The flying term...

Veeeeeery long time without writing.. a whole term!

Many things have happened..actually it's been a very busy term.. I hardly had time to rest..
Because of "Evaluation" I spent most of the weekends indoors doing those hateful workshops... but they were useful anyway. I feel that I'm more prepared to be a teacher now. I feel I got to know my career.
Besides, I went inside the school system not only to observe classes, but to teach and perfom some sketches in front of the students!! But sketches weren't enough, 'cause in drama we performed A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare in Udec and in Catolica.... uuuuffff!!

Fortunately everything went ok.. everybody congratulated us and were very happy with our performance.

I have many things to write (some sorprises are coming) but, in the meantime, I'll quote some paragraphs from my reflection about the play.

From a student's point of view....

"Perfoming A Midsummer Night’s Dream was a very nice experience. We never expected such a “success” and that everyone liked it.
At the beginning, I think nobody thought how well we could do it, because as far as I know, most of us do not like acting. In spite of that, I am completely sure that everybody did the best they could last week. Actually, I was impressed of the progress we had since the very first rehersal, which I think was awful because nobody knew their lines and how to move on stage, until the presentation, which was much better because we got beautiful costumes and were much more ready.
I think that the fact that we all had our customes on helped a lot at the moment of the performance because we felt we were the characters themselves. I believe characterization is important when you want to perfom somebody else, otherwise you would feel like a stranger and not believing in the things you are saying or acting.
Besides clothing, make-up helped a lot too, especially for the fairies. It was very necessary for the Fairy Kingdom to look shiny because that made them stand out from the rest of the characters, meaning they were not part of the “visible” world."

And from a future teacher's point of view...

"Making students act is a good way of helping them to improve their English because they can learn many things, such as vocabulary, pronunciation, fluency, grammatical structures which are in the texts. Other things they can learn are related to body movement, fluency and oral expresion. Furtherrmore, we can analyse the sense that the play has by discussing about situations, conflicts, characters’ personalities and actions that occur in a play.
I would really like to put this in practice when I am a teacher, I think it would be very helpful, especially for those who are afraid of talking in front of people or are too shy to do it.
The best way to motivate students to perfom and do their best work is by reinforcement. If we know what students are capable of, we can ask more from them and make them know that they are doing it well. I think we should not correct by interrupting them or telling this is bad or wrong, but we should tell them carefully that there are other ways of telling something or letting them how the can improve something. The same happens with acting. Students can learn by rehearsing and effort.
Finally, I am sure the “actors” participation and opinion was very important for the performance. We all gave suggestions to each other about how to say our lines or to move on stage. It was like having feedback all the time. I am amazed with the group work we were part of."