The easy way out.

Here I will share an experience with you girls. This happened to me during my practice period and reminded me why I decided once that I wanted to be a teacher.
During the observation period there was a boy who really called my attention from the very first day. He was always sitting at the back, without participating at all and whenever he was asked to answer a question by the teacher only silence was his response. He seemed to be very shy and having a vulnerable personality. Before starting my practice period I decided to talk to his teacher about him but the only response I had was: “He never studies, he fails in every subject, there’s nothing to be done” and here is when I thought let’s give it a try. I will do my best to help this boy and that is what I did.
He was the one to whom I paid more attention, whenever I explained something, an activity for example, while the others were solving it I went to his desk and explained it to him for a second time. In the first week there were no signs of improvement except the fact that he started to pay more attention to what we were doing, still unable to participate. But, in the second week, when I saw that he was starting to solve activities I started to call him, and he felt confident enough to raise his hand whenever we were correcting something or they were asked to participate. And he was doing well, he was able to solve every activity, at the end of each class he came to me and asked if I could explain to him what they had to do for the next class. He wanted to work and participate and feel part of the group.
The day of the exam came and, when correcting them, to my surprise he got a “very good indeed”. When the marks were read to the students by the teacher, something unexpected happened. I looked at him and he was crying. I couldn’t believe my eyes; I went to his desk and asked him what the problem was. He just cried and repeated: “I studied a lot”. “But come on” I told him. “You have only made a few mistakes, it is a high mark, why are you crying?” and the response was: “I had never got one of those, I thought I had failed”...
Future teachers: Never take the easy way out.

The World Cup in the classroom.

Girls, what I want to do here is share an experience with you. Well, as you all know, the World Cup has become the talk of the country. And, the classroom does not escape from reality. Younger students are always exchanging stamps to complete their albums. Elder students are always judging the Argentinian coach’s decisions and criticising the players. So, I thought: why not taking advantage of this situation? I have to ask them to stop talking about the topic. Why not spending a whole lesson talking about the World cup using the target language? And that was what I did. I used the World Cup as context for a group of activities related to countries and nationalities with little students and, I presented a text about the World Cup for reading comprehension to the elder ones. And let me tell you that the results were amazing. They were so motivated that they really enjoyed the class and were eager to participate or to find out more about the World Cup history for example.
Motivation plays an important role in this issue. As we all have studied motivated students are more willing to participate and take risks, and are so interested in communicating that they manage to express themselves in the target language.
So girls I think that it is important to take these things into account, I know that sometimes we have to follow a book, we have many restrictions but we cannot deny reality. What is happening outside the classroom is of interest to the students. Almost any topic can be used as context to practise any grammar structure. If not texts can be found. For example, I will include at the end a link of a website where you can find texts about the World Cup for different levels. So, if you want them to pay attention to you just pay attention to their interests...

http://www.saberingles.com.ar/reading/index.html