Joint Productive Activity

In order to create this activity, I thought of the three main aspects to do this, which are the kids, the parents and me.  I decided to take this week out of the plan, and make a project about electricity at school, which was the first idea that came to my mind, because right now the school is constructing a new building and the security is a little taken for granted and students are exposed to an accident. So, I talked to the students to do this and make a small presentation about the security rules at school, then I added something extra to the project, in order to involved parents and make them participate in the activity.

First, I divided the topic inside the topic, I mean a delimited the points we were going to touch in our presentation, these topics were: the electricity concepts and its importance in daily life, the campaign and the advices prevent accidents and the last one security rules and advices to save electricity.

I divided the 11 students in three teams; I chose a leader for each team. Then, I asked who of them has access to internet and video recorder at home, in order to know and make the teams. The first team had to make the research about the electricity, concepts and the importance in daily life. They had to summarize information, look for some images and main write in on in a poster to present it; they were needed to specific material and internet access, I checked the information and give some ideas to make the presentation which were taken in consideration in the presentation, I also monitored the way they work in the classroom. The second team had to make a campaign inside the school to prevent accidents, they made a small questionnaire to teachers and another one to the students, and we wanted to take some insights about school problems about electricity. After this, we went deeper to the classroom work and made a small pamphlet giving some advices with the information provided, I checked the information in the pamphlet and I also give them some ideas. These teams had to make another questionnaire guided to the student´s parents of the members of the group in order to involved parents and make them participate with their ideas, providing extra information to the pamphlet. They did the pamphlet and we showed in all the groups, so they could realize how to prevent accident at school and home, making emphasis in the construction they are seeing. The last team was the one who had to make a small commercial about the security rules that they had to follow to save electricity and prevent accidents at home, this is where they had to make a video recording; unfortunately we couldn´t make a video recording inside the school because it is forbidden but I asked the principal for permission to show the students the video made at home in each classroom, in here the students has to speak in English about electricity at home and give some rules to follow for all the members of the house don´t caring about age, they must follow it. I helped them in the classroom with the speech they were going to say, they wrote it and provide their own ideas, also, they asked their parents to participate in the videos, it only last 4 minutes. We showed the video as well with the pamphlet of the other team. We presented last on Wednesday, I asked for permission in my job to absent and help the kids in their performance at this school. We joint music to the presentation of the kids and the school helped us to give us copies to the groups, we only presented it in junior high groups and some elementary level groups because of the time I had to the performance.

It was good the participation of the kids, but in some cases, they forgot material, some of them absented some days, and one of them got sick, so we wasted more time. It was supposed to be presented on Monday because of the waste of time we had to move to Wednesday. But, the participation of the kids was the most important thing, besides they gave an overview of the importance of electricity. By the way, most of the parents attended to the presentation which was very important for the development of the activity.

Reflection

Despite of, I have a large communication with Prof. Evelyn Ponce, this dialogue left me many things. It helps me to extend my perspective about my labor. There are some situations that doesn´t let us to do the activities as good as we want to but we need to know how to deal with it. The most important thing is remember that the goal is being accomplished. =)

Partner Dialogue

I arranged to talk to Prof. Evelyn Ponce, she is in charge of the junior high groups in English subject, I prepared the dialogue on Saturday because we both are a little bit less busy.

We talked about the situation in the school and the development she has seen in the tutorials, I could see a significant interest on Evelyn , she is really happy with the actions my plan has had. This situation was necessary for the students, parents and even to the institution, because there had been a lack of interest on parents. We agreed that the community has some trouble about the perspective of a bilingual method; they think that the school must provide everything that the student need to success and their performance shouldn´t exist. Evelyn has seen the actions to put the parents inside the problematic about their kids, she also has seen the activities students has made and the improvement, by this time she recognized that the level on students has been increased but unfortunately the school still has trouble with the assistance they can provide to students. This program was my own program, but as Evelyn and I have seen  there is not enough support  in all the moments of the action plan, even when there is a commitment from them it hasn´t been followed as good as we wanted.

About the Joint Productive activities, we have also seen the interest on the kids about the workshop but many of them are not decided to attend, we need to remember that the workshop is not an obligation so, they take it for granted. We also talked about how some activities hasn´t been productive for some students especially in seventh grade because they can not put enough effort and this implies more effort by the teacher to explain a topic again, she agreed because she is dealing with the same guys everyday and it happens in daily classes.

Then, I showed the type of lesson I´, teaching and she found some of them very entertained and didactic, she gave me some advices about these lessons and ask me for permission to use some of them in her classes.

At the end, we agreed that we deal with many difficulties with students and parents, and the labor becomes harder. We deal to set another date at the end of the SS.