PRACTICUM V 

After implementing my teaching unit: Let’s create a restaurant!  I would like to share what I have observed. On one hand, the students have been very engaged and motivated through all the sessions. It has been very different for them, as they are used to work following the book, therefore, they have enjoyed all the activities proposed. The fact that students have fun with what I prepared make me feel happy and proud. However, there are several things I have noticed while implementing my teaching unit that I would change if I did it again.

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Session number one went really well, however we did not have time to comment the last video “The food pyramid” as I would have liked. Nevertheless, they got the main idea of the food groups and its structure in the pyramid.

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The objective of session number two was to analyse the food pyramid and study how a balanced diet should be. This session was planned to be done following the jigsaw method. But before doing this activity there was a true/false game. To develop this game we went to the audiovisuals room as children needed to have some space to move from the true side to the false side. However, they were not understanding the meaning of the food I was saying although the vocabulary selected was very easy (bread, peas, pears…), and they were moving from one side to the other following what their peers were doing. On the other hand, the jigsaw activity went really bad. They are not used to read real readings, they only read the comic that appear in their book. Therefore, for them was very difficult to understand the jigsaw dynamic and the text.

 

Having done this session, next day I had the same session with 6th A (the other class) and I decided to change the dynamic of the classroom. On one hand, we did not go to the audiovisuals class, I prepared green and red papers, and when I was saying the sentences (which I modify to make them simple) they had to raise their hand holding the red (false) or green (true) card. This made the organization of the class much easier and it was more visible to detect who was getting the right or the wrong answer.  On the other hand, instead of following the jigsaw activity, I divided the class in 4 groups and each group was responsible for one part of the text. Each group had to choose a spokesperson and that person was in charge of explaining their part of the text to the hole class. Changing the organization of the class made a big change between one class and the other. In this second lesson, they were more organized, they knew what they have to do, and what did they have to work on.

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Session number three was the favourite for most of the children as it was based on different games to work food. They loved the supermarked corner and the one computers one. The use of technological tools in my teaching unit was a handicap as my school is not prepared for it. Although they have digital blackboards, they do not work properly, therefore, nobody uses them. On the other hand, there is just one computer per class. In the English class there were 2 computers, one of them was not working though, for this reason I tried to look for a laptop. They did the activity in groups and took turns to answer. If I could implement my teaching unit again in a school with more digital resources I would like to make them create the menu with the online programme “ Canva”.

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One of the best things of my teaching unit I think is the fact that students have to work and learn how to collaborate in groups. They are not used to work by groups and most of the works are done individually. Moreover, they had to design everything (from the menu to the dialog they did in the final presentation). They work very hard. As well as in practicum IV, I was underestimating my students, because as they have a difficult situation at home and they are not used to this kind of projects I thought they would not be able to achieve the main goal of the project. But they did some amazing presentations that made me believe a lot more in education and in our future job.