Journal 4

This is my fourth journal and it is about disruptive behaviors of students during the lesson, and in this journal I tried to explain what kind of attitudes we should have in such situations based on my observations and experiences in my practicum school so that I can come back to this journal and see which methods I can use when I become a teacher.

DISRUPTIVE BEHAVIORS AND SOLUTIONS

            Students are sometimes difficult to deal with, and they do not avoid displaying disruptive behaviors. As prospective teachers, it is our duty to find the ways of hindering such behaviors. However, it is not that easy because in my practicum school, teachers know what to do when a student is behaving in an undesired way, but the result is not always what teachers want. Whether they work or not, I want to tell you the techniques my cooperating teachers use and I used during my presentations.

            In the first place, when the teacher saw a student who was not listening to her or was speaking to others, what she used first was eye-contact. In the situations when eye contact was useless, she moved close to that student. It was very effective because the student could not dare to speak near his teacher. In another class, the teacher gave the student who was misbehaving an errand to do; for instance, and she made him clean the board, write a sentence on the board or turn on the projector. I observed that these kinds of errands made the student happy and self-confident, and interestingly, this technique created more positive student-teacher relationship. Moreover, teachers often tried to involve these students in the lesson by calling on their names, asking them questions about the text they were reading or do an exercise. These were what I learned from the cooperating teachers, and I want to continue with my own experiences I had during my official and unofficial presentations.

As teacher trainees, I think we confronted with more disruptive behaviors than the teachers working in the school because students knew that we were not their teachers. Therefore, we had difficulties in managing the class due to disruptive students in the class. In my second official (it was seventh graders’ class), one of the students finished his work much more early than his friends, and he began bothering his friends. I could not know what to do in such a situation, and then I thought that giving extra work to that student would work. I told that student he was successful so he finished his work early, and he could add some more things to his work. I think he loved my communication with him, so he turned back to his work. My other experience was with the ninth graders, who were teenagers so it was much more difficult to make them participate the lesson and do what you told them to do. It was my last presentation in the practicum school, so I was upset because I loved the teachers and the students and I felt as if I had been a teacher at that school. Thus, I was more relaxed with these feelings, and I was not anxious at all. In one of the activities I wanted students to make a poster and gave the instructions, but I saw that students are talking to each other. Then I chose one of those students, and asked him what I said and what they were supposed to do in the activity. He tried to explain, and I helped him in order not to humiliate him. It was effective because students stopped talking with each other and concentrated on the activity. Again in this class, students wrote sentences and I wanted them to tell their sentences to the class one by one. While one of the students was reading his sentence, others did not listen to him so I called on a student and asked him what his friend said.

These are some of the techniques I experienced during my training. I am sure that there are a lot more, but time will show them to use in the future and we will learn as we are experiencing them.

Journal 3

This is my third journal about the questions “How can you increase your classroom management abilities?”, “Can you communicate with the students effectively?”, and “Why is it so important to have good rapport with students?”

HOW SHOULD WE MANAGE THE CLASS?

         Teachers are always with students at schools, so interaction with students is inevitable. As prospective teachers, we should pay much attention to this issue because how we interact with students has great effects in our teaching. Being always with the same students might cause the relationship between teachers and the students to be too free and easy after a while. Classroom management is one area in which students, teachers, classroom environment, materials in the class are all included. Therefore, teachers may have difficulties in managing the class due to lack of control.

            What makes the classroom management difficult? I will try to give an answer to this question by giving examples from my training school experiences. In my training school; for instance, some teachers are very good at managing the class while some others cannot achieve it even for only five minutes. Considering the difference between these two types of teachers, it is of high importance for us to find classroom management methods. One of the teachers I observed was a native speaker, and there are a lot to say about classroom management in her lessons. First of all, both the teacher and the students did not listen to each other, they shouted at each other and the students did not respect to the teacher. When I first saw this situation I was shocked, and I thought whether they had a lesson or not. Before I observed that class, I had always thought that native speakers were better at classroom management than non-native teachers, but it is not actually so. In non-native teachers’ classes students obeyed the rules, listened to their teachers, and did what their teacher asked them to do.

            As for the classroom management in my official and unofficial presentations, it looked difficult to achieve at the beginning of the year. However, as I experienced the feeling of becoming a teacher, I became happier and more self-confident. I think I reflected my feelings to students, and we established a warm, personal relationship with the students. Therefore, we can say that it is crucial to make the students feel that we are really caring for them. If we can give the students this impression, there will be no problems at all. Students need to be cared and loved; therefore, everything is up to us.

Journal 2

This is my second journal about the necessity of enthusiasm to become a teacher. It shows my philosophy of teaching. Enjoy reading it!

ENTHUSIASM OR KNOWLEDGE?

An anecdote from my own life: I used to sleep in every History lesson in primary, secondary and high schools. The topics did not interest me, I was not curious about what had happened in our history. Therefore, I had had almost no knowledge about the history until I attended university and took History lessons. In the university something changed, but what was that? Was the change due to my age, the type of school, or the teachers? Yes, my age changed, school changed, and the teachers changed. But which one of these factors effected mu more than the others? Let me answer this question after I have written my journal. My answer will be at the end of the journal.

Teaching is a demanding job; it requires teachers to sacrifice in order to reach their teaching goals. As human beings, we have different characteristic features, moods and personalities. Therefore, it is of great importance for everybody to choose the professions they are good at. Teaching is one of these professions people should be very careful about to choose because it affects the future of the world because I am in the opinion that teachers shape the students they teach. As a result, teachers should be enthusiastic to teach so that their students are enthusiastic to learn.

The lessons I observed in the training school taught me a lot. Teachers were enthusiastic, so the lessons were effective or vice versa. In two lessons in the training school I paid much attention to this issue. When compared these two lessons, we easily see that the difference between them is very obvious. The first lesson was 4^th graders’, the latter was 9^th graders. I do not know exactly whether the age factor effected caused the difference between the atmospheres of these two classes, but I think teachers are the most important factor influencing the moods of the students. The teacher of the 4^th graders was energetic, kind to the students, helped them always, gave examples related to her students’ lives; mainly, she did almost everything necessary for the students to learn. As for the teacher of the 9^th grade students, she started the lesson in a normal mood which made the students unwilling for the lesson. The teacher is very knowledgeable in her area; nevertheless, knowledge is sometimes insufficient. As a consequence, we should be very careful about our way of teaching. Although we know what to teach, if we are not efficient in how to teach, we will not be successful in teaching. Then the question: “what should we do in order to be and feel enthusiastic?” comes to our minds. My answer to this question is that we should look enthusiastic to students even if we are not. We are like mirrors, if students see us excited and enthusiastic, our feelings will pass to them.

As for the abstract from my own life, I think you have found the answer, but I want to talk about some important points which might be useful for the prospective teachers. I do not know whether it is a coincidence or not, but all the teachers I had in primary, secondary and high schools spoke slowly and they did not use their voice effectively. Thus, I had difficulty hearing and understanding them. Secondly, they did not make the topic interesting; they just told us what the books said. The only way they used was lecturing, and this really bored me so I could not learn anything from the lessons. So, if you want to be a successful teacher, make your lessons as interesting as possible, and make yourself as enthusiastic and motivating as possible.

Reaction Paper on a Fled Article

ARE YOU NEW?

After a four year of training, being an idealist teacher, loved by their students, having no classroom management problems at all or knowing how to deal with those problems are some of the things most novice teachers expect. Therefore, they begin their profession with energy and enthusiasm. Nevertheless, those beginning teachers are vulnerable to the problems they encounter in their first year of experience. In the article “From heaven to reality through crisis: novice teachers as migrants”, Naama Sabar (2004) presents the difficulties novice teachers have by showing the similarities between the immigrants who go to another country to work and live and the student teachers who start teaching after training. The article is crucial for the student teachers because it helps them to foresee their future as teachers; furthermore, it protects them from the influence of their disappointment in real school life.

First of all, Sabar (2004) points out in the article that novice teachers are strangers in the school. Having read the article, I strongly agreed with it, and I thought that getting used to the school, adopting its rules, adapting myself to it will take some time and effort. Even though we are taught theoretical knowledge in teacher education institutions; however, we cannot internalize it immediately. Therefore, we still lack some qualifications which are indispensible for our teaching profession. I am in the opinion that it is of great importance to provide students teachers with more and more practice before they enter real school life. Nonetheless, it is inadequate to give students the chance to practice only in their last year at universities in Turkey. Thus, student teachers should be allowed to discover more about their future professions.

Another significant point the article highlights is that knowledge novice teachers have does not suit to the daily life in school. Some novice teachers lose their self confidence due to the gap between the school reality and teacher training. As a result, they might feel unsuccessful in managing the class, insufficient and uninteresting for the students. I think this thought is enough for them to collapse psychologically.

Moreover, it is clear from the excerpts of the teachers participated in the research that they began with high expectations, and then they crash, and finally they get their strength and climb up again. In my opinion, it is of crucial importance to start real teaching with lower expectations because the more expectations a person has, the higher he/she will experience disappointment because they will have great difficulty in finding what they expected.

            One more thing to be considered in the article is that mentors and cooperating teachers play a great role in cultivating student teachers. For instance, in some universities in our country the effect of this cooperation is obvious during training program. If student teachers come across some problems in school, they have the chance to share these problems with their mentors; as a result, their burden gets lighter and lighter.

To sum up, as future teachers, there are a lot of problems, difficulties waiting us. I am in the opinion that trying to get prepared for such negative situations is inadequate to some extent. The reason for this is that no matter how prepared we get, there will be other unexpected problems which no one else has experienced so far. Moreover, we should not disregard the role of problems and mistakes because most people learn through them. Therefore, mistakes are inevitable, and we should try to keep our patience during the first challenging experience year.

References

Sabar, N. (2004). From heave to reality through crisis: novice teachers as migrants. Teaching and Teaching Education, 20 (2004) 145-161.

Ken Wilson's website

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official 3

This was my last presentation, students were ninth graders, and their level was pre-intermediate. There were thirteen students in the class, the topic of my lesson was modals, especially the use of can, could, should, must, would and the negative forms of them. Students had learnt it before, so it was like a practice lesson. I started the lesson with a warm-up activity because I wanted to have their attention at the beginning of the lesson so that they would participate during the lesson. The activity was breathe in and breathe out, it also helped me to create a good rapport with the students before I started the lesson. The students refreshed themselves with the warm-up activity, and I started lesson with a concept map of "holiday and the things they take when they go on a holiday". Then I got them to write what they should take in case of emergency, and I wrote the words students said on the board. After this pre-activity, I made the students watch two short videos about plane crush and getting lost on an island. I told them they were on that plane and they were alone on the island, so I asked the students what they should (not), could(not), would(not), etc. They all wrote sentences and I wrote some of them on the board. As for my post activity, I told the students they would found their own republic on the island, and would prepare a poster for which they should find a name for the republic, draw a flag, and state their rules they set for the republic. They prepared the posters and sticked them on the board. Then I chose a student, he came to the board and chose a poster, read it and the other students tried to find whose poster it was. and the rest of the lesson went on so.

Lesson plan for official 3

ACTIVITY       & AIDS	INTERACTION	PROCEDURE	STUDENTS	COMMENTS	TIME
Warm-up Physical Exercises	T®C	T greets the students and asks how they are feeling on that hot day. T asks students to stand up and do some physical exercises. T tells them to breathe in and breathe out using modals.	Ss give response to the teacher. Students stand up, breathe in and breathe out to be more energetic.	This will make the students engaged in the lesson. Students will feel more energetic and refreshed. In addition, students will be motivated for the lesson.	2 Min
Pre-activity Activating Schema Concept Map Blackboard	T®C T®C	T asks students what comes to their minds when he/she says “holiday” and makes a concept map with students’ answers. She asks the students what they should take with them when they go on a holiday and makes a list of them on the board. Then asks them what they must take in cases of emergency. While writing the words on the board, teacher makes sentences with modals so that students will have an impression about how they can use modals. She elicits most of the words from the students and adds some things if necessary.	Ss tell the words which come to their minds. Ss give answers to the T’ question. Ss listen to the teacher, and see how he/she makes sentences with the words they told. Ss think of other words which they did not think.	This activity will help the students to get the gist of the topic. This will increase the Ss’ higher order thinking skills. Moreover, with the sentences of the teacher, Ss will be able to recognize the situations in which they can use modals. If the teacher adds some words, Ss will see how the teacher is knowledgeable in this area.	6 min
Main Activity Videos Pen and paper Blackboard	T®C S ®S	T makes Ss watch two videos which are about a plane crash and getting lost on an island. T tells Ss that getting lost on an island is an emergency situation. T distributes a paper which is about “first things to do in any emergency” and makes Ss read it. T asks students to be pairs and add three things to do on the island in order to survive using “should, shouldn’t, may, can, must, mustn’t and don’t have to” and read out their sentences. T writes some of their answers on the board, and correct if necessary.	Students watch the videos and try to understand what happens in the videos. Ss read the sheet and try to understand it. Students work in pairs, read out their sentences, and they correct their friends’ mistakes if necessary.	The videos will increase the interest of the students and give an idea about the theme of the lesson. This activity will help the Ss to see the target language in a written form, so it is helpful in terms of visual mind. This will improve their writing and communication skills.	15 min
Post Activity Making a Poster Colorful pens & Papers	T®C S¬®S	T tells students that they are alone on the island and they will found their own republic.  T wants the Ss to prepare a poster about their imaginary republic. T asks Ss to find a name, draw a flag for their republic and write the rules, necessities and availabilities using “ should, shouldn’t, may, can, must, mustn’t and don’t have to”. T asks Ss to present it in the class. Students come to the board, choose a poster and read it to the class. And the other students make guesses about whose poster it is.	Each student will find a name for their republic, draw a flag and write the rules. Then the Ss declare their rules to the public which is actually their class.	This will help them use their creativity and higher order thinking skills. Moreover, students will enjoy the lesson while both presenting their posters and listening to their friends’	17 min
Extra activity Board	T®C	T draws a baby on the board and asks Ss what this baby should(not), could(not), can(not), must(not), (don’t)  have to in order to be a good person. Teacher gets answers and makes one student write the sentences on the board.	Students listen to the teacher and make sentences related to the context.	This activity will increase Ss’ knowledge about modals. Students will like it because it is like giving advice to a baby, and teenagers like these kind of things.