Teaching in a Challenging Environment

 

It is another warm wet morning in a small cramped classroom in a countryside school of Misiones Province. The space is divided by a blackboard to be shared on both sides with another class, Biology. This is an English lesson in first year of a technical secondary school, the class consists of twelve students. The teacher’s plan is to present a new topic today; in order to do that, she starts retrieving previous knowledge from the last topic so as to make a smooth transition. They have been dealing with tools vocabulary, thus the teacher asks them to call the tools names after she shows different flashcards Then she presents a big poster of a workshop and introduces the new structure: there is/there are. Some pupils are paying a lot of attention showing high interest in the topic and ask the teacher to take them to the school workshop to see if there are the tools they have seen in the picture. On the contrary, some other students cannot focus since the noise coming from the immediate Biology class is turning much louder. Anyway, the teacher approaches that group and tries to engage them in the topic again by asking them to group the ones who are working. The bell rings and it is break time.