Instituto de Formación Docente Continua

Lenguas VIVAS BARILOCHE (A-052)

Profesorado de Inglés – Opción pedagógica a distancia

SUBJECT: Práctica Docente III

TUTOR’S NAME: Aurelia Velázquez

YEAR: 2020

STUDENT’S NAME: Emiliano Torres Tealdo

EMAIL ADDRESS: etorrestealdo@gmail.com

DEADLINE: 24/07/2020
 Portfolio Development

Long time ago, when giving your first steps into Teaching Practice, you created your portfolio. Now that you are
getting closer to the finish line – in a rather unexpected context, by the way – it´s time to refurbish them.

Thus, we should work on the “Secondary Level” Section.

 Go back to your portfolio. Add a new section, so that your whole practicum experience is displayed within
the same blog.
 Include an introduction to this section, reflecting upon general characteristics of learners at secondary
school. You may revisit materials from Didactics for Secondary Level, so as to refer to
 Learners and learning
 Motivation and autonomy
 Approaches
 Resources
 Classroom dynamics
 Assessment
 Upload the assignments you have submitted so far – the one on CSE, the one on Special Needs, the one on
Interculturality, and the video analyzing and reflecting upon ICT.
 Once it is ready, upload the Portfolio Evaluation Rubrics, completing the required information.

Deadline: July 24, 2020

 REFLECTING ON LEARNERS AT SECONDARY SCHOOL

Teaching at the Secondary level is perhaps one of the greatest and most exciting challenges we, trainee
teachers, have to face. Students are going through many changes at different levels –physical, cognitive,
social- and it is necessary to be aware of how teenagers behave and learn to create a positive, safe, and
caring environment that promotes learning and development. We have been covering many topics about
teenagers in Didactics that will be discussed in the paragraphs below. It is worth to mention, though, that
every class -and every student within it- has different needs and interests, or different reasons to be
attending the English lesson. Therefore, the best way to learn about our students is getting to know them
and understand what they need.
According to Scrivener (2011), within a class, students may differ not only in their level of English but also
in their preferred learning styles and multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1983). Understanding and accepting
such diversity within the classroom are vital if we are to build a solid relationship among based on trust,
mutual respect and confidence. A good way of responding to the individual needs is to adapt our teaching
practice in favour of different styles, and also designing differentiation explanations and tasks within the
stages in a lesson to cater for all the individual needs.
Another important goal when teaching is to sustain motivation among learners. Knowing about our
students’ interests would certainly help us better adapt the contents and tasks and, therefore, engage the
learners in the lesson. According to McDonough (2007), students should also be challenged. As they
progress in their learning, students need to be exposed to tasks that demand effort from them but which are
also doable. This is important as succeeding at different activities is key to keep the learners motivated. In
addition, varying and personalizing resources according to the students interest and that are relevant to
their lives are important factors that teachers have to take into account.
On the other hand, the role of the teacher is, as McDonough states in his paper Motivation in ELT (2007),
to act as a facilitator, “providing a supportive and challenging learning environment, but also facilitating the
development of the learners’ own motivational thinking” Difficulty as the lesson progresses can be
increased by adopting an approach that follows Bloom’s taxonomy. This approach suggests that the
teachers should set skills that demand the students’ lower order thinking skills (such as understanding,
remembering, etc) first, and more complex tasks that demand the learners higher order skills (like
evaluating, judging, creating, etc) later. This approach seems beneficial not only for the teaching of English,
but also teaching in general.
Finally, autonomy is another aspect we can help our students develop. Smith (2008) states that learner
autonomy is the ability to take some control over one’s learning. This is not an innate skill, nor is every
student able to do so. Thus, the role of the teacher is to develop his/her students’ autonomy by involving
them as active participants of the learning process and inviting them to have voice when making decisions.
Delegating autonomy to the learners would foster their confidence, responsibility and development of
critical and thinking skills. One interesting way to promote motivation and autonomy is involving students in
taking control of their assessment (Maximising learning in large classes, British Council, 2006). Self-
assessment (which should follow a previously agreed criteria) and peer feedback allow for learner
involvement in the class and the development of the Target Language, as they are encouraged to analyse
others’ productions and produce their own samples to provide their feedback.
To sum up, there are many factors that we need to take into consideration if we are to work with teenagers.
To provide them with better opportunities to learn English and develop their higher order skills, we have to
be ready to adapt our teaching practice to their needs and create a safe classroom environment in which
they could feel safe, challenged and motivated.

REFERENCES:

 Banegas, D. (2020) – Didáctica Específica para el nivel Secundario – Units 1-4.

 Maximising Learning in large classes (2007) – British Council.
 McDonough, S (2007) - ELT Journal Volume 61/4 – Oxford University Press.
 Scrivener, J. (2011). Learning teaching: The essential guide to English language teaching (3rd ed.).
 Smith, R. (2008) - E LT Journal Volume 62/4 – Oxford University Press.