Teaching Reflections

1^st  teaching reflection

After I had experienced a term at Ahmet Barındırır primary school, my new training school was Ahmet Bahadır İlhan primary school. First meeting in the school with our mentor teachers and the principal made me feel pleased about my coming days because their attitudes towards us very moderate. I always found myself comparing my previous experiences with now at the beginning. I think there were great differences between the schools and it may be because of the socio economic status of the schools. The conditions of the classrooms and technological facilities were not as good as the former school but students were more innocent and sincere.  They were respecting to us and calling us as teacher, which made me happy since our previous students were mostly calling us as ‘’ Abla’’ because they already had one real teacher in the class, so they did not take us seriously at first. I want to share a memory that was a bit funny and interesting for me if I compare my previous and now experiences. During the class, one of the students asked for a dictionary to find the meaning of a word, which made me smile because I got used to students who were using their mobile phones to learn the meaning of a word. Both of the schools were state schools but conditions of the school or students were very different but the best side of this school was the size of the classrooms. The classrooms were not so crowded and that was a big advantage for our teaching sessions. I was observing 6th and 7th classes just as at my first school. I was planning to work in a primary school, so it was my second chance to learn and improve myself during training.  After a few weeks, our mentor teacher told us our topics to teach. As it was my second term, I was not feeling so excited because now I was more close to being a teacher and the size of class and their interest in English lessons did not make me fear anyway. I would teach ‘’ must and must not’’ to 7th class.  I really liked the topic and I believed that I could do my best to teach this topic, so I enjoyed very much while preparing the lesson and materials. The video and game parts were really engaging and enjoyable for t he learners. As I saw that they were enjoying and learning simultaneously, I felt much more captivated to my role as teacher.  The feedback that I got after the end of my teaching also showed me that I could. It was the day that I decided to become a teacher once again.

2^nd and 3^rd Teaching Reflection

I wrote about my pleasure in my first teaching in the first report, but my next teaching experiences did not become as successful as the first one because I think that two teacher for a lesson was a real trouble.  We had to prepare the 2nd and 3rd lesson plans together, which hindered our creativity and performance in a way. Also, I felt so nervous during my final teaching and I could not even speak sometimes because I could not feel that I was the only authority in the class and I always feared that I would make mistake and the lesson would not go well. In short, I lost my confidence and I just wanted to come to the end. I think, our plan was not so difficult but I agree that some tasks were not suitable for their level and some of them were missing and not fulfilling. The biggest challenge that I experienced was that students said that they did not remember any of those words, which made me understand that I was not good enough to teach them target vocabulary. The interference was a bit discouraging for me but showing the presentation once again was really necessary at that point, and then students could complete the task because they noted the meanings of the words down It was my fault because it should have been a real teaching of the words rather than a presentation, but these were experiences for me and now I believe that these experiences will be very beneficial to improve myself and become a more equipped teacher.