MDD 1

“CONTEXTUALIZACIÓN DE LA ENSEÑANZA”

Name: Angel Sandoval Villarroel

Course: Práctica Profesional

Teacher: Theresa St. John

2014, Concepción.

School description

The ‘American Junior College’ (AJC) is a primary and elementary subsidized

school located in Lagunillas, Coronel. This institution was founded in 2003, which

main goal is to provide basic tools to students to reach a proper development in

society emphasizing the English language, humanities, arts and science.

This school has as a mission to provide equity, quality and integrity with a

high focus on the English language. To form persons with solid knowledge and

values, which allow them success at university and their lives; to be able to work in

groups, adapt themselves to information and society changes; to be self-confident,

enterprising and loyal to their principles and beliefs.

The vision of this institution is to form individuals capable of getting on

perfectly in a globalized world; to be conscious about the environment and its care;

capable of taking right decisions; to face problems with sights set high with

efficiency, efficacy and relevance; to form persons who are a contribution to society

with useful tools to reach their goals and dreams.

Concerning the infrastructure of the school, it is a one-story building that has

a squared shape conformed by four large isles with a yard in the middle. The

‘American Junior College’ has 34 classrooms including a computer lab, a science

lab and a library that students can use whenever they want and every class has

between 30 to 35 students separated in letters ‘A’ and ‘B’ in all the levels.

Regarding the teaching staff, there are 31 teachers plus 4 teachers who are in

charge of the administrative part of the school.

As it was mentioned before, this school has a special emphasis in the

English language, being this one of its main supports to expand students’

development. For this reason, there is an English project called ‘Proyecto de ingles

intensivo’ that goes from first grade (primary) to fourth grade (elementary). The

main goal of this project is to increase English hours during the academic year and

hence, improve the English level by part of the students following the standards of

the ‘Common European Framework’. However, the school does not apply any

certificated test to measure students’ level of English.

In relation to English as a subject, every semester there is an assessed

activity called “Concert” that involves all elementary students, in which every class

has to perform a special act (dance, choir, catwalk, etc.) related to English culture.

This activity was planned in order to motivate students to use the target language

and get involved in the English culture and at the same time, reinforce students’

talents by doing things they like.

Classroom description

The classroom in which the teaching-learning process is developed is

organized in three rows of two desks each one and two isles where the teacher

can walk and monitor to students. In the front of the room, there is a piece of

furniture under the whiteboard that contains books of different subjects, while the

teacher’s desk is located on the side of the windows that leads to the central yard.

At the back, there is a wall chart and there are no pictures or any other decoration

on the walls. Regarding to technologic resources, the room is only implemented

with a data that is screwed on the ceiling, which image is reflected on the

whiteboard.

Characteristics of the class

The 2nd medio ‘A’ is a group of 30 students, 12 boys and 18 girls who are

between 14 and 15 years old. From these students, ten of them have been

studying since first grade (primary) at AJC, whereas the other twenty, correspond

to students who arrived in 2014 from other schools, in which they have stated that

they come with a weak base in English. Due to this, the teacher imparts her

classes in English and Spanish (50-50) to make “new” students understand what

she says.

Actually, according to the class book, all students live near the school or

somewhere else in Coronel. Besides, none of the learners have special needs in

their learning development or have a different ethnicity.

Based on the observations made in the classroom, there are many groups

within the whole group of students. The behavior of the group of boys tends to be

very messy and violent sometimes, and the majority of them do nothing related to

English activities or tasks that the teacher asks them to do. On the contrary, there

is a group of girls who are very talkative during class; however, they always do the

work. Another characteristic is that almost all the students use their cell phones to

be on Facebook, play online games or sending messages during class that totally

disconnect them from what the teacher is saying provoking laughter and hence, the

distraction of the ones that are following the class.

Concerning to habits, it is worthy to mention a particular routine that all

teachers do before starting their classes. All students must go out of the classroom

to form a queue and then enter one by one to the room. Once all students are

inside, the teacher greets them. Generally, the teacher takes around ten minutes to

connect her notebook to the data, deliver the worksheets and make sitting changes

to keep students calmed and quiet. After that, the teacher gives the instructions of

the activities that appear in the worksheet and asks them to do the exercises.

Analysis of context factors

Based on the information gathered and the observations made, the fact that

the school does not provide English course books is a disadvantage not only for

students, but also for teachers, especially at the beginning of the year, because

they have to be permanently asking students to photocopy it. Furthermore, for

some students could be difficult to see and recognize some pictures in the black

and white version of the book.

Regarding to the infrastructure, the school is located in an area away from

the highway and the traffic almost does not exist around the building, which makes

a silent and quiet environment in the classroom. About the room, it does not have

enough air circulation and during the afternoon it gets very hot inside provoking

permanent complains and protests by part of the students and hence, the task

tends to be more complex for the teacher under these bad conditions. Another

physical disadvantage is the lack of decoration in the classroom. Probably, having

more colorful pictures, words or phrases in English on the walls could have a

positive effect on students’ attitude towards the subject and therefore, more

motivating during the learning process.

When it comes to the teaching part, there is a situation that is hard to

manage. The fact that old students are faster to work in the activities and finish

earlier, provokes the distraction of the students that come from other schools

hence, they end up copying the answers.

A positive point is that all students live in the same town; therefore, it makes

them to be inserted in the same socio-cultural context, so the teacher can base her

lessons taking advantage of it. Another benefit is the “Concert” at the end of every

semester. The initiative of this kind of activity is vital to motivate and make students

to use and get involve with the English language in any way.

Nevertheless, there is still a huge challenge that is to expand the knowledge

of the English language in all students simultaneously. The level of familiarity with

the target language is very disperse and varies significantly among students.

Reflection

From the information gathered in the AJC, objective judgments can be made

from the numbers. On the contrary, the data obtained from the observation tends to

be influenced by personal opinions that influence positively or negatively some of

the judgments. However, both visions overlap in one point that is that the teacher

labor goes beyond the teaching in the classroom. It is important to obtain the most

quantity of information at the moment of planning the lessons as in this case, it was

essential to know students’ interests, personalities, background, context and their

characteristics as a group to plan effective classes that impacts not only to a

certain number of students, but also to those who are demotivated and require

more authentic materials to reach them.