Class management and atmosphere

A positive atmosphere can make a classroom a more pleasant place to be and a more effective motivating place to learn. It can have positive results on the achievement of students. We can cover the walls of the classroom with positive messages: posters with motivational pictures and words; inspirational quotations from great people; positive paintings, drawings, prose, poems, or things done by the students. Furthermore, we, as practitioners, have to treat them as individuals according to academic needs and skills, each one needs to feel confident, if not they will not learn. Moreover, we have to encourage the students with positive feedback whenever possible; they like to work in groups, play games or sing songs, so we can take advantage of this.

As practitioners we are learning how to do things and improve what we know like the attitudes which can be learned and worked on. For example, helping the children to feel secure; knowing what we are doing, respecting our pupils and establish routines to build up familiarity and security. In my case, I have to improve things like my body language and tone of voice. I have 41 students, and sometimes it is hard for me to control them. But, they like to play games; thus, I take advantage of that and I teach them by playing.

One of the disadvantages I have is the arranging the desks because I teach only one hour on Wednesday and one on Friday. For that reason, I cannot change them because moving desks during a lesson is very noisy and a time- consuming activity.However, the teacher always tries new techniques like work in pars, in groups or alone. Particularly five and six year olds are often happiest working alone, and are not yet willing to cooperate and share. But, my pupils are different; they enjoy working together.

My short-term objective is providing daily opportunities for students to collaborate with others about an issue, such as naming classroom objects. I will reach this objective by teaching the students essential vocabulary. My long-term objective is furthering work on initiatives to grow the students' self-esteem to encourage ongoing success. I will accomplish this by working on consistently giving positive reinforcement, which has been shown to lead students to feel loved. Praising specific achievements, showing sincerity and quickly reinforcing good results are ways to give positive reinforcement. I know it will be hard, but I will do my best effort.


BY R. JEANMILLETTE FERNANDEZ
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How can you adapt your own style of teaching to accommodate to the needs and motivations of young learners? There are some features that are proper characteristics of young language learners. Mostly, these characteristics are very important because the teacher must always have them in mind in order to manage the classroom and the pupils in a more effective manner.

Here I will list those peculiar characteristics of young learners:-Children tend to be keen: This is an important tool that we can use when we are teaching because we are aware of the potential that a pupil has when we want to develop an activity.-Children like to experiment: This characteristic is important because the children explores his o her environment just by touching, watching and tasting.-Children want to have fun: Let say that fun is an effective way to get the knowledge to the children. By having fun the pupils will involve themselves in classroom games, activities and tasks.-Children cannot concentrate for long: This could seem a disadvantage for the teacher but it is not. We have focused our attention in preparing short activities so that the child is concentrated during the teacher performs the class.

Since the fact that I am an ELT practitioner, I know that there are many things to change if I want to enhance some skills that teachers have been developing throughout the years. I would like to say that the first matter I have to change is that I would like to create a better rapport with the children; doing this is not difficult for me, but I really wish to find an exact way in which the kid could really feel confident participating on activities and tasks developed in class.

LONG AND SHORT TERM GOALS
In this part of the activity I will explain the most important aims that I have established since the beginning of my teaching English practicum.

Thus, the most important short-term goal is to be a facilitator in order to create a strong bound between the grasp and the children. It also involves the creation of an adequate atmosphere without forgetting to put in practice techniques and methodologies that will let the student easily learn the language at issue. Another short-term goal is to make the difference between a traditional teacher and an enabler; in this way, I want to know about the subject matter, methodologies and how to deal with people in the most effective manner.

Besides, I would like to create the conditions which enable the student to learn by themselves and that the teacher suitably acts as a guide, a counselor and a source of information when it is needed by the pupil.

Well, how do I plan to reach this aims? I could say that the first step I did was when I started my teaching practicum, and now that it is almost finished I may say that I met too many attitudes and abilities. I would have never imagined creating rapport with children or creating a nice classroom atmosphere, but in my practicum I even learned how to group the whole class according to the activity that I was attempting to perform.

It is said that the more somebody practices the more somebody learns, so taking this into account will encourage our self to learn in order to become professional teachers of English.


BY: ANGEL NACXIT GÓMEZ CAMPOS
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 Our personality is already formed, but there are abilities and attitudes which can be learnt and worked on. As a teacher of young children it helps a lot if we have a sense of humor, suitable and patient. If we are silent reserved type, we have to work on those attitudes because our personalities can influence in children’s learning.

All of us may not be brilliant teacher like some children wish, but we can try to learn some important abilities like playing the guitar, singing songs and drawing activities.

In all my teaching practice I have seen how some children like to learn playing, so they learn when they play, but I have also seen some children who do not feel capable. Confidence is not only an attitude but ability. It is essential if we want our pupils to get the maximum overcome of the lesson.

LONG AND SHORT TERM GOALS
One of my long term goals as a practitioner is to work with children’s abilities because it is something that is going to help me to achieve other goals such as how to get along with children or how to arrange children’s desks in order to learn grouping. I know it is common in that level, so I have to teach them the importance of working and share whit their classmates.


BY: JOSÉ FLORENTINO LOPEZ FLORES