Final Report:

Practicum V

Sara Sibila Duró

Tutor: Melinda Dooly

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INDEX

1. CONTEXT OF THE SCHOOL .............................................................................................................. 3

A. General overview of the school ....................................................................................................... 3

B. English as a second language (ESL) in the school ............................................................................ 3

C. TYPICAL DAY IN MY INTERNSHIP ................................................................................................... 4

A. Timetable ......................................................................................................................................... 4

B. What did I observe? ......................................................................................................................... 5

D. DEVELOPEMENT OF THE TEACHING SEQUENCE ............................................................................. 7

E. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE TEACHING SEQUENCE ........................................................................ 11

A. Analysis of the main problem encountered during the implementation ....................................... 11

B. My “eureka” moments .................................................................................................................. 13

C. Questions for reflection ................................................................................................................. 14

F. MODIFICATION OF YOUR TEACHING SEQUENCE .......................................................................... 17

A. PLANNING INSTRUCTIONS ............................................................................................................. 17

B. TIMING .......................................................................................................................................... 18

C. ASSESSMENT ................................................................................................................................. 20

G. LEARNING AND GROWING AS A TEACHER ................................................................................... 22

H. CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................................................. 22

I. REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................ 24

A. Books and Articles ......................................................................................................................... 24

B. Websites and links ......................................................................................................................... 24

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1. CONTEXT OF THE SCHOOL

A. General overview of the school

“Escola Catalunya” is a state school placed in

Navarcles, a small town near Manresa. It is the only

Primary School in the town.

As a general structure, the school is divided into two

different buildings which are named according to their

roof colour: the green building and the red building.

The office, the kitchen, the dining room, the

audiovisual and media classroom and the library are only in the green building whereas

the other areas are almost all duplicated. Pupils start P3 in the red building and they stay

there until 2nd

grade of Primary. Then, in 3rd

grade they move into the green building.

It is a double-line centre despite having triplicate P3, P4, P5 and 1st, 3

rd and 4

th courses.

What means a total of 9 classrooms for kindergarten and 15 for primary, making a total

of 507 students. This course the staff consist of 35 teachers, the school also has a

religion teacher, a TEI (Tècnic en Educació Infantil), two “vetlladores”, a porter, a clerk

and a person who takes care of the maintenance of the centre twice a week. During the

week, teachers have 5 hours for meetings taking place from 13h to 14 h, as the centre’s

schedule is from 9 h to 12:30 h and from 15 h to 16:30 h.

B. English as a second language (ESL) in the school

Pupils are exposed to English since they start P4. Their

first contact with the language is through stories and

games which are aimed to approach them to this

language from a “playful” perspective. The school is

very conscious about the importance for learning

English, thus they try to provide pupils with as much opportunities to get in touch with

it as possible. Every year, for example, pupils from the different primary grades assist to

a theatre play in English which they previously work in class.

English lessons are run through the use of textbooks and worksheets that guide the

vocabulary and content to be taught. Nevertheless, the English teachers are aware of the

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importance for practicing the language through communication, thus they try to engage

pupils in different communicative tasks on each unit.

In the next table I summarize the English lessons that each grade take during a week:

HOURS/WEEK GROUP DIVISION LANGUAGE FOCCUS

Kindergarten

(P4, P5)

1 hour Whole class Vocabulary games and story-

telling

Key Stage 1

(1st and 2

nd

grade)

2 hours Whole class Book and worksheets

1’5 hours Small groups (mixed

ages)

Story-telling

Key Stage 2

(3rd

and 4th

grade)

2 hours Whole class Book and worksheets

1 hour Small groups Oral English

Key Stage 3

(5th and 6

th

grade)

2 hours Whole class Book and worksheets

1 hour Small groups Oral English

According to this schedule, we can see that the older the pupils are, the more time they

devote to English and the more importance the school gives to the oral communication

in that language. Regarding the Key stage 1, where I taught in most of my trainee period

in the school, I would like to point out that this year has been the first in which they

have implemented 1’5 h/week of “tallers” where they work with English from a more

communicative based perspective. Thus, they use story books to engage pupils using the

language in activities such as theatre plays or songs.

The school also has an English Blog where teachers, students and parents can see some

of the activities done in class. You can access the blog by clicking in the following link:

http://englishescolacatalunya2012.blogspot.com.es/

C. TYPICAL DAY IN MY INTERNSHIP

A. Timetable

As I said before, I devoted most of the time teaching in the Key Stage 1 and in P5 as my

school mentor, Begonya Corrales, was the one in charge of those courses. Nevertheless,

as she has a reduction in her working hours she finished her lessons by the midday.

Thus, in the afternoon I was allowed to see other courses and work with the other

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English teachers in the school: Meritxell, Sílvia and Dolors. That, allowed me to

observe in detail and acquire a more specific idea of how the English subject was taught

throughout the different grades. Moreover, it was also very enriching for me as a teacher

as I saw four very different ways of teaching English.

During my internship my timetable was the one attached below. So that, in the

mornings I taught with Begonya in the red building and in the afternoons I moved to the

green one to teach Key Stage 2 and also Key Stage 3 with the other English teachers.

B. What did I observe?

As I have had the opportunity to work with different teachers which had quite different

perspectives about how to teach English. Furthermore, I’ve seen all the stages of

learning in the school and various strategies and methodologies used by the different

teachers.

Starting with P5, which are the youngest kids that Begonya taught, I’ve observed that

the Syllabus is based on the one hand, on storytelling, so that during all the course she

works from the vocabulary and structures that appear in different stories such as “the

Goldiloks”, “Little Red Ridinghood” or “the three little pigs” which are stories that

pupils already know. Thus, it is easier for them to comprehend the story even though

they don’t understand all the words. From each story they did some worksheets which

consisted on: matching some pictures with words (for example the characters with their

names), drawing something related to the story (as with the “Little Red Ridinghood”

where we worked on their favorite food), etc. And on the other hand, Begonya also uses

songs to engage them to use English which are usually accompanied by gestures. What

is defined by James. J, Asher as TPR (Total Phisical Response), commonly known as a

very powerful and useful tool to be considered by language teachers. Due to the fact that

in P5 pupils only have one hour lesson per week, the teacher starts the class with a

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“good morning” song that pupils sing to a puppet “Chikey Monkey”. I’ve realized that

in that way they all start more focused the English lesson. Over the course, I’ve also

observed that they have had a positive development in the acquisition of English as a

second language even though they rarely produce any sort of sentence by themselves

but they were almost all able to understand the instructions which were always given in

English.

Regarding the lessons observed and taught in 1st and 2

nd grade (key Stage 1) I must say

that the Syllabus is mostly based on the course book they have, “Explorers 1” and

“Explorers 2”. Regarding the timetable, Begonya seemed a bit reluctant to the idea of

having two hour lessons per week with the whole group, she had to manage it due to her

reduction in work hours. She told me that she had had to cut out in many activities

which were not such based on the course book as it was very difficult for her to manage

a class of 20-23 students doing some activities such as role-plays, games, etc.

Nevertheless, she always looked for some space for interaction and creative activities in

which the pupils had to use the language and apply their knowledge. For example, at the

end of each unit she asks pupils to do a written production related to the topic in which

they are working, such as writing a description of themselves when working on the

body parts.

I really appreciate how begonia tutored me as she always tried to find time to share with

me different materials that she uses, provide me with a great amount of resources and,

of course, helped me with my teaching. Moreover, what I liked the most was that she

always allowed me to teach when it was possible. That, made me feel more confident as

I saw that she trusted in me.

I have also learned from the other teachers whom I have been teaching with, especially

from Silvia, which was the English teacher from the upper cycle (Key Stega 3) and with

whom I have been many hours in class too. Moreover, as Silvia was Carla’s tutor she

led us teach together and try new activities in class, what was a very interesting

experience but also a bit stressing as she sometimes led us only 10 minutes to prepare

the class. Nevertheless, due to the fact that we had a little time to get prepared, we had

to do our best and overcome different situations that helped us grow as teachers.

Finally, we always managed it as she was always there for giving us a hand.

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D. DEVELOPEMENT OF THE TEACHING SEQUENCE

Planning this project was really special for me as I took the idea from a project I did

when I was in the 3rd grade of primary, in my town’s school. My English teacher at that

moment was who made me interested in English as we used to do very nice things. One

of them was a theatre play called “At the restaurant” in which we dressed up like

waiters, costumers and cookers. We sent the video to a competition in Barcelona and we

won. Thus, as I have a very nice memory from that ages and especially from this

project, I thought that it would be a good idea to take the same idea and see how can I

made pupils feel as good as I felt then.

From the first moment, I knew that I wanted the students to act but that I didn’t want to

give them a text that they only had to learn by heart. From my experience, I’ve realised

that it is better if I can make them feel that they are important part of it. Nevertheless, I

was a bit worried and lost at the beginning about how I could direct the project, but my

peers really helped me during the tutorial sessions. When I presented them the idea, they

really seemed to like it so they gave me some ideas on how could I organise the

teaching unit. I really liked the point of turning it into a role-play activity in which they

had to write the lines for the play. Because as Ur (2005) points out role-play “is close to

genuine discourse and provides useful practice in the kinds of language the learners may

eventually need to use in similar situations outside the classroom”.

From this first draft, in which I only knew that I wanted them to write the dialogue for

the final play (output of the project), I tried to work backwards and see what should I

teach pupils before they would be able to write for themselves. As it is known,

“backward planning” can help the teacher to fix the activities and sessions more

coherently with the final output that he/she wants to achieve as it requires thinking step-

by-step what pupils should know before reaching each objective.

Thus, I decided to present this first idea to my school tutor to see

which her first impressions were. Firstly, she seemed a bit

confused as she told me that 2nd

grade children wouldn’t be able to

write an entire theatre play. Nevertheless, she offered me her help

and she showed me some resources that I could use to introduce

the project. From these resources I took a book called “Today is

Monday” by Eric Carle, which is related to what we were going to

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work on, meals, and which also has a song that I thought would be nice if we could use

for the play. In that moment, I had very clear how to introduce the project, which was

the main goal that I wanted the students to achieve and where did I want them to go.

Thus, I started to plan the different sessions for the didactic unit and the materials

needed.

After having the first scheme of the project, I presented it to my peers in the practicum

session which turned to be really useful. First of all because as had to explain it to my

peers I had to have it very clear to make others understand it. Therefore, I was able to

see which the main weaknesses of the project were and also which were the strengths.

Moreover, sharing ones work with peers who may also have the same difficulties as you

have is not that “exposing” and lets us share more freely our impressions and ideas. The

main change I did from the feedback received in this session was to decide that I was

not going to give many directories to them when writing the dialogue, thanks to the fact

that they made me see that I needed to give pupils some more freedom if I wanted them

to develop their language skills. Therefore, I decided that each group would write the

dialogue for the costumers and the waiter and that pupils would be allowed to choose

and go as far as they wanted.

From that moment, I had the ideas much clear and I felt really proud of what I was

creating as I saw that my peers really liked the idea and supported me with good

feedback. Then, while working with the template that I was given by my university

teacher, I started to go deeper onto the project’s objectives, aims and also on the

different activities planned. Some of the main problems I encountered during this last

step of planning, were the timing and the assessment. On the one hand, I found it very

difficult to fix the timing for some activities as I knew that not all the pupils were going

to work at the same rhythm and that I may need to change it during the lessons. Hence, I

tried to come up with a reasonable timing for each of the activities. Moreover, as I was

given only 5 sessions for the implementation and the project seemed to be quite

complex for second grade children and I wanted them to do many things to get prepared

I had to cut on the time for some activities. On the other hand, regarding the assessment,

I might say that I was struggled in many occasions as I wanted to do many observations

and assess all the process but I didn’t came up with the right tools to do. Thus, I decided

to use some observation charts for the teacher and also assess some of the mini-outputs

from different activities.

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As it is said planning is always a cycle of changes.

In other words, you cannot think about your

planning as it is going to be always the way that

you thought. You must be prepared and ready to

adapt it to the different situations and possible

unexpected situations that may require some

modifications. The image on the left illustrates

which could be a good definition of the “cycle of

planning” which includes the planning itself, the

plan B to be carried out in case that is needed, the implementation, the collection of

evidences which are later analysed and evaluated and the final reflection which would

lead the teacher to improve the previous planning. As a teacher, I have experienced this

cycle among the months that I have been designing and implementing “at the

restaurant” project. Here are the main changes that I have gone through:

In the first draft I had planned to do 5 sessions and to ask each group to write the entire

theatre play, after the feedback received in class I realised that it would be too much

work for second grade children so I changed it into each group writing half of the play

that was going to be divided into four scenes: welcoming, ordering the starters, ordering

the main course and ordering drinks and deserts. Moreover, the school tutor gave me

another session so I was able to give pupils some more time for activities which weren’t

DRAFT 1

•5 sessions

•each group write the entire dialogue for the play

DRAFT 2

•6 sessions

•each group write half of the dialogue for the play

DRAFT 3

•8 sessions

•each group write one part of the dialogue for the play

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as fast as expected (such as the creation of the menu that finally took us two sessions

instead of one). Once pupils started writing the dialogues, I saw that it would be not

possible for them to write half of the play in time so I talked with my school mentor and

we decided that it would be better to give each group just one scene and record only one

theatre play. It took them a lot of time as it was a kind of activity they were they were

not used to. In the end I was allowed to have two more sessions, so that the project

lasted 8 sessions, as the English teacher saw that pupils really enjoyed it and she

thought that it would be a better idea to give them more time to prepare and study for

the play.

From this process of planning and implementing a project I have learned to adapt

myself to different situations such as realizing that an activity is not working and having

to stop the class to direct it in another way. I have also learned to ask for help, which I

now see as a good and necessary strategy to improve, thus I do not have to see it as a

sign of failure but as an opportunity to learn from others. And last but not least I have

developed more critical thinking. Not only with other’s work but also with myself,

which is a very necessary skill to take into consideration as a teacher.

Finally, as to conclude with this point, I present a word cloud which summarizes all

what planning means for me after this period.

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E. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE TEACHING SEQUENCE

Once finished the implementation of the project and as it was expected I may say that

there have been many moments from reflection. Some of them which lead me to

congratulate myself and also to get surprised but also some others from which I had to

reflect and that also helped me growing as a future teacher. Thus, in this section I am

going to present and analyse some of these moments.

A. Analysis of the main problem encountered during the implementation

First of all, I would like to reflect about one of the main problems that I encountered

when teaching the “At the restaurant unit”. This problem refers to giving instructions.

For this reflection I have selected a quite small sample of one session recording. It

belongs to the first session of the project which was aimed to introduce the teaching unit

and to start working with the main vocabulary that pupils would need. This excerpt of

the video specifically belongs to the warm-up activity where I was explaining to the

class what to do.

From this video, I would like to focus on how the instructions were given and which

strategies were used for doing it. For that purpose, I am going to reflect on the strengths

and weaknesses that I observe from the teacher giving the instructions. Even though it is

me who is teaching I would try to be critical and analyze it the more objectively the

possible.

Regarding the strengths of the explanation I may say that the teacher used a great

variety of strategies, especially during the first part where she introduced the activity.

Some of the strategies that we can observe on the recording are:

- The teacher uses examples to make pupils understand the instructions. For

example when she tells them that they have to use different colours, she makes

an example by pointing to the pupils in the table next to her and saying “blue,

yellow and pink”, pointing to a different child for each colour. Moreover, she

With the following link you would be able to access the video. The concrete timing of

the excerpt being analyzed is from minute 1:11 (when I start the explanation of the

warm up activity) to minute 4:38 (when I finish the instructions).

http://youtu.be/xwYnAIlmmVs

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shows the pupils a model of what they are supposed to do what gives support to

her explanation.

- The teacher monitors pupil’s understanding. For example when she wants to

make sure that every child has picked up a different colour; she walks around the

tables and checks it.

- She models what pupils are asked to do. When she explains them that they have

to write their name on the paper using the colour that they have chosen, she

models it by making the example for some pupils in one table.

- The teacher asks for pupil’s translation in some points of the explanation to see

that they are following and to make sure that everyone understands it. For

example, we can see that when she is explaining them that the words they write

must be about food and drinks she takes profit of one pupil who translates those

words into Catalan.

Nevertheless, there are also some points in which the way that the teacher gives

instructions could be improved:

- The teacher translates some sentences which could have been easily understood

by the pupils. When she explains the pupils that they are going to do a

competition she automatically translates the word competition into Catalan

without giving them time to decode that information.

- When summarizing the instructions, she gives too much information in one beat

and it appears to be not very understandable for pupils as it is quite disorganised.

As to conclude with the analysis of the video and positioning myself now in the paper

of the teacher, I might say that, even though the first time I watched the video I felt that

I did it really bad, I can now say that it was not that disaster. I have realised that most of

the weaknesses present when giving instructions could be solved with more carefully

planning before. Moreover it seems that I was not confident enough so that I did not

give my best. The activity presented in the extract was a quite simple activity but it was

very difficult to understand for pupils who had never done it before. Thus, I would have

had to think about how could I explained it and maybe not doing it so fast, as it was also

too much information for them to understand in three minutes. Moreover, during a

feedback session in the university, where I presented my reflections and I showed my

peers a short piece of this video, I was given the idea of using an example to

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demonstrate what to do just after giving the instructions. So that I could have chosen

some volunteers to come to the front and do an example of the activity. In that way I

think that I may have avoided some groups in which they were all dictating to one

member who was writing or groups in which all the members wrote the same words.

Nevertheless, I am very proud of the way I run the class as it was my first session in that

group and the first time they saw me in the school.

B. My “eureka” moments

Along the implementation of the project I have had very nice heart-warming moments

where I have felt very proud of the pupils and even of myself. I am really proud of the

results achieved with the outcome of the project, the theatre play. From the first

moment, I was warned by my school mentor and other teachers that pupils won’t study

their lines and that it was going to be very difficult, and what is even worse, I really

thought the same. Nevertheless, during the previous week of the recording session many

teachers in the school told me that the 2nd

grade children were studying and rehearsing

the dialogues during the playground. That fact, made me realise that pupils were really

engaged and motivated with the project. Moreover, there was one girl in the class who

had no support at home with her homework, what normally leads to not bring her

homework to class. Thus, we expected her not to study and know her lines for the play

so we gave her very simple sentences so that she could learn them by practicing in class.

The day of the play, when she saw me arriving to school, she came and told me that she

had been studying and that she knew what to say. I was extremely surprised when I saw

that she was able to remember everything and I saw in her eyes that she was really

proud of herself. That day I really understood the importance to work through projects

as they allow the teacher to contextualize the activity and to work through engaging and

motivating activities that can fit into different learning styles and even engage those

students who have more difficulties and give them the chance to felt really proud of

their results.

Videos of the final plays are available with the following links (you may not be able to

found them without the links):

2nd

A: http://youtu.be/UOii1zj6nEk

2nd

B: http://youtu.be/2zUCE3TAdbY

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C. Questions for reflection

1. Was the planning appropriate?

As it was expected, I have had to go through many changes and modifications on the

planning. So, as teachers, we must though about planning as a “guideline” which should

be flexible. Even most of the activities planned were appropriate and worked properly

and as it has been stated in the section 3 of this report, it would have been a good idea to

plan more detailed instructions for the activities as it seemed that they were sometimes

too complicated for the students to follow.

“63 tactics for teaching diverse learners, k–6” is a book for teachers that presents a

wide range of teacher-tested instructional methodologies that can be used across

different subjects and grade levels from the elementary school. The model presented

focuses on planning, managing, delivering and evaluating instruction. In the first part of

this book the authors provide the reader with a visual scheme of which steps should be

followed in order to plan instructions (figure 1). They divide the planning into three

principles: decide what to teach, decide how to teach and communicate realistic

expectations. Each of these principles is developed in more detail in different chapters

each.

Figure 1

As the authors state, “Effective teachers carefully plan their instruction. They decide

what to teach and how to teach.” (Alogozzine, B. Campbell, P. & Wang, A. (2009),

pp.1). Thus, I really found this a very good resource to keep in mind when planning

projects, not only for language lessons but also for other curricular areas.

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2. What instructional strategies did I use to achieve the goals of the teaching

sequence?

According to the “Glossary of Teaching Strategies” provided by the National Center on

Educational Outcomes” (see references) the main strategies that I have used during the

implementation of the teaching sequence have been:

- The use of body language to complement my explanations. Moreover, I used

too when trying to catch pupils attention.

- Paraphrasing and emphasising some parts of the explanations given in order

to make pupils focus on the most important parts to be understood.

- Adapt the language to their level so that I tried to avoid difficult structures and

long sentences.

- Use of different supporting materials. In some occasions I tried to take profit

of the different objects in the class, such as the menus they did with the Spanish

teacher for my explanations or I also prepared different materials such as

pictures, comics, etc.

- The use of their mother tongue language is also a good strategy to use but it

has to be carefully planned as the teacher is supposed to be using the target

language and take profit of pupils’ translations or paraphrasing into their mother

tongue.

- Examples were very frequently used when giving instructions as they are a very

good strategy to model what students are expected to do.

- Designing Hands-on activities in which pupils had to actively participate in the

project.

In this document we can find a huge list of strategies that any teacher can use in his/her

lessons for different purposes. Some of them could be used to make him/herself

understood, to see pupil’s impressions or doubts, to engage students in different

activities, etc. Having seen such a big list I sincerely think that I could have used some

others during the implementation such as:

Chapter 1 of this book is available in the following link:

http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/26484_Chapter_1_Decide_What_to_Teach.pdf

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- “Collecting anonymous student generated questions” which consist on

asking pupils to write one question anonymously and then picking some of them

at random to answer. In that way the teacher also facilitates to those shy students

who are afraid of asking in front of the whole class to participate by giving their

question. Moreover, this strategy could also have been used by changing it so

that instead of questions pupils could have write opinions about the project, still

anonymously, so that I could have had a general overview of their thoughts and

impressions for the project and in that way I could have modified aspects which

pupils didn’t like or found useful, for example.

- “Response cards” which can be pieces of paper in which pupils have to write

answers for some questions that the teacher asks them. In the teaching sequence

this could have been a good strategy to use during the activity in which we were

ordering the “mixed-up menu” as we worked all together and my impression

was that only few students were actively participating and answering whereas

the others were just looking and listening. With this strategy I could have had

them all participating and it could also have helped me to assess their

understanding and knowledge.

3. Did I use good classroom management strategies?

In the class where I was teaching there were some pupils with behavioural problems

so I was a bit worried about how to manage some activities, as some of them were

based on collaborative work. Thus, I asked for help to my school mentor when

making the groups, so that the pupils in each group get on well with each other.

Nevertheless, I took for guaranteed that by doing this I would get all the groups

working well. Now, I realise that was not a good choice. During the activity, there

were some pupils who did not do anything or groups which found very difficult to

reach a consensus. Thanks to the feedback received in one of the practicum sessions

I get one idea which I am sure would have helped in this situations. One of my peers

in class told me that it would have been a good idea to give different roles to each of

the pupils on the groups, so that they all knew what they were in charge for.

Moreover it would have created positive interdependence between them as

everyone’s participation on the group would have been vital for the accomplishment

of the activity.

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In that way, taking into account that “The purpose of cooperative groups is to make

each member a stronger individual in his or her own right” (Johnson, Johnson, &

Holubec, 1998, p. 4:17) and that pupils were not used to work cooperatively, giving

them different roles could have helped me when scaffolding the development of the

social skills that they need for cooperative tasks.

F. MODIFICATION OF YOUR TEACHING SEQUENCE

Once finished the implementation of the teaching sequence, I might say that I am now

more capable to look at it with different eyes and think about many changes that could

be done in a future in order to improve its success. As is has been stated before,

planning includes a process of reflection which can help the teacher to see which

aspects went on the right way and which should be modified. Nevertheless, this process

of reflection may not be carried out just by taking into account first impressions, such as

the ones I wrote in the blog after each session, the teacher should carry out a deep

analysis on the different activities, objectives, assessment tools used, etc. to carefully

plan the modifications needed. For example if as a first impression you see that there is

one activity which seemed not to have been very useful or meaningful you should not

only modify the activity but also look for other factors that may have also influenced

and collect data that help you corroborate your feelings.

Once finished this process of reflection and also self-evaluation I can now state which

would be the changes that I would like to make for further implementations. These

changes are presented below divided into three categories: instructions, timing and

assessment.

A. PLANNING INSTRUCTIONS

First of all, I would need to work more on the instructions given to pupils for the

activities as they were not really planned and detailed in the teaching sequence. Thus,

my mistake was to think that if I knew what the activities were about and what I wanted

the pupils to do I would be easily able to explain them. Nevertheless, it was not that

simple, as they were very clear in my mind but not for the pupils. So, even I had a good

level of English I struggled in some explanations and it was sometimes hard for pupils

to understand what I wanted to say.

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As teachers, it is really important to make children understand what we expect from

them. A very simple and understandable way of doing it is by modelling what they are

supposed to do. Hence, the main modifications that I would do regarding the

instructions given would be:

- I would try to prepare beforehand the set of instructions to be given in class. I

have realised that it is very important to prepare instructions which are simple

and clear for the students. Having a good level of English does not necessary

mean being able to simplify the language such as for low proficiency English

learners.

- I would include more examples while explaining some activities. As an

example, in the activity where pupils had to brainstorm foods and drinks it was

really difficult for me to make them understand that each one in the group had to

write their own even though they shared the paper. Thus, for this activity it

could have been better to support the explanation with an example, so that pupils

could have seen how the activity was going to be carried out.

B. TIMING

Secondly, I have also realised the importance of the timing as it is a key point for

carrying out a successful lesson. During the implementation I had to adapt myself and

the teaching sequence to many changes on timing:

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On the one hand, it seemed really difficult for me to imagine how long some of the

activities would take before having implemented them before and without knowing the

class properly. Thus, some of them need to be revised during the implementation.

Nevertheless, it always depends on the class being taught, so the timing must be flexible

according to the needs of the pupils. Apart from that, there were other situations which

were not predicable and also influenced the timing too, such as the changes on the

number of sessions. At the beginning I had planned 5 sessions, as it was the only

possibility I was given, but in the end I was allowed to do 7 sessions. It was a really

positive change as I could give pupils more time for some high-cognitive demanding

activities such as writing the dialogues (what I am sure influenced in the results) or for

rehearsing the final play, what gives us the opportunity to work more on the language

repetition and focus on pronunciation. Thus, for further implementations I would keep

the number of sessions that I finally did as it may not have been successful in less than

7.

On the other hand, there were also some other problems which weren’t my fault but

which I should have taken into account in advance. Those problems refer to the use of

the technology. In the first session, for example, we were supposed to watch a video

from You Tube, but the Internet in the school was not working so we couldn’t do it.

Nevertheless, I think I spent too much time trying to get the video working that I lost

valuable time that could have been profit in other ways. The solution of this problem

could have been planning some “plan B” activities or even download the video before

the session.

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C. ASSESSMENT

Assessment really worried me when planning, as I wanted to assess all the process in

order to assess the development of each pupil. So, as I wanted to do a formative

assessment, I created some charts for the teacher to assess pupils through observation in

each of the sessions carried out. Nevertheless, when implementing the teaching

sequence I realised that it would have been impossible for only one teacher to use them

in class as the items for the observation were quite general (e.g: active participation) and

difficult to observe while running the class. For that reason I think that I should have

prepared more carefully the materials for the assessment.

After having had a session on Formative assessment in the university I have really

understand what it means. So that not only is an assessment that takes into account the

process and the development of the students but also is an assessment that has to inform

both teacher and students (NCTE, 2003). For that reason some of the modifications that

I would do in the assessment planning are:

- Revise the purpose of some activities which are going to be assessed and

share it with the students. For example, at the beginning of the teaching

sequence I carried out an initial assessment through a brainstorm activity where

pupils had to write as many names of food and drink as they could remember in

only 5 minutes. From this activity I came up with numeric data according to the

number of words that each student wrote and how many of them were spelled

correctly. At the end, when I analyzed this data I realised that it was not very

useful, neither for me nor for students, as it did not inform of the knowledge

acquired. After talking about this with some peers I realised that it could have

been useful if I had planned a similar activity at the end of the teaching unit as it

would have informed about the knowledge acquired and it would have allowed

me and also pupils to compare the final production with the first one. A similar

problem occurred when assessing an activity which consisted on each pupil

creating a menu. The purpose of this activity was to see if pupils had understood

the main parts that a menu had and which dishes should be in each part.

Moreover I told them that the best menu would be the one used in the final play

as to give a purpose for them to do the menu. At the end, with my school mentor

we decided that choosing only one menu was not fair so we used a different one

that we created for the play. Thus, I realised that the activity may not have a

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purpose then so I asked my practicum peers about what should I do: eliminate

the activity or if they had any ideas. One idea that I liked a lot was to re-organise

the way how the session was planned. There were two main activities for the

session which were to organize a mixed-up menu all and to create a menu. The

first one was to do with the whole class together whereas the second one was

individual. The change on the planning for this session would consist on the one

hand, on asking pupils to work on the mixed-up menu in groups, so that in this

way they can create the meanings on their own and take profit of the discussion

with their peers and then bring their conclusions to the class so that we reach an

agreement all together. In that way not only they would learn the parts of the

menu and some dishes but also they would have a real purpose for using the

language. On the other hand, the creation of the menu would be done with the

whole class after the discussion so that they apply the knowledge acquired and

the purpose of doing the menu is still for having one for the final play.

- Include more variety of assessment tools. In the university some of my peers

presented a very interesting article about formative assessment. 25 quick

Formative Assessments for a Differentiated Classroom (see reference in

bibliography) provide a great number of tools which could be adapted and used

in different moments of the teaching sequence. Apart from using observation

charts as the one I planned for the unit other assessment tools that I would like to

use are:

o “My top ten list” (pp. 38): in this worksheet students have to write 10

ideas that summarize their learning. It could be used before asking them

to write the dialogues for the play in order to make them think about

what they should take into account for their writing such as some

expressions that they have seen in the sample text, important words, etc.

o “Nothing what I’ve learned” (pp. 44): this activity could be used to make

the pupils aware of their learning process so that after each of the

sessions they would have to draw and write what they have learned.

Thus, if for example there are many kids which did not learn nothing the

teacher could revise the objectives and the activities in the session as

they didn’t worked properly.

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Nevertheless I would keep some of the assessment moments planned such as the

peer assessment for the play in which the group performing was assessed by the

audience as it was useful for them to see what were they expected to do and it

was also a way in which they had to be attentive to the performance. Moreover I

think it would be a good idea to include some other moments for peer

assessment as, as Melinda told us in class, we have to learn to do them so that

not always the first can be taken into account.

G. LEARNING AND GROWING AS A TEACHER

The whole process of planning, implementing and then reflecting on the Teaching unit

that I have created has really helped me on learning and growing not only as a future

language teacher but also as a self-critical person. Thus, to illustrate this process I have

created a slideshow which would guide you through it.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1280DZWZt2iot_MKV1R5JNPA6tzZw6xzPhm

NXGZogWQw/edit?usp=sharing

H. CONCLUSIONS

The previous sentence, stated by Albert Einstein, fits perfectly when trying to

summarize the experience that I have had while working on this report. During this

process of analysis and reflection, I have learned to be a better teacher with more

resources and also more competent in her job. Moreover, I have had the chance to

analyse both strengths and weakness of my teaching as an opportunity to grow.

At the beginning, when I started to plan the teaching unit I was a bit worried as it was

the first time for me teaching English in a school. Even though I have been working in a

language school for 6 years this time I was nervous as I was used to have only 6-7

pupils per class. Nevertheless, the fact of having some experience on teaching English

had also been very useful in some “critical” moments. For example, when I had to plan

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to

stop questioning.”

Albert Einstein

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activities without having so much time, such as when we taught with Carla in the Key

Stage 2 and Silvia asked us to prepare the class just 10 minutes in advance. On the same

way, I have realised that it is in those “critical” moments I did my best as a teacher and

that they were where I was braver ton trying new things. Although those situations

pushed me out of my comfort zone, I can say that I managed quite well in all of them.

Furthermore, I honestly think that they have played an important role on the developing

of my teaching skills.

As to conclude with this report, I must say that having to work on such a deep and wide

reflection has really helped me on becoming more professional. I have learned how to

critically analyse not only others’ practice but also mine, how to see the weakness as an

opportunity to improve and the importance of learning from others. Thus, I now feel

that I am most prepared to face my first year after the degree with lots of energy and

illusion to start working and continue learning and growing as a teacher. I’ve become a

more confident teacher, more capable of learning from others and also from my own

mistakes. I am really excited with the new phase that we will be starting in just now and

I really expect having the chance of applying all what I have learned this year in the

university.

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I. REFERENCES

A. Books and Articles

- Alogozzine, B. Campbell, P. & Wang, A. (2009) 63 Tactics for Teaching

Diverse Learners, K-6. Corwin.

- Clive Beck and Clare Kosnik. Growing as a teacher: Goals and Pathways of

Ongoing Teacher Learning. Sense publisher. Rotterdam, 2014

- Cummins, J. (2000). Lenguaje, poder y pedagogía. Madrid: Morata, 2002

- Dodge, Judith. 2009. 25 quick Formative Assessments for a Differentiated

Classroom. Scholastic Teaching Resources.

- Johnson, D., Johnson, R.& Holubec, E. (1998). Cooperation in the

classroom. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

- Lightbown, Patsy & Spada, Nina. 1999. How languages are learned. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

- Masats, D., i Unamuno, V. (2001). Constructing social identities and discourse

through repair activities. A S. Foster-Cohen i A. Nizegorodcew (Eds.), Eurosla

Yearbook, Volume I (p. 239-254). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing

Company.

- NCTE, 2003. Formative Assessment that Truly Informs Instruction.

- Ur, Penny. 2005. Discussions that work. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press.

B. Websites and links

- http://www.cehd.umn.edu/nceo/presentations/nceo-lep-iep-ascdglossary.pdf

“Glossary of teaching strategies”. National Center on Educational Outcomes

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