Instituto de Formación Docente Continua

Lenguas VIVAS BARILOCHE (A-052)

Profesorado de Inglés – Opción pedagógica a distancia

SUBJECT: Práctica Docente III

TUTOR’S NAME: Aurelia Velázquez

YEAR: 2020

STUDENT’S NAME: Emiliano Torres Tealdo

EMAIL ADDRESS: etorrestealdo@gmail.com

DEADLINE: 11/11/2020

Final reflection

Instructions:

As soon as you finish delivering the lessons (real groups) and as soon as you get my feedback on
the last assignment (unreal groups), you should get to work on this reflection and submit it
before November 11. Well, if you want to start writing your drafts, go ahead!

Please, make sure you follow the structure (Description, Feelings, Evaluation, Analysis, Conclusion,
Action Plan). You must submit this assignment on a Word document, which shouldn´t take more
than two pages.
 Final Reflection

Based on Gibbs’ (1988) reflective cycle

Description

Due to the pandemic, this year we had to deliver our practicum online. It consisted of designing two
didactic units based on my chosen school’s program; each didactic unit I created comprised two
lessons uploaded to a Whatsapp group of the class in the form of videos –one per session- that
included the presentation of the topic of the lesson and explanation of activities. For my first didactic
unit, I developed a lesson plan around the topic of food and countable and uncountable nouns. In
the first lesson, I explained the difference between those types of nouns and set two controlled, low
demanding tasks. For the second lesson, I designed a CLIL lesson in which learners would learn a
recipe, integrating the language learned in the previous lesson and new one. After assessing the
lesson plan, my tutor suggested that I should try to avoid the constant use of Spanish, as I
translated every comment into the learners’ L1. The second didactic unit was structured in a similar
way: a first lesson dedicated to the explanation of the topic –superstitions and First Conditional
sentences- and controlled activities, and a second session that involved reading skills and higher
demanding tasks. In this didactic unit, I followed my tutor’s advice and tried to avoid the use of
Spanish, relying on visual aids to convey meaning.

Feelings

At first, carrying out the practicum online was not very comfortable. In contrast to many of my
classmates who are already working in schools, I had never taught to teenagers, so I had been
waiting for the experience for a long time. Honestly, I was rather insecure when I started recording
the first didactic unit, because talking to a camera without receiving any sort of response felt very
unnatural to me. However, as students started sending me the activities, I realised that my
explanations had worked, which helped me to gain confidence. A general positive response from
students and my tutor’s feedback on the first didactic unit made me feel comfortable with recording
the lessons for the second unit, which I think that came along fluently and nicely.

Evaluation

Despite I sometimes felt insecure, I would say that this –unusual- experience of teaching in
Secondary school was good. I think that, in general, I made my explanations clear, and the activities
I designed were appropriate to the level of the students. In addition, the sequence of tasks in
between the lessons of each unit moved from less demanding to higher demanding activities, which
helps in the development of thinking skills, as the level of difficulty increased gradually (Banegas
2020: pp 4-8). For instance, learners would start with a fill in the gaps activity–which, following the
hierarchical categorization in Bloom’s (1958, 1990) taxonomy, could be classified as an
“understanding” process- and end up the second lesson choosing a dish, doing research on it, and
writing its recipe. In a specific activity, I encouraged the students to work in groups –by exchanging
text messages- but nobody carried out the task in that way.

Analysis

As mentioned in the paragraph above, I tried to structure the didactic units moving from activities
that demanded Lower Order Thinking Skills to activities that involved Higher Order Thinking Skills.
In addition, I provided adapted texts –as Scrivener (2011) denominates, restricted exposure- that
matched the students’ level to practice reading skills. Reading tasks would lead to controlled writing
tasks; I would provide the learners with models or sentence frames to support their writing, as
Scrivener suggests (2011, Ch. 9, p. 241).

As I delivered asynchronous lessons since many students had connectivity issues, and given the
fact that the school heads encouraged teachers not to be “very demanding” (see “Reporte
Institucional”) as the institution’s main goal was to support the learners emotionally, it was really
difficult for me to think of speaking tasks. I included, though, videos that involved listening, but they
were not mandatory as, again, many learners had not Internet access to watch them.

Regarding the use of L1, the tutor’s suggestion helped me to reflect on the benefits of providing the
learners with lot of exposure of the target language. For instance, Davies and Pearse (2000) state
that “… your greetings, questions, instructions, explanations, anecdotes, and so on, are probably
the most natural and generally effective listening practice you can provide in the classroom. When
you use English consistently in this way, you are giving the learners meaningful, authentic
practice.”(Ch. 5, p. 77)

Conclusion

I would say that I finally could integrate efficiently the theory I have learned in my training into my
lesson planning. Now I feel that my lessons are sequenced appropriately, and that now I am able to
think of reasonable and doable aims taking into account my students’ needs and level of English. I
have the feeling that, in previous years, I did not plan my lessons as I do now. Perhaps, I should
have thought of a suitable task to encourage learners to speak, such as recording themselves
reading aloud their writing productions, or even just voice messages greeting their partners or any
other message not related to homework. According to Thornbury (2005, p.6), working on these type
of messages could promote automatic, and thus, fluency.

Action plan

For my future lessons, I will use as much English as possible, as I might be the primary source of
input for most of my learners. After reflecting on my experience, I reached the conclusion that I
sometimes underestimate what my students can do (understanding spoken English, or speaking).

In addition, I will focus on the integration of technology in my particular teaching context. Despite
there are many tools available on Internet, most of them could not be adapted in my teaching as
most of my students had connectivity issues. As virtual learning is now a reality and it could
continue next year, I need to think of ways to integrate ICTs in my particular context and use them
not only for sending explanations and activities, but also to motivate learners and promote
meaningful experiences.

REFERENCES:

- Banegas, D. (2020), “Didáctica Específica para el nivel Secundario (Unit 2, pp. 4-8 )”,
Bariloche: Instituto Lenguas Vivas Bariloche.
- Davies, P. & Pearse, E. (2000), “Success in English Teaching (Ch. 5, p. 77)”, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
- Scrivener, J. (2011), “Learning teaching: The essential guide to English language teaching
(3rd ed.)”, London: Macmillan.
- Thornbury, S. (2006), “How to teach speaking”, Harlow: Pearson Longman.