Weekly Reflection

There was a specific situation that paid my attention this week. It doesn’t have to do with my English lessons but with the students as a group. When I went to the school on Tuesday I got there and I was informed that the 1st year of high school was under a punishment. They all has to stay 7.5 more minutes in the classroom during the 15 minutes break, only two students were allowed to go out (Javiera and Nicolas), I said OK, no problem. When I went to the classroom to meet the students I asked them why were they under a punishment? They told me that it was because “somebody” had did something nasty to a classmate (Javiera), I asked what was that nasty thing and two girls told me that someone had filled Javiera’s backpack with spitting and wet toilet paper. I was amazed and I asked who was or were that persons… they told me: nobody knows…so the whole class is under a punishment except for Javiera and Nicolas.

After I heard all this I started to think and I realized this class is a class that apparently gets on very well, but there are always some situations in which the students work as a group to harm some weak classmate. These students protect each other, so the guilty ones are never found. They always do this, but I thought that it wasn’t so serious. This class has a new head teacher and she doesn’t know them very well so it’s difficult for everyone to find out what is happening to them this year.

This case made me reflect on the fact that it is very important to know very well the students, their personalities and if they are good or bad leaders in the class since nowadays bulling is present almost everywhere and we as teachers must be aware of this problem.

David Trumbull Weekly Activities.

8th Grade

Date of the lesson: May 25th, 2010.

The activities done this week included a reading activity about a Chilean Celebration in which they must extract information from the text using different techniques like: predicting, deducing and extracting general and specific information from the reading. The connectors and, because and or were taught to the students and they had to do some exercises to practice the use of these connectors. In this lesson the students also practiced a dialog in order to improve their pronunciation.

1st Grade of High School

Date of the lessons: May 25th – 26th, 2010.

This week the students prepared a dialog about being a good citizen putting into practice the simple past and the past continuous tenses. This dialog was first delivered as a written task in order to check the grammar and eloquence of the dialog. I check their dialogs and I gave them back to the students the next day for them to correct the mistakes and present their dialogs orally next Tuesday. After having delivered their dialogs they did a listening activity which included some pre, while and post listening exercises. Then I introduced to them the use of the conjunctions so and because and they did some exercises I created for them in order to check their understanding. Finally they worked on their workbooks doing activities about the use of so and because.

Reunion de Profesores

Nombre del Establecimiento Educacional: Colegio Presbiteriano David Trumbull
Profesor en Práctica: Deisy Pérez Valderas.
Fecha: 13 – Mayo - 2010
Hora de inicio: 17:15
Hora de término: 19:03
Tabla de la reunión: Ninguna.


Para este consejo de profesores no se expuso ninguna tabla o tema principal para comenzar la reunión. El consejo se realizo en la sala del 5° año básico en donde las mesas estaban organizadas de manera que formaran un gran cuadrado, la cita a esta junta era a las 17:00 pero se comenzó a las 17:15 hrs. debido al retraso de algunos profesores. A medida que los docentes iban llegando sacaban una tasa y se servían té o café con un pan. Cuando hubieron suficientes profesores para comenzar la reunión la directora, que es la encargada de dirigir la junta, la comenzó leyendo un pasaje del evangelio y pidiendo al resto de los profesores que oraran por uno de los docentes que estaba teniendo problemas familiares, luego una de las profesoras hizo una oración y la reunión comenzó. Lo primero fue leer el acta de la reunión anterior, la directora leyó la fecha, hora de inicio y termino, profesores que asistieron, los temas que se trataron y los acuerdos a los que llegaron. Una vez terminada dicha lectura la directora prosiguió a pedirles a los profesores que voten para aprobar o desaprobar el acta anterior. A lo que los profesores, levantando la mano, decidieron aprobar dicha acta. Los inspectores, que se encontraban sentados al costado de la Directora, iban tomando nota de todo lo que se decía en el consejo.
Después de haber dado término a la lectura y aprobación del acta anterior la Directora dio comienzo al consejo de profesores diciendo: bien 5° básico Miss. Por favor, y la profesora jefe de dicho curso comenzó a exponer los casos respectivos a este mismo. Lo primero fue mencionar al alumno Puyol, al cual en el consejo anterior se determino enviar a tratamiento psiquiátrico y suspender la matricula para el año siguiente. Se les informo de esta situación a todos los profesores y se hizo hincapié en que no deben decirle al alumno que no estará en el colegio el próximo año, además se les dijo que el psicólogo había dejado instrucciones de cómo se debe tratar a este alumno, instrucciones que cada uno de los docentes debía seguir. Luego se continuó con el 6° básico en donde se planteo un caso especifico en donde se le había escrito una grosería a un alumno en un trozo de papel, los inspectores contaron lo sucedido y nombraron a los implicados, que son tres alumnas, de las cuales ninguna quiere aceptar la total culpabilidad del hecho. En esta situación los profesores votaron y se acordó que se debe citar a los apoderados antes de tomar cualquier medida en el asunto y que se debe estar atento a el comportamiento de esas tres alumnas ya que son líderes negativos dentro del curso.
Los docentes en su conjunto reflexionan en que en general hay un nivel de agresividad más alto en los últimos 15 días, y que van a tratar este tema con el psicólogo. Se menciona también que este tema de la agresividad del alumnado se viene tratando desde el año pasado.
Se da paso luego al 7° año básico en donde se habla también de una situación en particular que ocurrió a la hora de almuerzo con un grupo de alumnas que “jugaban” a empujar a otra: Victoria Palomeé, alumna con pre-condicionalidad y con problemas de conducta y poca aceptación dentro del curso, se menciona que esta es una alumna con mucho problema emocional, debido a que es una niña rechazada dentro de su curso y que ella, para llamar la atención, hace muchas cosas que le causan problemas como hacerse heridas en las muñecas con la regla, se dice también que la apoderada de esta alumna es también una mujer muy inestable emocionalmente y que no está bien, quiere llevarse a su hija del colegio y piensa que se quiere suicidar, la hija está muy preocupada por su madre y no sabe porque dice esas cosas de ella. Los profesores votan por mantener o bajar la pre- condicionalidad de la alumna. Votación que resulta en la mantención de dicha condición con 9 votos. Se mencionan dos casos más de este curso en donde se acuerda que ambos alumnos deben seguir con la carta de compromiso y sumar un registro diario.
Se continúa ahora con el 2° medio A en donde se tratan tres casos: uno de un alumno que esta condicional y que no está cumpliendo con las reglas del uso del uniforme del colegio a lo que se acuerda mantener la condicionalidad y sumar una carta de compromiso. El otro alumno mencionado posee una carta de compromiso, pero debido al buen comportamiento y avance que ha mostrado los profesores votan y acuerdan quitarle la medida disciplinaria. Y el tercero, un alumno con pre-condicionalidad que hace un mes tuvo una riña en el colegio, pero que antes y después de ese incidente ha tenido un comportamiento excelente, los profesores votan para rebajar o mantener la medida disciplinaria, a lo que después de una larga discusión, se acuerda mantener la pre-condicionalidad hasta el próximo consejo (15 días mas).
La directora menciona luego que ya es muy tarde y que no alcanzaran a terminar el consejo, y menciona que se realizará un consejo especial en la mañana durante la semana para el 2° medio B, y se les recuerda también a los profesores que las parejas que pololean en el establecimiento no deben besarse dentro de este mismo, que eso no esta permitido y que se les debe llamar la atención si los ven muy efusivos haciendo hincapié en el respeto que deben tenerse el uno al otro.
Se acuerda hacer una reunión con las parejas que oficialmente pololean en donde se incluirá al psicólogo.
Se da por terminado el consejo con una oración hecha por la directora.
Este consejo me dejó impresiones positivas, el ambiente de la reunión fue muy acogedor y además fue un consejo muy ordenado, ya que la directora daba paso a cada tema y concedía la palabra a quienes se lo pedían y cuando ella lo requería, en ningún momento se formo un ambiente incomodo o de discusión, por el contrario, ellos parecen llevarse todos muy bien, me hicieron sentir muy cómoda en el consejo. Creo que el único problema es que al parecer, nunca alcanzan a terminar los consejos, por lo que deben terminarlos en la próxima sesión y así sucesivamente.

Students' Day

The students' day was celebrated in the school on May 11th, 2010. I was invited and I had the opportunity to participate in the activities with the students, it was very funny.

The day started as following: in the morning the head of the school wished a happy studnts' day to all the puils, then they went to their classrooms and had a little cocktail, after that they all (teachers and pupils) went to the court since the activities for celebrating this day were about to start. The first activity consisted on a song sang by some teacher dedicated to the students, the song was a reggaeton but teachers changed the lyric, so it was very interesting and funny. When that activity finished, the David Trumbull's Awards began, there were a wide variety of categories separated by secondary and high school. Some of the categories were: Premio al mejor vocabulario, el/la mas poncio(a), el/la mas fashion and so on.
Then started the activities that were programmed by the students for the students, like dancing, yincana, el metro cuadrado, etc.
The award for the class that obtained the highest score was that they were allowed to go to school wearing "normal" clothe not uniform for one day.

The activities were very funny and we all had a great time. I felt very comfortable and happy to be there participating with the community of the school.

Here are some pictures of the event for you to have a look. Enjoy them!!!

Team Teaching Stage

Name of the student: Deisy Perez Valderas
Name of the School: Colegio Presbiteriano David Trumbull
Date: May 4th, 2010

Task 1: Collaboration Activities

In my first collaboration activity I was asked to guide the students on a writing task. The teacher told the students they must create sentences using the simple present and simple present continuous. The activity lasted around 20 minutes and I had to go around the students seats answering their questions and doubts regarding the sentences they were creating. There were a lot of questions and almost all of them started asking me for help. Miss Erika had previously explained the use of these two tenses before they start doing the task that was assigned by her. They were very motivated creating the sentences because they found the simple present continuous tense very easy and funny, since they could describe what they were doing at that moment. All the pupils finished the task successfully and they make some comments to me like “Miss usted es seca para explicar”, “Miss usted siempre nos va a ayudar?”… comments that made me feel good and confident because their reaction towards my help was positive.
During the last lesson I was helping my guide teacher I was asked to help the students to create a dialog they must present orally to Miss Erika. I was asked to help them to correct grammar and also pronunciation, so I went through the classroom helping the students and asking them to read their dialogs to me in order to help them with the pronunciation. They create their dialogs very quickly and then they started to practice and memorize them for their oral presentation programmed for the next class.
During this professional practicum all the activities I have been asked to do have been related to check exercises or clarify doubts, I have not been asked to prepare any special material of any kind since my guide teacher do her classes based only on the American Adventures book.

Task 2: Lesson Planning

For the 1st year of high school I got the necessary information for preparing the lesson planning from the American Adventures book the students use for the English classes, the Planes y Programas para Ingles 1° medio and from the planning my guide teacher must do for the whole semester. I combined these three sources and I did my own Unit plan and lesson planning. I also asked Miss Erika how should I do the planning and she showed me her own lesson planning for me to have an idea. For the 8th grade of secondary school I used the same resources but instead of using the American Adventures book I used the Travelers. The format the school uses for planning is almost the same we use at University so; I did not have much problems on this task. When Miss Erika knew the planning format for the lesson plan was almost the same she told me to do my own planning alone and then she will check and correct them if there were something to correct. After I did all my planning I sent them to her and she congratulated me for my job she said they were very good.
The first Unit Plan and lesson plan I had to do take me a long time, around two hours each, but after I finished those, it was easier to do the next ones. Now, preparing a lesson plan take me around 30 and 40 minutes each.