Week one:

On my first week of teaching practice, the school was like the beginning of the year. The
teachers were organizing the sections and the students’ books because half of the
students moved to another school that opened at Shakbout area. And the teachers who
teaches grade two is now teaching one subject only, and the students have to move to
the teacher’s class. So, my MST now is teaching English only.
So, during the first week, I was helping my MST to organize students’ books and I started
to teach English topic which is writing an information text about “My Garden”. So, the
first lesson was just orally. I showed the students some picture of my garden and I asked
them to describe the pictures.
This lesson is focused on learning to include a title, heading and subheading on the
writing. Also, to write with a capital letter, use finger space and punctuation.
It was hard for me to remember all the students to do my observation for my research
project because I see five different sections, this is about a hundred students. It was also
hard to repeat the same lesson many times.
Week Two:
In my second week on teaching practice I continued teaching English about writing an
information text. I let students write about the garden, because I wanted to connect the
w3riting with their English story book about Harry’s Garden.

So, I made a sample for the students so they can understand the formation of the text.
And to help the lower group to write some sentences. For the sample, I put two headings
and two subheadings. Before I let the students starts the writing, I asked them two try by
their own words of they want to. From my observation, I was shocked from some of the
writing that some students did. Although there was spelling mistakes, however, the idea
of the writing was very clear. The other students where copying the same writing that I
displayed to them. Starting from Monday, I marked some of the writing, and most of them
were very slow and only done with the first heading.

So, I was concerned about the low group, because they did not write even one sentence.
So, I was thinking about changing the plan for the low group. I came up with some ideas
that might help the lower group. I think I might give them the sample and ask them to put
a circle on the title, heading and the subheading. Or, I might leave space between the
sentence to let them fill it with some words. I will start applying the new method with the
low group next week, and I will discuss with my MST about it.
Sample of high group: writing with her own words.
Sample of middle group: copying the sample that I displayed on the smartboard.
Sample of low group: writing the date, title, and the heading.
Reflection three:
In week three, I applied new strategy with the low group in writing task about “My
Garden”. I did a worksheet including the first paragraph of the writing sample I used last
week. I removed three words from the text and I put a picture of each word in a box, for
example, “In my garden I have mangoes, bananas and dates”. I removed the word
“mangoes and bananas”, and I put a picture of the fruits. Under the text, I wrote the name
of the missing fruits, one fruit in each box and the student have to cut the words and stick
them on top of each picture.

I noticed that this worksheet helps most of the low students to complete their writing
about “My Garden”. Most of them did the worksheet correctly and started to write their
final draft. Myself and my MST were surprised from a low student’ work. Because she
usually does nothing during the class, however, she did the worksheet correctly, also, she
drew some pictures that describes the paragraph.

There were some students who did the worksheet, however, they still found the writing
difficult to finish. So, I reduced the amount of the word count and I deleted on paragraph.

The rest of the students who are outstanding and middle levels did well with the writing.
I was impressed with some of students writing they wrote by their own words, they are
very good on describing things. The middle group followed the sample that I put for them
on the smart board.
Low group:
Middle group:
high group:
Week five:
On this week, I started a new lesson in English about “demonstrative pronoun”. Myself
and my MST were discussing on not spending so much time on this topic because we felt
it’s too complicated for grade two level and this comes up automatically by practicing
speaking in English. So, I came up with an idea to help them understand this topic, I draw
table on the white board to explain when to use this, that, these and those depending on
the number of the objects and how far or how near is the object.

So, the first thing I did, I ask them if they know the words this, that, these, those. And they
gave me an example of when to use these words. One girl says “this is a chair, and then
one girl says that is a board. I asked them who knows why Mariam says this and Fatima
says that. One girl answered me correctly because she read the table that I did on the
board.

For the worksheet, I put some pictures near to the sentence and some of them I put them
far from the sentence. That means the object is near or far. Some picture has two objects
like two kites and two umbrellas, and some pictures has one object like the airplane. So,
depending on that they have to look at the table and find the words that suits for each
picture.
The table:
The worsheets:
Week five:
On this week I did my first lesson observation for my MST. according to the questionnaire
that I did last term including a question about which subject do students struggle the most
in learning as a second language subjects which are Science, Math and English. Six over
8 responses found science as the hardest subject to learn as a second language. I also
found from students works that the low group still needs extra support to finish the task
on time. So, I decided this term to focus on low students in science subject only to
implement my action research

Firstly, I felt not very sure on how will improve the implementation of my action research.
I have looked at my MST’s and MCT’s feedbacks to find the biggest struggle faced me on
implementing the bilingual strategies. I found out that being as teacher centered took a
lot of time from the lesson which I end up with students rush on finishing the tasks, low
students end up with nothing on their sheets and me as a teacher, I have no time to end
the lesson with closing activity or questions.

So, I decided to improve my action research by implementing student centered strategies.

I planned to do a Science lesson about “Keeping cool”. For my action research, I did two
things. For the emergent students, I gave them a sheet that has the answers, I removed
some words and I put a box that have an Arabic word instead. under the answer, I made
a table which includes both the Arabic word and the English translation to it. Students will
find the English word that matches the Arabic word on the text and write it over the Arabic
word. This strategy was a little bit confusing for the students, however I believe that I
continued implementing this strategy it will works effectively. The other strategy I did was
for the closing. It is a group activity which students will matches the English key terms to
the Arabic. After that, students will come to the front and use any of the key terms to
make a sentence of what have they learned. I found out that students enjoyed this
activity and be able to finish it very quickly. also, they were able to tell me what they have
learned. Though, this will not give me a written evidence to show that students could
understand the key terms, especially the low group.
Week six:
On this week, I did two lesson observations. I did an English lesson about adjectives.
Reflecting on the previous lesson that I did last time in English about demonstrative
pronouns, I found out that teaching a full lesson in one period is too much for the
students. So, for the adjectives lesson I decided to teach in three lessons.

The first lesson I only introduced the topic using a power points slides and one whole class
activity which is choosing a favorite animal to describe. The second lesson, I let them do
an art craft activity about creating a pencil’s monster. On the third lesson, they work on
their worksheet about drawing the monster and write down three sentences about the
monster using the adjectives words.

I found out this time that students enjoyed learning about the adjectives more than
demonstratives pronouns lesson. Furthermore, from marking student’s worksheet I
noticed that most of the students understands the topic this time.

My second lesson observation was a science lesson about “Huma responses”. This was
my second lesson observation for my MCT MS Josephine. From her reflection on my first
lesson I did some changes to improve my teaching through implementing bilingual
approach which is my topic on my research project. I found that student with low ability
were able to write the answers by themselves with self-confident, with no help from me
which shows me that student-centered approach woks effectively using the tracing
strategy.

During the professional development meetings, one of the teacher was sharing some of
the strategies that she is using with her students. So, I liked one of the strategies that she
is using which is a new vocabularies booklet. So, I come up with an idea about creating a
booklet for the lower group that includes new vocabularies and a apace to answer the
questions from the book for each topic. Students will be asked to do the vocabularies and
the answers before each lesson. So, on the next day, they will bring in their booklet with
them and copy the answers to their science book. students enjoyed working on this
booklet because it makes them become more confident during the class time while
answering the questions.
Week seven:

On this week, students start their formative assessment in Maths, Arabic and English. On
Sunday, myself and my MST had no duty to monitor students. However, I marked
student’s adjectives worksheets. Most of the students got good marks on this sheet.

I believe that students enjoyed learning about adjectives because they enjoyed creating
their own pencils monster and describe it to the class. As Gardner believes on multiple
intelligence theory, some children are kinetic which can learn more by working practically
more than doing worksheets. From my experience in working with young children in right
different schools, I believe that most of the children enjoyed the practical activities and
able to gain more information.

I also read a story about “The Little Egg” for the big cat reader, ADEC stories. Before I start
reading I asked open and closed questions to make students think and use their
imagination. My MST noticed that and told me that she liked the way I start and motivate
me to carry on starting all my lessons this way.

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we started marking the exam’s sheets, and it was
a new experience to me. On the first day. I felt that it’s a huge responsibility, to make sure
I did the marking correctly. I also was very confused on distributing the grades. On the
next day, I felt more comfortable and enjoying it, sometimes student’s answers bring a
smile to me. On the other hand, it could be frustrating sometimes, because you may have
found that the student deserves the mark.

On Thursday, all the schools had the children’s day. There was no teaching, the school
celebrates by making some activities and enjoy eating desserts and treats. There was also
concert honoring on the auditorium for stars of Khalifa A school and the winner classes
for the innovation week.