Task 4: T.U Implementation report

Description of the implementation of the T.U

First of all, I must say that the teaching unit I wanted to implement during this internship, was not easy, I complicated and challenged myself a lot, and so this teaching experience has helped me to see which are the limitations that arise when creating and implementing a collaborative project along with another school and other teaching members.

In most of the cases, students believe that studying English is about another language they need to learn in school, which is based on different grammar structures which later they put into practice in worksheets and textbooks. Even though the school where I am carrying out my internship does not employ textbook nor evaluates students through tests or exams, the English teacher of the school normally works by worksheets and though a grammar-focused approach. Therefore, I am sure that the students were not aware of the communicative purpose that English and languages in general have. That is the key when learning languages, so see the useful purpose of learning and using them. This was the main goal of our T.U.

Our project consisted on offering students a new experience of learning English, a way that they are not used to do it and hence, to promote a different idea of what it means to learn this foreign language. Having said that, students from 2 school participated and collaborated in the project. The objective was that each one of the students in both school had a colleague assigned, who would later become his/her penfriend. This way, along the 7 sessions of the project, students would be having a friendship-like interaction by writing each other letters, sharing their personal objects, sending videos and even making a special souvenir for them.

Results and evaluation of the project

Students learning experience: main outcomes

Students overall are very enthusiastic and motivated about the new English Project, in fact, more than I had expected. They come to my class very happy and ask me all the time how are their pen friends doing and what we will do next and so on.

In addition, one of the highlights of this project probably has to be the fact that students understood the real communicative purpose of English and they have realized how important can be for their lives acquiring a foreign language in order to establish relationships and social interaction with others. They will have also learned a lot of importance of social values such as friendship, tolerance and being open-minded to other people, to avoid prejudices and have a closed mindset.

All these values, I believe are very important to enhance in children, even more in the present, in which the context is very dynamic and rapidly changing and immigration is very present. So we are somehow preparing them for their future social life, educating them on social values. The fact that pupils saw this authentic purpose in English, also helped them to get into the mood of an English environment, as normally the usual English teacher does not employ English as the learning language, she prioritizes Catalan and from time to time she uses English.

However, with this project, since I reinforced some rules in the classroom asking them I would like them to use English and speak it more than they usually do, when they enter into the class they greet in English, and reply simple things such as "Thank you, yes, can I…, Yes, No, Help me please...". Even though they are little details that one may think they are not important, it is the very beginning when learning another language, to accommodate certain greetings and routines in their learning process.

Furthermore, since they want to communicate with their pen friend, they ask me how they can say whatever expression, how they can write it, etc. This also shows us their eagerness and motivation to learn a language in order to be able to use it, later on, to address it to someone else.

When it comes to linguistic contents, students may not have learnt plenty of contents, yet they will have reviewed and practiced some specific expressions such as greetings, the structure that follows a letter (dear...best wishes, how are you? Thank you for your letter…) and some qualifying adjectives (funny, enthusiastic, organised, responsible, extroverted, cheerful, shy…).

Finally, another very interesting aspect that I realised students have learned is to acquire more confidence in using and writing in English, even though the words they write may not be fully correct, but they were talking about language. What I am trying to explain is that while they write a word in English, they are aware of how they are writing it, and asking theme how do you write...is it correct like that? This is a very simple and small detail that one may take into granted, but for me, it is very important, as it means that they are definitely learning some skills that later on can help them to assimilate the English contents better.

In these images below, you can see how students without my help or asking “Permission” they went through it and started to write whatever English words they knew and had learned in order to communicate with their penfriends. This is also for me a very important aspect as if children feel the freedom and mood to write and try out making words in another language, helps them to get a better learning and become more autonomous learners as they find out their own strategies to get in touch with the target language they are learning.

Critical reflection of my teaching performance (video example)

Weak points about my performance

Observing my own teaching performance, some of the weakest points that I see in myself in the excerpts provided are:

Missed out corrections of pupils' pronunciation → 2’45’’

When I ask for the student who was in charge of the calendar and weather, I realize now that I see myself in the video, that I didn’t correct him when he was reporting the date of that session. For example, instead of pronouncing “wednesday →/wensdei/, he pronounced it the way as it is written /wednesdei/. I didn't realise about this at that moment.

Probably, I was focusing more on whether the kids was able to detect and put correctly the answer in the smartboard and be able to report it orally, leaving behind the attention on the pronunciation. However, my English teacher (the one recording) stopped me and told me to correct him. That is why afterward, I asked the pupil to repeat and I try to correct him.

Missed out asking a student to report on the weather → 2’18’’- 3’10’’

I usually use a routine in order to assess students ability to report the date as well as the weather. However, in this session, I can see that I missed the weather part, as I didn’t ask the pupil to report what was the weather like. That is why, in the next session I remembered about it and made sure the next pupil reported both the date and the weather.

The wrong answer was given to a specific student→ 4’42’’- 4’50’’

When I explain to the girl who asks me “Where is the object of Mila?”. First I tell her that he/she didn’t come at school so there is no object and descriptions and then I tell that she cannot do the letter so she must help others to find out the objects and help writing the letter her classmates.

I believe it was not the most appropriate thing to do, because everyone had an object and were writing to their new friend, and she didn’t have anything exciting to do, and she didn’t, she knew that during the class she would get bored when everyone was having fun.

However, later one, I gave her a piece of paper and asked her to make a drawing to her friend and saying her hello or something. She did and she seemed happier because she had something to do and related to her friend. In fact,what I should have done is (I had already planned and the materials, but I did not use it at the end) to give her another letter template I had prepared by saying “ Dear Mia….what I a pity I could see your object, but I am very happy to be your friend...I hope you are happy too, best wishes, we are in touch…”. We can see in the video how she reacts, she shows a deceiving expression, rather upset about what I tell her.

Needed to request more attention from all students when giving instructions ( 4’52’’-5’21’’)

When I am explaining then what they have to do when they collect their penfriends object, how and important things to consider, I realised that I did not wait until all students were in silent and all of them were looking at me. In the video, we can see how while I am explaining the instructions, some of them are talking among them or looking in another direction.

This is why when I am telling them the instructions, they start to take the object without me having given them the permission to do it so. In this case, since the group was small, I was able to readress everyone back and stop them and avoid in time before the total disorder happened.

Encourage students to use more English when providing answers → (1’06’’-1’14’’)

When two of the students answers to my question “What is a penfriend?” they answer to me in Spanish saying “Mejores amigos” and “amigos de distancia”. My attitude towards this answers is pretending I understand what she said in Spanish, but I translate into English when I correct her.

However, I could have asked them to report their Spanish into English to me so they could practice and use English.

Strong points about my performance

When it comes to the strongest points and from those that I am happy about are the following ones:

Drawing students motivation and checking understanding → Throughout all the video

I can see in the video extracts, in both 1st extract and second extract that students are actively listening to me, understanding me and hence, showing me their understanding by nodding their heads and participating when required. Even the new student who was not present in the first session and does not know much what is the project about, he was listening actively when I was talking.

Reviewing about the previous session → Min ( 0’0’’-1’38’’)

One of the things that I am happy about is the review I carry out at the beginning of the lesson, as this it helps them to understand and internalize the objectives of the project in general and to relate the activities of the session with the project. It’s very important for students to revise what they have done so far and what they are going to do in each session so they can see the progress of the project and learning experience.

Giving students enough waiting time to answer → Min (0’38’’-0’56’’)

Another thing that makes me feel motivated about my performance is the wait time I give to the students to answer. I tried to give them the amount of time they needed to think and speak out, as it’s important to consider that they are learning a language that is different from their mother tongue’s which, therefore, makes it harder for them to gather the proper words they have learnt in English. However, if enough wait time is given to them and they are encouraged to think and give them the space they need, they can come out with surprising answers, such as the one in this video when the student asked 2 keywords of the project to explain what is the project about. He couldn’t have used better words than those he used when I asked him to explain to his friend about the project. He reported by saying “The project is …...about…...make……. penfriends” for explaining the project.

Combined teacher talk and students talk → used peer explanations → Min (0’27’’-1’13’’)

I used some participants of the students to help me explain about the project to the students who were absent from the previous session, instead of making myself all the talk. Therefore questions such as “Can anyone explain Dennis what is the project about?”. “And what is a penfriend? Anyone can help Dennis because he doesn’t know what is a penfriend” that invite students to make part of the talking.

Good positive feedback and encouraged students → min (0’50’’)

Throughout all the project, especially in the extract of the session 2, where is more evident, I try to always give positive feedback to students responses and efforts they make when speaking English, by telling them “ yes, exactly, very good…”. I believe by giving positive feedback students feel more encouraged to participate and use English as they feel they are doing it well and they are more capable.

Improvements for future implementations

For future implementations of this project, I would specifically focus and pay attention to the following aspects in order to get even more successful project:

Check out for the schedules and availability of dates

It’s important that before deciding and making the step forward to start the project, both participants in the project have enough availability and flexibility in the dates.

This means having at least more than 1 or 2 sessions extra so that in the case that its needed or making changes in between, the projection be extended and finished sucessfully and be able to accomplish the objectives of the project with no rush.

Choose very carefully the contents to be worked on → Do not focus on treating 1 new content in each session, but to find the appropriate contents that can be worked in the project. Therefore, choose contents that allows to make different communicative activities.

Hold meetings every after session with the collaborators

What I missed throughout this project implementation is the lack of contact with the other colleague, and by contact I mean face to face contact and carrying out meetings to revise and go through together the project. This way, both of us could have shared more in deeply what went wrong for each one of us and what could we change and rebuilt about the project, even though it means to replan some activities and materials.

It’s true we met in some occasions, bit it was merely to exchange pupil’s productions to exchange. Therefore, it would be nice to hold a face to face meeting after each one of us has carried out a session. This way, we can improve way etter the different challenges and gaps that exists throughout the project during the real implementation.

More open-mindness and flexibility from both collaborators

If both of were more open-minded throughout the project and had attitude to be even more flexible than we have been and change things, probably the project would have been even more successful for us and more student-centered rather than teacher-centered.

Therefore, I would recommend myself for the next time I implement a project like this one to risk more myself to change and listen to my students ideas and attitudes in order to accomplish their learning interests.

Clear and realistic assessment criteria

Create and make clear, simple but effective ways to check student's learning progress through real evidences. From the objectives built around the project, plan clear assessment tools that can allow the teacher have an idea of what are and whare are not students acquiring.