Reflection

"I feel quite nervous about how it will be because I still don't have much experience in foreign
language teaching and thus, I feel very insecure. I have the impression that something it is
going to be wrong, but we are not going to know until I finish each lesson and I can reflect on
what has happened. See you next Monday! I wish I can tell you good news!” It was what I
wrote in my diary before starting the implementation of my teaching sequence with 4th
graders. But, what finally happened?
The first week of the implementation of the teaching sequence was an important one for me
and my teaching practice. It was the first time I teach some English lessons to my fourth
grade students working on MY TOWN topic. Concretely, I made the first three lessons of the
didactic unit. Before starting on Monday, I was very nervous and I did not want to get in front
of the students. I was afraid and worried about what was going to happen. The English
teacher helped me to relax and he told me that this Practicum was important for me, for my
improvement and it was the moment to be wrong and to reflect. So I got stronger and I started
my lesson. I presented the topic to the students and I gave them a worksheet with some
pictures of different buildings and places you can find in a town and they had to write their
names in English. It was such as an initial assessment. It was amazing, they really knew how to
say all of them in English but they had some problems with BAKERY and CHEMIST. It could be
because these are the most different names from Catalan or Spanish. We only had 30 minutes
lesson (30 for each half of the group) so they did the worksheet and finally we reviewed with
some flashcards I had prepared for them. It was only an initial session, a quite presentation of
the topic and some vocabulary they will have to know during the didactic unit to be able to
follow the next sessions.
After this lesson I had good feelings and I was positive to continue teaching them as an English
teacher. I had the opportunity to repeat the lesson to the other half of the group and I had
more or less the same feelings and I could improve some things the teacher told me. It was a
short time and they followed me very well, better than I expected. I was happy, very happy.
The second day we started reviewing vocabulary with flashcards and they really remembered
all of them. They had to repeat me lot of times and we were working on pronunciation with a
lot of repetitions for each word. We spent a lot of time on it because it is quite important.
Finally, I gave them the Memory Game and they had to find each place of the town and relate
them with one thing you can find or do in each place. They worked in pairs.
That day, I was not happy with what I did. I was angry with myself. Something was not okay
and I have the feeling that I lost the control of the class. The teacher told me that it was not
what I was thinking, it was only my impression and my point of view but we were talking

during playtime and he was giving me some advices and something to improve and to do it
better on the other group. I forgot to give them some worksheet to help them to play memory
game and my instructions were clear, I recognise. I went home sad, disappointed with what I
did and with myself because I had all session very well prepared and they were something that
did not go as I expected.
My last session of this week was on Wednesday and I had 45 minutes. We worked on location
with some prepositions such as: next to, in front of and between. At first I we worked on it
with flashcards pictures and I reinforced it with “who is who game”. I described the location of
some student of the class and they had to guess the student I was describing. Then, I gave the
change to some students to be them the person who gave the descriptions and his/her
classmates had to guess the student described by his/her location in the class. They enjoyed a
lot and they did not want to stop playing but it was time to work a little bit. I gave them a
worksheet to work on location and finally, when they had finish they had to work in pairs
doing the same as the worksheet by orally and inventing them what they wanted. One of the
pair has to describe some place location and the other one had to guess or, on the other hand,
one of the pair could describe the location of some place and the other one had to say if it was
true or not. They were working some speaking with their pairs. I was very happy with the
answer of the students in front of my activities and they made me to feel happy with my
work. Definitely it was an amazing week for me. My first feelings, my first lessons, my first
nerves, my first advices on my English teaching practice, my first joys and disappointments. I
want to continue working, to receive new advices, and to feel that I am improving on what I
want to be in my future: an excellent English primary school teacher”.
Then, during the second week of the implementation of the teaching sequence I continued
working on my teaching sequence about My Town. Specially, we were working on GIVING
DIRECTIONS and students were so motivated to work with some White Board activities and
participating a lot using all vocabulary acquired lessons before. We had this projected on the
White Board and I was giving them some directions and they had to guess where I was. Then, it
was a classmate who gives the directions to another one. We spent two sessions playing on it
because students loved it a lot. They always wanted to be the guide or the “car” and they were
too motivated and did it very well. We could listen some conversations between students such
as: -Go straight on Church Road, turn the second right and then the first right again. And STOP.
Where are you? - I am between the museum and the cinema.
At first they had some difficulties but working in group they solved them very good and finally
they achieved the lesson objective.

This third week at school has been really exciting but exhausting at the same time because of
some serious familiar problems I had and I was not teaching as I expected. My teacher told me
that my problems were reflected while I was teaching and it cannot be like this. “Your work is
apart from your personal life”. But he told me that he knows that it’s difficult. I was very
worried and I was quite in a bad mood lot of time. I was negative, not motivated and aware of
my own problems. Even so, the students answered me in a correct way, they demonstrated
me that they learned things and they were always great students.
It is being difficult for me being a foreign language teacher and trying to speak English during
the entire lesson. Even so, my teacher is always saying me that he is very happy with me,
children is motivated and they are learning with me (which is the principal teacher objective),
and negative things can happen during the lessons are good for me, to learn, to improve my
teaching, and to be more mature as a teacher.
Finally, after the last week of implementation of my teaching sequence, I was thinking a lot
about what happened all the days before. After finishing the intensive period, and in
hindsight, I'm not quite happy with my teaching unit. I had planned it as well as I could in that
moment, but nonetheless I did not take profit of all the chances I had to improve it. I feel as I
had something promising in hands, but that I did not explore all the possibilities.
So, although I know I have reason to be proud of myself, and happy with the unit, I am not.
Maybe it is something in me that is too critical about absolutely everything, but on the overall I
think I was not as good as I could have been. I have to improve a lot and take profit of other’s
opinions and ideas and in this case, I know that my teaching sequence was not well planned,
so it did not make sense in general. In this manner, if one day I want to teach this topic again
and take profit of this teaching sequence, I had to start changing all the approach of the
teaching sequence in general and considering the topic with other point of view.

Reflection

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