personal reflections
After the implementation of my teaching unit, I would like to reflect about both my performance as a teacher and the development of the teaching sequence itself. John Dewey was the first to point out that experience alone does not constitute learning; instead, a conscious realization must occur for the experience to become a source of learning. That is why I believe it is important to reflect about one’s performance as a teacher, as it will help me make better choices and improve my teaching abilities.
Before I bear my soul, I would like to highlight that when I started implementing my teaching unit with the fourth graders, it was the second forty-five minutes I was with them. We barely know each other, so we did not have a mutual understanding at all. We had to create that complicity while working together, hand in hand. It would had been easier to continue working with the fifth graders, with whom I had been doing my fourth teaching practice until then, but I was assigned the middle cycle. I took it as a personal challenge and a preview of what a teacher has to face in a real situation: planning without knowing the context in which she will be teaching.
​
When students first entered the class, they were simply dizzy. They did not know what to do or where to seat, although they had a group list on the board. I told them that from then on, they would be working on teams and that, in order to facilitate work, their English teacher and me had created balanced cooperative groups. Once everyone was in silence —which took about five minutes—, I introduced the “Let’s be investigators” activity and it worked beyond my expectations! Students were really engaged in the activity, although they could not guess what the project was about at all —they did when I gave them a hint.
1
In the second session, there were already some complications. The English teacher had to attend a meeting, so I was asked to reduce the time of my teaching implementation to 30 minutes —five of which were already wasted since kids always arrive late at the English classroom. Thus, I had to readjust the timing and content for that session. So I had to take the challenge to do the terrifying jigsaw activity in the snap of the fingers! And there we were: they quickly arranged themselves into base groups, and then I explained them what the activity was about. I started writing the word “jigsaw” on the board and asking if it sounded familiar to them. I let them guess what it could mean, and at the end they got a synonym: “puzzle”. Straightaway, I made a clear diagram on the board explaining the steps of a jigsaw activity, just as you can see below:
2
And then we got started right away! They understood the process and the steps to perfection, so it really worked well! Something important to highlight is the scaffolding I had prepared in advance: each of the four pieces of information was differentiated from the others with a coloured circle in the upper right corner —pink, red, green and blue. That was really helpful at the time of creating the expert groups, since I just had to cry “Red group will seat here”, and they all knew where to go. Moreover, when it came the time to order the pieces of the story, it was easy for me to know at a simple glance if they did it right or not, since I already knew the colours order. Certainly, it was a very wise and useful classroom management tool.
After finishing the jigsaw activity, I gave them a piece of paper with the full story, also created by me.
Straightaway, we finished the class with the display of the story of Saint George and the Dragon that I had prepared for them. They were really shocked that the one telling the story was me, my own voice! Actually, I believe they truly valued my effort personalizing everything in the teaching unit for them, not just taking a Youtube video with I don’t know whose voice… and I loved it!
3
The third session was quite chaotic…although it was supposed and thought to be the funniest! That day I felt really upset... Both third graders A and B were celebrating the Romans’ week with their class teachers, so all the students came dressed up, they were daydreaming all the time and, actually, it was the last lesson of the day… So if brought together, it was a complete disaster! Imagine my eagerness that knowing that they were celebrating the Romans’ week, I had adapted the groups list with the Roman names they used to call themselves during that week —Let’s contextualize and personalize everything, I thought… Poor me!
So we started the lesson with a game to recognize some key vocabulary of the project. It was called the “Chinese whispers” and consisted on the following: I gave a student a flashcard depicting a keyword while pronouncing the word, so the kid had to retain the information of that word in English –both by sight and hearing– and then go to another mate that did not have any card and give it to him or her while trying to repeat properly the word in English. When I cried “freeze”, all the students who had a card on their hands had to say the name of the picture out loud. Well… it did not worked as I thought it would! They got crazy running and passing the cards without saying anything at all or shouting nonsense words… I had to stop the activity twice, emphasizing that the main aim of the activity was to acquire the vocabulary having fun together.
​
Then it was time for the corner games, which I readjusted at last minute: since I had created enough material to have two domino sets, the class was divided into two groups and they played the domino. Once finished, we played altogether the bingo game, and they really enjoyed it!
The fourth session could have gone better as well… I realized that the running dictation was too demanding for them —even though I gave them some scaffolding— and that I had been too ambitious and optimistic with the timing devoted to create their own rose. Starting with the running dictation: they are not used to that type of activities nor to participate actively. I tried to do my best when explaining and exemplifying what it consists on, and finally they got the idea, but they spent too much time in each gap. Regarding the video tutorial: I consciously filmed myself making the origami rose really slow, making long pauses and folding in slow motion. But they got lost in the first step, when they just had to fold the paper in half… My first impression was: I will die. And that was it: they did not have time to finish their origami rose, but a positive aspect was that they were so engaged in doing it, that they begged me to continue the following day.
4
So there we were: session five! We devoted almost the whole session finishing the origami rose, but it was worth it. All the students were simply amazed to have their own creation! And I was also really proud of them and the big effort they did! We spent the last fifteen minutes doing a brainstorm of possible origami video tutorials: they could use the computers, which really helped them when having to take a decision on what origami shape they would be doing.
5
The sixth session was devoted to prepare their scripts and record themselves. As starting writing a script is quite difficult, I prepared beforehand a scaffolding piece of paper with useful vocabulary when giving instructions on how to make an origami. I have to say that I gave them almost all the work done, since the phrases of that text typology are recurring.
They had enough time to do everything, and I believe we all were so happy!
6
And there we were! On the last session, we projected all the video tutorials of our Youtubemates and they were simply euphoric!!!
That was a nice feedback for me as a teacher, since I could see that all the effort me and them had done was worth it. They were not just sitting and watching a video, they were really assessing their peers objectively, knowing that it was an important thing.
After doing the peer-assessment, I asked them to point out positive things of that teaching unit and others that they would change or they did not like at all... I was frankly astonished at their answers! They said they had a really good time working with me and that they loved the opportunity I gave them to be Youtubers!​
7
