Trainee’s Self-AssessmentPeriod: Secondary

Taller de Práctica Docente

Ludmila Ruiz Díaz 2015

Introduction

Even though my little teaching experience was mainly with teenagers, I can certainly assert I have gained an enormous amount of experience and knowledge during this practicum period.

I have naturally come back to previous Didactics bibliography; as I had done during my whole practicum. Revisiting authors like Nunan, Hedge and Ur helped me broaden my understanding of CLT and plan my lessons as well.

At the beginning, during observations, I feared the amount of work I thought I had ahead. The group was very disperse and at all engaged with the subject; I am now convinced it was due to the L2 management strategies because my experience was completely different.

I am happy and proud of my lessons; I have given my best and I have been rewarded with the students’ engagement and willingness to work. Every time I planned I did it carefully thinking of this particular group’s benefit and necessities and I believe the lessons were appealing to them; I do hope they have seen L2 from a different lens.

In the end, I asked for a little feedback and the learners kindly let me know they have seen my effort and appreciated I had chosen such entertaining context. This was sublime; beyond the fact that of course I could have done a lot better; the students’ response gave me a great sense of achievement.

1

1

Thinking Back

I started the observation period with lots of questions; what the group would be like, their level, the material they work with, and the students’ level of engagement, among many others. From the beginning, things were not as organised as I had expected them to be: the L2 teacher would be absent without notice, not all students had the material to work with, there were some students with special needs which were not catered for, students were overtly uninterested in learning L2 and dispersed or engaged themselves in other activities.I needed to start my practice later than planned; the L2 teacher was absent one of the observation lessons making my whole schedule shift forward. To be honest, the only reference I could grab was from the observations; not only did I not get the content I was supposed to teach but I was left with no material at all to work with or to use as reference. As the teacher would be absent for two weeks due to a planned journey, the only data she facilitated me was that the level was very heterogeneous, that it was very difficult to work with them and that there was one student with Asperger’s and some others with developmental delay but she did not specify who these students were.

The only agreement we had with the L2 teacher was that I would make a revision of contents. The teacher had told me she was not sure what I could present the students since she had covered all the units from the book appointed to 1° E.S.O. Due to this declaration, I proposed revising and recycling topics and vocabulary so I could also cater for those students who were incorporated later during the year and benefit everyone by refreshing content. In order to find out what the students had learnt throughout the year, I downloaded from the Internet Champions Student’s book and Teacher’s book since the teacher refused to lend me the material; her only request was I would not to deal with the Present Simple.

From the observations I learnt students were beginners and false beginners. Even though they were not actively participating in the lesson, the rapport with the teacher was very positive. They worked in a very small classroom with a strange sitting arrangement due to the lack of room. There were 21 students in all, girls been the majority of them. In these lessons the teacher worked with a video from her mobile phone; she had not booked the projector so students listened to it directly from this device with the help of a speaker. The activity was not very successful since there was no pre listening activity and they only needed sport the verb in a dialogue were pumpkins talked about their abilities in a film audition. The following lesson I observed, students worked with a collocation exercise and this was all they did during the 80 minutes the lesson lasted. Because not everyone had the course book, students shared them in groups of three or four while the teacher explained group by group what the activity was about. In this last lesson I could not tell whether it was new content they were dealing with or they were just recycling vocabulary related to free time activities.

As the aim was to revise content, I scanned the course book units and decided to work with introductions, verb ‘to be’, have/has got, can/can’t for abilities, and there/there structures related to different contexts: meeting someone for the first time and giving personal information, the family, the house and there rooms therein, superheroes and their superpowers. I really wanted to make the students’ experience as meaningful as possible; for this I was convinced lessons would need a communicative element as well as the addition of personalised activities to make them significant and help students use L2 in their contexts.

As far as resources were concerned, I decided not to resort to the course book because at least a quarter of the class did not have it. Consequently, I tried to design my own material or search for material on line and then adapted it to the needs of this group in particular. This experience was very rich and creative for me: I looked for listening excerpts on line, arranged worksheets for dialogues,

2

2

wrote charts to infer information from, and designed appealing templates for students to work with, among others. I believe students’ response was very positive. I was able to appreciate students’ engagement in all lessons; naturally there were students who were reluctant to participate or work, principally in speaking activities. However, I believed I managed to have students involved in most of the activities I proposed during the eight lessons I shared with them.Since I always endeavoured to provide activities where students produced using the target language; I also thought of visual aid or worksheets to scaffold these productions to help learners feel confident and willing to carry them out.In consequence, I can assert that students found the activities proposed significant and demonstrated to be very keen on them in general. Most of students’ productions were carried out carefully and their attempts to carry them out as expected was reflected in their constant questions and need for positive feedback which I believe I provided accordingly.

In terms of the knowledge and attributes needed to go through this experience, I can name some that were imperative for me to analyse and study. As I wanted to make use of ICT and there were no computers to work with; I reckoned it was best to work with mobile phones as I had noticed practically every student possessed one. In the search for activities, I found QR codes were very useful to work with web search, specific sites, and sms messages; I decided to include them in a lesson in order to find information about celebrities and also, to have student appreciate other uses of this technology.Another tool I decided to resort to was Google Sites. I had not worked with them before, consequently some research on how to use them was necessary; I think I managed to create some pages successfully even though I was not completely content with the design since I like worksheets and sites to be visually appealing. I also resorted to different websites and resource books to find activities and adapt them, different videos and comic strips to include realia in the lessons were also a priority because students can see language being used purposely and it also gives them a sense of achievement when dealing with actual L2 material.

As I have mentioned before, I have broaden my knowledge and experience during this practice period. From working with different resources and adding some I had never worked with before, to expanding my creativity for creating visually captivating material to work with. Most of all, I learnt how important it is to set an amenable environment to work in because if I compare students’ participation during my lessons to the one during my observation lessons; I think I could make a great difference. I think this also was thanks to the fact that I was a new teacher, and I have a different character and approach than their L2 teacher; however, I definitely enjoyed working with and for these students.Last, although I did not feel comfortable at the beginning of the practice because I felt unsupported by the L2 teacher, I was kindly welcomed by the students and their willingness to learn.

Thinking Forward

When I finished this project, I had the same feeling as with the other two periods: I could have done better and more. I believe this feeling to be positive since I see I can always improve and this is a learning process for me as well. If I had the chance to develop this practice again, I would make students be more active. I would include short stories; which I looked for during the practice but at the moment I considered it best to develop their oral skills, reading had proven to be quite a challenge and I did not want to make students feel disappointed. Nonetheless, I included a simple comic strip which students found easy to deal with and were happy they could comprehend it. I would also find some other activities where they could develop their listening skills. I only included one listening except apart from listening to my own voice; I made an effort to communicate and make myself clear in L2 as much as possible.

3

3

Then, there is the sensation I left some unfinished business. I would have liked to finish working with the last structure can/can’t, it is not I feel the ‘owner’ of the course but I guess I need that closure.

In the future, I see myself working more creatively. I like adapting activities and working with visual aid in general; so developing this trait will be a pleasure venture. I also enjoy learning and working with ICTs, there is an immense range of possibilities to apply in the classroom that it is almost overwhelming. The advantage of working with ICTs is that they are always up to date and can cater for all learning styles.As many of my colleagues, I am convinced learning is a never ending process. As a result, I will always be looking for new ways of improvement and enlarging my knowledge of the field I have chosen. I believe teachers need to be professional and act in consequence; so there is no absolute boundary in teaching and learning: we will always be engaged in these processes as long as we live.

Thinking Inward

At a personal level, this experience has been very significant. Generally speaking, I believe I did not encountered very experienced or highly committed teachers during my whole practicum journey and I would have liked to work with professionals who would offer me more support and reassurance. Nonetheless, I believe I could weather my insecurities and managed to do my best during the practice and this is the greatest asset I gained; being able to feel content with my work despite the lack of the expected support I considered I needed.

For my part, I was expecting a much less rewarding experience; not because I did not want to carry my practice out but because I was being evaluated and that pressure is hard to contain. I felt relaxed enough in the classroom with the students, during the taped lessons as well but planning took me a great deal of drafting and redrafting. This process was as stressful as it was gratifying because I have little teaching experience so putting the stages of a lesson in order was very difficult but in the end, the results were overtly fulfilling.

This is the experience I feel the most satisfied with. I love working with teenagers; this period of life allows us to see the world around us more abstractly and we live milestone moments which are imprinted in our memories for the rest of our lives. I was excited when planning my lessons and I thought all the time if I would have liked to be a student in my class; this was the engine that compelled me to work at the best of my abilities. The results and feedback on the part of the learners made me feel proud of them. The knowledge that I had something to do with their improvement and that they did not want me to leave, made me feel significant as a teacher.

Even though I felt uncomfortable and insecure during the first stage of this practicum period, in the end I was able to take in the challenge and transform it into an unforgettable experience with the help of the learners.

Thinking Outward

Regarding others’ viewpoints and attitudes, my reference were my tutors’ comments on both my plans and journal entries. There is much I need to improve and I am open to hear and learn from other professionals’ experiences and advice; this teaching and learning path allows us to share and be generous with each other so I think we all should benefit from other people’s viewpoints. Personally, I think the recommendations I paid most attention to were the ones related to my teaching strategies and timing. I took them into account and made the necessary changes before delivering each lesson; these pieces of advice were wise and they were very beneficial for me.

4

4

Other viewpoints I thought I should consider were the headmaster’s; he was the one who evaluated most of my lessons. He highlighted the school’s personalised approach to teaching and gave me some advice regarding some students with specific needs; these were centred in the way I talked to them or how I should manage my expectations regarding their learning. Nonetheless, I appreciated his guidance and followed his advice even though I considered I was not prepared to deal with these kinds of students.

Consequently, I do consider it is possible to articulate others’ points of view with our own in order to understand the world around us deeply. Taking into consideration what others have to offer, as long as it is directed to improve the reality we live in, can extraordinarily transform our environment positively.

In my opinion, I think my view is beneficial because I believe I understand that my perspective is not absolute or the only one that is valid. I relish working with other teachers, listening to students’ opinions and receiving feedback; I reckon this makes us growth as professionals and as humans as well.

5

5

Personal Conclusions

To conclude with my self-assessment, I would like to add that I have no doubt this is the mission I want to have in the world. Any doubt I may have had in the past regarding this profession has been cleared out and I am happy to have spent hours in the path of becoming a teacher.

This group of students in particular helped me rediscover how much I like working with teenagers; they can be very demanding and exhausting but I find them fascinating. I take with me the wonderful moments we shared during lessons; their curiosity, opinions and participations were priceless to me, even the ones which were not so positive because I learnt from them.

6

6