Sònia Reig 

VIDEO REFLECTION 

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In this part, I will reflect about me as a teacher with the support of a video recorded on the third lesson of this TU, the 23rd of May. The aim of this session was to start the activities related to our topic, which was the moment of the robbery. After reading Rose Mary’s e-mail and entering the blog we started the activity; the students in groups had to put the verbs in the past in the gaps on the personal diary of the neighbour. To do that, they had a glossary with the possible verbs as a support. After that, they had to put the days in order.   

 

Next, I will analyse my performance as a teacher, to make it clearer I will follow the same order as in the video. The video could not be uploaded to the web because the students appeared on it.

 

After reading the e-mail, entering the blog and looking for our task, one girl read it aloud. While she was reading I corrected some pronunciation mistakes, which was a good point, but, I didn’t say anything in others, that was because I felt bad for the girl to be all the time correcting her, and I didn’t want her to think that is not good at the language and be demotivated. But I should probably had to correct her anyways in order to help her improve, so that is a thing that I need to change. When she finished I asked them what they had understood in order to see if they had comprehend the message. As can be seen at 0:45, a boy answered me, but using Catalan. He could express himself better in his mother tongue, and it was also good to make the explanation accessible to those children that have difficulties with the foreign language, but maybe I should have to push him to speak in English. After that, I repeated the explanation in English, so they received English input, and I added information to explain the activity that they would do.

 

At 1:55, I presented the support that they would have during the task, it was a glossary with the infinitive, an image to help the comprehension and the past simple form, of the verbs that they had to use to fill the gaps. I went through all of them in order to make all of them comprehensible for the children. Spending more time to the ones that could be difficult as at 2:42. To do that, I also asked a lot the pupils, in order to make them be involved and to keep their attention.

As explained at 3:18, the verbs had different colours depending on the text that they had to go. We did one as an example (4:33), it is a good point in order to show how the activity had to be done, and to ensure that everybody sees that. The example was done as well with the collaboration of the children.

At 6:06, I repeated what the girls said in order to point its importance. At 7:07, also repeating what the girl had said I made a clarification of a word that could be tricky for some of them as was towards, adding new words is essential to introduce new and more complex words, and not use always simple words or phrases, but explanations and examples are needed to make them comprehensible. At the end, at 7:29, I said the main idea of the text, so everybody had it in mine and refreshed it.

At 8:28, I asked if they had any question, in order to solve possible questions about the development of the activity or the content. Moreover, to recap the steps that they would have to follow I asked them to explain me what they would have to do, this way I was sure that they had understood the task, and also the children with more difficulties had an extra explanation.

 

As a way to conclude I will briefly comment the main points seen on this video. During it some repetitions are observed, this plus the clarifications made are a good point of my performance, to make the content and the instructions more accessible to everybody, but maybe I had to do more or of better quality.

Another good point was to make the students read the e-mails and the tasks, so they were more involved on the explanations, but maybe more rephrase and pronunciation corrections were necessary. Moreover, I consider that asking them questions while doing the explanations and to make them say the steps, they were part of what was going on on the class. I also had to push them more to speak in English, this is an aspect that I will have to improve, to make them be more motivated to speak the foreign language.

I said very good in some moments during the video, I see this as a good thing, positive reinforcement is essential in order to motivate children and show them that they are good in what they are doing, but I think that I should do it more.

Apart from that, there lots of things to improve such as the way that I use and pronounce English, I have to do lot of work in order to improve my English level. Also, I have to use more gestures when using the language, because it helps children understanding. Last but not least, I have to pay attention and correct the children that I ask; because I always asked the same ones, always were more or less the same children who raised the hand, so I had to ask other children too, and find the way to foster other’s participation.

 

In comparison with the video recorded on the Praticum IV, they are distant for some sessions, which has influence on the differences, helping me to improve. One of my initial expectations was to gain security, comparing both practicums and both videos I think that I have done, but lot of improvement is needed. But also, this feeling can be influenced by the group that I had in front, comparing 6B and 5B, the last ones were calmer and less talkative, it also helped me. There are things similar from one video to the other, such as reminding children to raise the hand, without saying anything but doing the gesture; but also things that I have improved such as the increasing presence of rephrasing and the gain of self-confidence, but lot of work is needed to continue improving these aspects.

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