch of a smart board. However, this is not the case.

In most of the lessons I have observed until now, the smart board, unfortunately, has been used as a substitute for the classical black board we are familiar with. The teachers, instead of taking the advantage of having these tools in the classroom, just use them for taking notes with their electronic pens or for showing PowerPoint slide shows in order to cover the grammar subjects.

What could have been done instead? I have a few suggestions for activities with the smart board. First of all, it is possible to play a lot of online games prepared for online learners- the teachers can make use of such games and activities. There is a big array of electronic sources from which the teacher can choose to present through the smart board as well. Also, smart boards enable some links to be made between the subject material and technology- thus allowing the learners to see how they can use their own technological resources at home for learning purposes.

Overall, I believe that before smart board technology is presented in schools, the teachers should be given an orientation on how to use it most effectively. This way, it would be possible to ensure that technology is in fact used purposefully at schools- not as a substitute for non- technological tools.

Journal 1

Do We All Have a Favourite?

One of the points I tried to pay attention during my practicum was the participation of the students in the lesson. I observed three different classes in three different levels. In all of these classrooms, there were students with differing needs and differing levels of competence. Some of them preferred participating in oral tasks while some others were better in writing activities. However, isn’t it the teacher’s task to ensure the participation of all the students in the lesson?

The question I am asking in this journal is: Do we all have a favourite student? My answer, unfortunately, would be “Yes.” Whether willingly or unwillingly, I believe that we are inclined to have better relationships with the students who participate more in the classes and who make the lesson easier to handle for us. I can observe this in all of the classes I have attended. As the teachers are professional, you normally do not see that they have a preference for a certain student in the classroom as they try to behave equally to all of them. They generally have a good rapport with all the students. However, when you examine the interaction in the classroom closely, it is possible to see that some students have more chances of participation in the classroom than the others. The teachers always have a curriculum to catch up with and they want to finish the subject at hand as soon as possible. As a result, I believe that they feel more comfortable giving the chance to talk to the student they trust. There is a student in every class whom the teacher trusts that he or she will have a correct answer to all the questions. Especially for the challenging grammar subjects, I have observed that these students are generally who have the right to speak. When the teacher feels that there may occur a misunderstanding or confusion when there are wrong answers, s/he consults his/ her most trusted student.

What happens to the other students then? Especially in the lower grades, most students are too shy to confess that they have not understood the subject especially if the correct answers are given by other students. In such cases, the students just keep silent and they keep doing the same mistakes over and over as they are not corrected.

The responsibility is the teacher’s in this case, I think. Every teacher knows the level of his/ her students at least roughly. So, going on to the lesson with the high achievers and leaving the low achievers behind would be a cruel attitude. The teacher should provide equal right to speak for all her students or sometimes s/he should even favor low achieving students for the sake of learning about their difficulties and providing help.

Self Evaluation 2

The Time Management Issue

For my second official presentation with the 5th grade classroom, I was supposed to cover a grammar subject- namely “going to”. While I was thinking about how to teach this subject to my students, I decided that I would not make a lesson based on grammar explanation. That is what has been taught to us for four years. We should not write grammar rules of formulas on the board and then expect our students to understand them without any context or guidance. The first thing we need to do is to present the context for the use of that particular structure, and help the students understand what kind of space in the meaning that structure actually fills.

In my presentation, I tried to apply this idea to the classroom. However, because there was no explicit reference to “going to” throughout my presentation, the students sometimes used it in their production and sometimes did not. They knew other structures which could be used instead of “going to” and they were successful in using them. I am not so sure whether I should have restricted my students to convey their meaning across using “going to.” However, I think that this did not constitute a problem as the students were actually able to grasp the use of this structure in the lesson.

Another problem I came across was the time management issue. I believe that most of us have this problem as we are novice teachers and we cannot foresee how the lesson we planned will progress in a real classroom environment. Regarding my lesson plan, I thought that it would take a full hour or maybe it could exceed the time limit. However, the reality was not like that. In the classroom, the activities progressed really fast and I was shocked when I looked at the clock to see that I still have a lot of time until the end of my lesson. This can be due to the fact that I was too fast at the beginning of the lesson as a result of stress and nervousness. However, I fortunately had an extra activity in my mind which saved the day. I asked the students about their own holiday plans for the summer and I closed the lesson with this discussion.

To conclude, I can say that it is a must to have an extra activity in mind when you are not sure whether your lesson plan will take that much time or not. Experiencing this in a real classroom, I will always keep preparing an extra for all my classes from now on. I advise this to all my teacher candidate friends as well. Being completely blank at that moment and not knowing what to do could result in a classroom disaster. Being prepared is always better than leaving the lesson to its fate. 

Self Evaluation 1

Too Far or Too Close ?

While watching myself in the video of my first official presentation, I asked myself one question: How much distance is there between me and my students? Or is there any? Of course, there has to be some distance; however, as a prospective teacher, I feel myself incompetent in preserving a logical distance between myself and the students.

I asked this question to one of my mentor teachers during an interview for our classroom management course. She said: “Well, this is a difficult question but there is not a certain answer for this. This is just an instinct. You understand how much distance you should keep with a certain group of students once you are in the same classroom with them and this changes in every class.” Throughout my practicum experience, I started to agree more and more with my teacher’s explanation.

I did my first official presentation with the high school preparation classroom. From the beginning of the first semester, I have had a very good rapport with all the students in this class. This affected my experience positively, of course. I even asked for their opinions while I was getting ready for my unofficial presentation and official presentation. As a result, their level of participation and enthusiasm during these presentations was quite high. However, there is one question that needs and answer: Would I be more successful in managing the classroom if I were a more authoritative teacher?

While I was watching the video, I had the impression that I was not very successful in managing the classroom. The students knew that I liked them and they did not always think of me as their teacher. As a result, they believed that I would not object to them if they did not participate in the activities; and this was the case, actually. I did not want to harm my relationship with the classroom for the sake of making them feel that I am the teacher. I now think that if there was more distance between us, and if I behaved like a teacher instead of a friend to these students, it would be better for my classroom management during the official presentation.

Other than that, I did not have any problems during my official presentation. The students were generally willing to participate in the activities and they replied to most of my questions. There were just a few points where I should have used classroom management skills more effectively to ensure participation in the lesson. The students should have felt that this is their lesson and that I am their teacher. 

Personal Learning Diary

Keeping in Touch!

“What is a blog?” I remember asking myself this question quite a lot of years ago when I first heard the term. Then I just went online and checked some travel blogs. They were different from the regular websites that I was familiar with. The bloggers were writing from time to time, and sharing their travel experiences through these blogs. Later, I discovered that it was in fact free and easy to have a blog and write in a blog. That was the point when I created my first personal blog on Blogger.com.

I was excited when I first learned that we were supposed to keep a blog about our practicum experience this year. I have tried to keep my blog as active as possible since the beginning of the term. In my opinion, the idea of having a blog gives us the impression that the work we are doing this term is a professional work, and it should be something worth sharing with other people. For me, the basic aim of blogging is this: sharing with others, and helping people take advantage of your own experience. As a result, I have tried to post everything I have made use of this term in my blog. Also, blogs provide us with a good frame where we can see and evaluate our own work. It is good to see all of your work neatly placed in a blog- this helps us to make self-evaluations as well.

Lastly, I see the blogs as a step towards professional development. All of the ELT professionals I have met in The Third International ELT Students Conference and the other conferences have professional blogs which they keep really active. Sharing their ideas on their blogs help these people get instant feedback from their colleagues and their followers. Most of the bloggers reply to the comments they take from other people. We also were able to get some feedback from our peers thorough the help of our blogs and evaluate our own work with the help of others.

Blogs are a great way of representing yourself and your work in the digital life. They allow us to share not only words but also videos, pictures and other online sources. In that sense, I see them as an invaluable source both for the bloggers and for the blog readers. Starting to blog from our practicum will be an advantage for our later professional life as we will have a source which allows us to keep the track of our own professional development from the very beginning of our career. In this sense, I see the blogs as a way of monitoring yourself and keeping in touch with the others. 

Feedback 5

Feedback on Fatih Sivridağ’s First Official Presentation

At the beginning of the lesson, Fatih introduced the topic to his students by asking them some questions about camping and whether they had experienced it before or not. I think that his choice for the topic was good and he made a good opening for the lesson. Some students raised their hands to answer his questions. However, it would have been better if he had used a concept map to activate the students’ vocabulary knowledge about this topic. He could have also asked some further questions to the students who said that they had experienced camping.

In the following stage, the students were required to read a passage about clouds. In my opinion, it would have been good to give the students a task to do while reading the passage or the teacher could have said what they were going to do once the passage was finished. In this way, he could have made the students read the text with an aim in their minds and this –in my opinion- is more motivating and meaningful for the students. However, most of the students participated in the question- answer part after the reading text in Fatih’s lesson and this issue did not come out as a problem.

Although this was not the case for the following parts, I felt that he did not move around the classroom especially at the beginning. This might be due to the stress of starting a new lesson and being filmed. However, it is essential for us to be close to all of our students from time to time. Also, I found some of his feedback at the beginning a little bit too difficult for the students’ age and level. As far as I could see from the video, some of the students looked perplexed. However, they were able to find their way around both with their peers’ and their teacher’s help. He was ready for help when the students were confused and when they did not know what to do. This is one of the things that make this lesson successful.

Overall, I think that this was a good lesson but there are some points that can be improved. I hope that this feedback will be useful in that sense.