Welcome!

We would like to thank you for your time to help us with our dissertation. 

This tool aims to account for the beliefs that you construe about the practicum, as part of the community from the Major of Modern Languages at PUJ.

Given that your participation in every entry is anonymous, you may feel free to provide as many objective and honest comments as you wish. 


You can choose whether or not to participate in this blog. There  are  no  right  or  wrong  answers  to  the  entries  questions.  We want to hear many different viewpoints and would like to hear from everyone! 

We hope you can be honest even when your responses may  not  be  in  agreement  with  the  rest  of  the  group. 

If you understand this information and agree to participate fully under the conditions stated above, please move on to the first entry.

This blog will remain opened up to October, 2015, and there is no time limit to comment on each entry.   

First Entry: Large Group Management and Discipline

The Big Five*

1. Rules: Establish and teach classroom rules to communicate expectations for behavior.
2. Routines: Build structure and establish routines to help guide students in a wide variety of situations. New teachers deserve better. It is time for teacher prep programs to focus on classroom management so that first-year teachers are prepared on day one to head off potential disruption before it starts.
3. Praise: Reinforce positive behavior using praise and other means.
4. Misbehavior: Consistently impose consequences for misbehavior.
5. Engagement: Foster and maintain student engagement by teaching interesting lessons that include opportunities for active student participation.

Based on these strategies which are so strongly supported by research, we would like to ask you to choose one of the following situations and develop a short solution for it. 






1. An authoritarian teacher who has few teaching tools uses a contradictory speech in an attempt to maintain the discipline of the class.

2- A pre-service teacher in her practicum whose class is out of control.

* Taken from: Greenberg, J (2014) Training our future teachers: classroom management.  NCTQ’s Teacher Advisory Group. Source: http://www.nctq.org/dmsView/Future_Teachers_Classroom_Management_NCTQ_Report

Second Entry: Lesson Plan and Class Objectives

Thinking as a teacher, what do you think is missing in these two situations?

Third Entry: The "Being a teacher" awareness

Let us now you opinion about the next statement!

"Becoming an effective teacher involves considerably more than accumulating skills and strategies. Without tying teaching and management decisions to personal beliefs about teaching, learning, and development, a teacher will have only the bricks.(...) Being successful in today’s classroom environment goes beyond taking on fragmented techniques for managing instruction, keeping students on-task, and handling student behavior. It requires that the teacher remain fluid and able to move in many directions, rather than stuck only being able to move in one direction as situations occur. Effective teaching is much more than a compilation of skills and strategies. It is a deliberate philosophical and ethical code of conduct." (Larrivee, 2000)

Larrivee, B (2000) Transforming Teaching Practice: becoming the critically reflective teacher. Reflective Practice, 
                     1(3), Department of Learning, Literacy and Culture, California State University. 

Fourth Entry - kids or teens?

It is pretty common listening to your classmates about their preferences when teaching: some of them prefer to teach children and some of them prefer teenagers. 

Related to this issue, two main questions arise:

1-) Was your preference taken into account when you were assigned to a certain grade at school?  

2-) Has your perception of teaching, learning and age-affinity changed during this short period at school? 

Fifth Entry - School assignation

When referring to the school the intern has been assigned to, how do you believe this decision was taken? What factors may interfere?  

Sixth Entry - The happening

Having in mind that slightly more than half of the population (54.17%) surveyed* claimed not to have reconsidered their professional future, based on a happening during their practicum experience so far, the question that could be asked here is: 

What is the  common  trend  that makes  almost  than half  of  the sample  population  rethink if education is the path they want to follow? 

*Students that participated in a survey that gave shape to the Statement of the Problem of the dissertation this blog belongs to.  

Seventh Entry - Are you prepared to be a teacher?

This point to discuss has two core questions:




1-) Do you feel that pre-service teachers (or student-teachers) are properly prepared for facing the challenge of being in charge of a classroom?

2-)What do you believe about one out of seven students* that expresses not to agree to feel properly prepared for being in a classroom?  


*Students that participated in a survey that gave shape to the Statement of the Problem of the dissertation this blog belongs to.