1. TEAM TEACHING STAGE
Name of student: Rafael Munoz Toledo
Name of School: Colegio “San Vicente”
Date:
Task N 1: Collaboration activities
For the following questions describe as accurately as you can how you have
collaborated in school assigned:
1. What kind of activity did you perform the first time you were asked for
help? How long did it take?
Although I have got involved with students since my internship starts at
“Colegio San Vicente”, the first activity I was asked to perform took place at the
beginning of my second week of assistance. On it, I had to assist students from 1 st
intermediate grade to search information and device a number of presentations
about different English speaking countries.
The activity itself was previously planned and scheduled by the guide
teacher, and the entire process took around three weeks i.e. from May 15th, 2012 to
May 31st, 2012. This process was done by pair work where students had to be
2. capable of searching, writing, devising and giving a presentation related to
historical, cultural, economical and political matters belonging to countries such as
Australia, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand etc.
2. What were the students doing before you started helping out?
They were looking for partners, taking notes from a list of mandatory contents
the guide teacher wrote on the board which each and every presentation had to
cover. Also, they were discussing how to assign the different countries they were
asked to research on.
3. How did the students react? Describe the atmosphere of the room
and the level of engagement in the room.
The atmosphere was quite gently; in fact it should be pointed out that most of
the students shown empathy and reciprocity at the moment of start interacting with
the practitioner. Evidence of it will be the way students asking for feedback about
what there were doing, the way they could express and written down an idea, a
sentence , an introduction etc.
Needless is to say that on average students from “Colegio San Vicente” have
students highly oriented mood to focused themselves on work and follow
instructions. Indeed, no serious behavioural issues were faced by the practitioner
during the time he was working not on only with 1 st intermediate grade, also along
with 8th grades and students attending English workshops conducted by the
practitioners.
4. What otter assignments were asked you to do? How often?
I was asked to give a 2 workshops during the 4 weeks of June aimed to help
students with real needs at the English language class.
3. These workshops were divided in 45 minutes grammar lessons per week to
students from 7th and 8th elemental grade, and 45 minutes speaking lessons per
week to student from 1st and 2nd intermediate grade.
Apart from that, I was asked to give two assistantships to students from 8th
elementary grade and 1st intermediate grade before they were given their PVL test
(Prueba Verificacion de logros), an internal evaluation which is taken through the
main subjects students work on at school by the end of June.
5. Were you asked to prepare any kind of special audio visual learning
material for the students? Where they used? How effective were they?
Although I was not asked to device any kind of special audio visual learning
material, materials like these were gradually included through the lesson plans I
have devised and effectively used through the lesson I have given.
Songs, ESL videos and interactive power point presentations were very
useful in order to work on topics and lessons’ contents. Students shown very
willingly to pay attention and interact in lessons were these materials have been
used, however used them by its own mean does not ensure, success and
comprehension at the moment of reviewing specific contents. In fact, has been
demonstrated by many authors and researches (e.g. Tym Murphy’s “Music and
Song”) that the overuse of these resources may in some cases saturate the learning
environment as well as distract student’s attention. So it is very advisable, at least
from my experience , that materials like these have to be incorporated as a warm
4. up , while stage or closing activity, as well as use them along with worksheet,
grammar exercises or board/on line game, but avoid making them the focus of a
lesson plan only for the solely reason of “ innovate” or shift from a so called rigid
methodology to a supposed “open and flexible methodology” without previously
thinking about what are the aims teacher wants to provide by using them as
alternative teaching resources.
Task 2: Lesson Planning
Answer the following question and explain how you planned the learning activities
for your students. Be precise as you can.
1. How did you get the information for planning the lesson for your
students?
Basically by two ways: guide’s teacher assistance and student’s previous
knowledge and contents they were working on ( asking to them , looking through
their notes in order to obtain information about the sort of activities to and the
contents they were familiar to).
2. Did you your guide teacher give you any suggestion for planning?
I received suggestions most of the time, especially when a different methodology
was asked to be implemented either from the head teacher at university and from
the guide teacher at school.
5. 3. How long did it take to you to prepare learning material for your first
lesson?
This is a very important question and must be answered firstly by saying that
planning (the devising and writing of a lesson plan) may take an hour or two,
depending on the contents, methodology, topics and time lesson then practitioner
wants to follow. However, the actual planning is a continuous process and
certainly cannot be mastered at all after only two or three month of internship. The
real planning takes time, is an everyday business where teacher thinks about what
may or may not be suitable for the next lesson contents, is a matter of searching by
using as many resources as possible in order to follow a rigid or innovative
methodology (or even a mixture of both).
Now strictly speaking about my first lesson, it was devised in order to
understand students’ familiarity with language, learning style and the environment
inside the classroom itself. Certainly it took me no more than two or three hours
in order to complete the “ formal planning” but it was the departure point of my
real planning which has been a continuous process during my internship ( whether
or not some of these lesson plans were successful, weak or subject of
improvement).