Teaching Practice Phase 1: Day 5

Today, the last day of the week that saw us commence our teaching practice,  was one of great enthusiasm and discoveries.  I took two periods today,  one for 8E students and the other for 9F students. In 8E, I completed the poem 'The Sower '. I had a great time engaging the learners,  teaching them and eliciting from them, their knowledge about different poetic devices and the learners were informed about these than expected. Though I had included poetry composition as a class activity while planning the lesson,  I made a quick change in the activity in the last moment. I gave them a more simple activity on activity card- to list down any four qualities of the sower- related to the poem under study. I thought this activity would help them with their assignment on writing the character sketch of the sower. Composing poetic pieces on their own may be difficult for atleast some of the learners and the task may not be completed within a stipulated time. I thought it would be unfair to put time constraints when the learners attempt to unleash their creativity. I thought of giving such an activity at later stages. The activity given to them was good enough to develop their critical thinking ability. Once the task was completed,  I consolidated the points given by the pupils and wrote them on the board. 

In the 9F class, I taught the grammatical structure 'adverbs' using Concept Attainment model of teaching.  I prepared in advance and displayed two charts , one for presenting labelled examples and the other containing unlabelled examples to check the learners' understanding of the concept.  It was felt that the learners showed more interest in learning grammar than in learning prose lessons. Some students could rightly identify the concept from the given examples. Randomly chosen learners were asked to fill the blanks in the second chart with the words 'Yes' or 'No' appropriately , after analyzing each sentence given. They all did the exercise correctly.  

Though I was requested to use Malayalam language more in the class than English,  I felt it better to use the target language English itself actively in the class to give the learners a taste of it. Language immersion is the best way to familiarise learners with English. Keeping them aloof from the language does not bode well for them. I felt that the pupils are simply not used to listening to English in classroom context. From the responses of the pupils to comprehension questions raised in English,  it was inferred that the learners can understand English and can dexterously learn the language when necessary scaffolding is given.