And suddenly, Cycle 1 finishes...

DAY 27 6 DE JUNIO

My first intervention stage lesson. It was OK, nothing special, quite regular. While I thought they’d be interested in Elvis Presley, it turned out they became interested in Diana Ross and the Supremes. Stoooop in the name of love before you break my heart. The song theme and my simple questions generated a lot of debate. I should have taken advantage of that opportunity to ask them to discuss in pairs, but oh well, for some reason I let it pass. Shame on me
The table exercise wasn’t wow. What was positively challenging was the writing task: transforming the table into a text. I skipped an entire page of exercises for they didn’t seem to care much about Elvis The Pelvis.
Tomorrow we have the groupwork activity. Let’s see how that goes. I’ll try to finish everything next Mon, even the feedback session.

I’m changing my own planning at the very last minute, just like we said in the last meeting of the action stage. (see my printed planning and my own penned comments)





DAY 28 13 JUNE

Today’s mistake: entered the classroom with my teacher’s mind rather than my researcher’s mind and I forgot to switch on the recorder. I missed the recap section of my lesson where the stu provided a summary of the main things we had done previously.
I’d say it was a profitable lesson, it was way way less T-centred than the two others as this time they had to summarise, come up with a mindmap and present it to provide a brief account of each decade (50’s to 80’s) of rock music.

After the lesson I asked them to vote for topics for the second cycle:
Winning topic: Drugs (meh) took a photo of it.



DAY 29 14 JUNE

S delivered her first lesson on the Nazis. Stu were more asleep than usual so she had to provide scaffold all along. It was as t-centred as my first lessons. I don’t think she managed to make the stu interpret and analyse the sources as she was expecting though with reservations. It was a good thing that the sources activity was grouped into themes so that everybody had the chance to summarise and somehow offer an interpretation of the extract given.
They seemed to be interested in the two videos shown. The listening activities were achieved successfully. During the lesson S asked the stu to be quiet or pay attention and a couple of times she reminded them that she was doing this because they had wanted it. I don’t think they ever took up this ‘accusation’ (recording: 00.7-00.16, 00.24, )

On the minus side, A’s second lesson had to be cancelled for she called in sick. I don’t know whether she can wrap this up tomorrow and immediately after I can do the feedback session with the students.

On the plus side, I carried out the evaluation session with my stu. It was rich though as I had suspected only the leaders spoke. I’ll definitely do the survey to collect everybody’s opinions.



DAYS (it can’t be true, I don’t not how to count) 15-16 JUNE 2011

Mentalllllll, Intervention and Evaluation stages are overlapping because while I’m doing the evaluation with my stu, A is still at the intervention stage. The problem is not them of course, the problem is me because I want to have everything transcribed, coded and written up before God knows what.

Topics:
Year 1: Drugs
Year 2: Nazis
Year 3: TBC




DAY 17 JUNE 2011

Skype tutorial with Ema but…previously in my life I designed two slightly different surveys as I tailored them according to the group interviews. I then piloted them. Good. Ema said they were OK so now I’ve just made copies. Wait and see.

I told Ema, and this is an issue I’ll need to raise later, that my presence in a class which is not mine, I mean, where I don’t teach regularly is causing tension with the regular teacher. She uses the mainstream coursebook and follows the syllabus. I teach with my own materials now and then and now the students think I’m great and that their teacher is not great. She’s being criticised. It’s not her fault, it’s just that I have the time and it’s part of the CAR. This is a problem that may arise when a teacher re-.enters the site partially. Unless she begins to change her own practices even when she’s not one of my teacher-participants. Hmmm.

End of action stage

DAY 26 2 de Junio 2011

Today we carried out our last planning materials meeting. It was short, why? Because one of the teachers couldn’t develop anything and the other has preferred to wait until the last minute. In her words ‘my best lessons are the ones I don’t plan much in advance’. I’ve got to say she’s right. I made photocopies for her and for me about some source texts that we will use, we don’t know how but at least we already have them copied.
I shared my own reflections about my developing materials style, S did her part and I forgot or I don’t remember now about A. Thank goodness I have my iPod to record everything. If she didn’t say anything, I’ll ask her in the one-to-one post-observ interviews.
The intervention stages starts next Monday :)) which means I become a teacher again :))