Physical and Psychosocial 

development of the

 adolescent student

I am 24 years old and it is a little difficult to go back to the memories of my physical and psychosocial development, because it's been quite a while, or so it seems, plus I think I never really behaved like the 'typical teenager'. However, I remember how easy it was to be self-conscious about the changes in my body and a few times it felt like my mood would change very quickly.

After making some research about the Physical and Psychologycal development of adolescents, I undertand why adolescence is such a difficult and crucial stage for humans. Erik Erikson, states that the physical changes, can make adolescents self-conscious and sensitive, sometimes clumsy or even insecure.

In regards of psychosocial changes, adolescents also go through big changes. They develop more reasoning and abstract thinking skills. Moreover, I think it is important to always keep this in mind when teaching adolescents, because this helps us know what our students are capable of, therefore we can be effective and show them how to learn and achieve their goals.

As a teacher, I would like to help my students by being understanding, encouraging, patient and knowledgeable. I would like to show them that, nobody is perfect, and it is important to learn from our mistakes.

Meeting and dealing with the changes
 in the brain of a teenager.

Before monday January 18th, my perspective about adolescents' behavior was very much mistaken. I only thought about how their attitude could make the teaching process difficult. I used to think that, one day I would have to teach teenagers only as my duty, without truly understating the reasons behind their behavior. However, in the first class of this course, I learned that a teenager's brain goes through a very complex process from ages 12-19, and that is the main reason behind their volatile behavior.

My findings about the changes in the brain of an adolescent, via NIMH Website , are the following:

• The connections between different parts of the brain increase. as a result of this 'new connections', adolescents show a growth in intellectual capacities such as memory and reading ability.
• The part of the brain in charge of the emotions, suffers a lot of changes during teen years. For example, the response of teenagers to emotionally loaded images and situations is heightened.
• Enormous hormonal changes occur during teen years. Reproductive and stress hormones can have complex effects on the brain, and as a result, behavior.
• Intellectual power. Research shows that the best time to learn is during our teenage years.

As a teacher, my expectations for working with children are very different from the ones I had before my first class in this course. One of my expectations is to be a positive guide for them, in other words, I do not wish to be seen just as a teacher. I want to guide my students positively to show them that even though being a teenager might be complicated sometimes, adolescence is something we all went/go through. More importantly, having a good guide during this stage, is ideal, because the students can learn from their mistakes. Lastly, I want to be able to use their hobbies as a tool for learning, for example, using their smartphones and computers to learn. In other words, take the negative aspects, like texting in class, and use them as a ladder to reach the positive.

  

Teaching Practicum 

for 

Professions Review

Overall, this lesson was good because they used great materials, took advantage of the space, had good voice projection. More importantly, they took into account the feedback that had been given before.

For the warm up, the teacher had a great voice projection and reviewed the previous vocabulary. In the presentation stage, the teacher had a great classroom management. For the practice stage, the teacher used a creative and engaging activity with simple materials.

To wrap up the lesson, the dynamic was very entertaining and kept the children engaged in the activity without losing focus on the topic that was being praticed.

Here are some pictures of the lesson

My dream job

For our last lesson, the objective was to have our students identify professions and express want they want to be when they grow up.

For the warm-up activity, we pasted  pictures about places in the town , students were asked to score a goal the ones that missed the goal, were given a piece of paper to match it with the pictures pasted in the classroom. In the pre-listening stage, 10 professions were introduced, by the other teachers wearing customes of the profesions. Some students participated in the activity by wearing some of the customes. 

In the 'during' stage, students played "What do you want to be?",  Five professions were described. One teacher described the profession while another teacher represented that profession. Students answered  a worksheet based on the description given by the teacher, and the picture in the worksheet.

In the post-listening stage, students played "Musical Chairs",  Students walked around the chairs while a song was played. When the song stopped, the student left without a chair picked up a number randomly, and said the sentence “I want to be a ___” based on the picture that matched the number they got.

To wrap up the lesson, the students passed a hat while a song about professions was played, the student who had the hat was asked a question about the topic.

In my house

For our second class, our objective was to have students identify four possessive pronouns, demonstrative pronouns while using the simple present tense.

For the warm-up activity, the students played the game "Mime a Hobby". Standing in a circle, the teacher introduced  the game by saying his name and something he likes to do. Then students did the same.

For the presentation stage, the teacher introduced the topic  with some charts and pictures, explaining the four possessive adjectives and the demonstrative  using household objects.

To practice the students completed a worksheet, about the topic presented, while a teacher monitored them. In the production stage, the class was supposed to be divided into two groups, one group holding a picture of a house hold object and the other group holding  the name of the object. However, for this class, there were only two students so we had to improvise a little.

To wrap up the lesson, the teacher pasted a cross (one for each student), made out of masking tape, on the floor. Then, they walked around the classroom while another teacher made some noise with a marker. When the teacher stopped making noise, everyone looked for a cross to stand on, the one with no cross to stand on, went to the front to write a sentence on the board.

 Group 1

In the classroom

Group Members: Tomas, Bryan, William, Eduardo and myself.

 For the warm up activity, students played "Sharks are Coming". The teacher explained the game, after practicing 2 times, students made groups of 3 and they completed a word, from the vocabulary to be used in class, in a piece of paper.

For the pre stage, the teacher introduced the topic with some  pictures and flashcards, students were required to repeat the new vocabulary, while the teacher monitored and corrected the pronunciation.

 For the during part, to show the meaning of the verbs to the students, the teachers acted each verb, and using the present participle form of the verbs.

For the post stage, students played acting and guessing. The teacher made groups of three students. While one group acted out the action, another group guessed the action.

Here are some pictures of this lesson

After the lesson, we got our feedback from the other classmates and the teacher. There were a lot of things to improve but overall it was a good lesson.