The document summarizes the author's experience completing their teaching practicum remotely due to the pandemic. They completed their practicum at their former primary school, teaching 5th grade alongside their pedagogical partner. Their mentor teacher was very supportive and gave them freedom to create their own lesson activities. The author enjoyed designing visual and interactive activities incorporating literature, drawings, and games to make learning enjoyable for the students. They felt this approach aligned with their own strengths as a visual learner. Despite challenges of remote teaching, the author felt they gained valuable experience in lesson design and establishing a supportive teacher presence for students.

1. It has been a pretty rough year for all of us, but we handled the difficulties
of our practicum with my pedagogical partner Valentina Ferreyra. We did our
practicum at Normal School N°256 that has been recently named as “Clemente
Andrada”, located in Villegas 256 between San Martin’s Avenue and 9 of July
Street. That was the school where I made my primary education. It was like
revisiting old memories I had about the place. I had the pleasure of greeting
some of my old teachers and they were pleased to know that I am studying to
become a teacher.
We had to make our practicum in 5th grade and our mentor teacher was
Juliana Badillo. All of them were highly supportive and warm, even when I had to
see them through my computer. Students were incredibly respectful and curious
when we started presenting our activities. Despite some of them having
difficulties understanding some concepts, they were eager to ask us for help and
even if they struggled, they finished their activities. In my case, it was
challenging to create a bond with them as I couldn’t interact as much as I
would like to when I had to give the activities through my computer because the
school’s internet connection was quite unstable. Hence, I felt like Sheldon
Copper’s computer robot from time to time, but it was nice to see them at least.

2. Some of them remember me when I was able to do my observation at the
beginning of the second quarter of the year.
Regarding our mentor teacher, Juliana, she left us the room open to
create our own activities. She provided us with some extra material that we may
choose to use or not, depending on what we needed. However, we managed to
equilibrate the textbook’s content with our own activities that were meant to foster
interaction between students and teacher-students.
Most of the exercises we designed aimed to provide
them with learning spaces that are closer to their
immediate context. In this sense, we also
heightened the use of drawing as a pedagogical tool,
literature with the short story “Places in my
Neighbourhood” and cartoons to make their learning
process an enjoyable experience. Despitetaking a lot
of time to design these activities, we enjoyed the
process, as I felt that we first put our pupils’ learning
strategies as an essential feature of our teaching
process. In my case, I love doing this kind of stuff as
it would be the way that I would like to approach a new language; I am like a more
visual learner. So, during my practicum, I spent many hours on the computer and
I believe that at the moment, I am subscribed to two hundred pages to download
images and I learnt a lot using Photoshop to design the activities.

3. Our most successful lessons were the ones we presented the projects
about the “Magic Bag” and “Draw Your Neighbourhood”. Using the short story
“Places in My Neighbourhood,” we were able to introduce grammar and
vocabulary by using literature as a pedagogical tool. We adapted some of the
short story images with places that exist in Argentina and some local places from
Santa Rosa, for example, the police station or the picture of our firefighters in
front of the fire station. One of the students read along with Vale while she was
showing the photos through the canon.
When they had to draw their neighbourhood, it was fun to see some of
their productions.

4. Although I could not experience my practicum in the standard way, I
believe that I have a better teacher stance than in previous years. I can now
design didactic activities by using what I like the most: games and cartoons.
Moreover, I reflect upon how I thought teaching a foreign language was, which is
always so focused on texts and grammar, and now I am able to look for other
methods such as literature, translanguaging and CLIL and provide them with
different activities like movies, games and visuals. These pedagogical tools will
help my students consider what they are learning in a much clearer light and
foster their motivation and creativity. There are tons of aspects that I have to
improve, for instance, in my first face to face experience with I realized that I
should use more the whiteboard, improve some of my explanations, but more
importantly to build my teacher stance in a way that students feel happy to be
with and that no matter how difficult it is for them they know that I am there to help
them.

5. My final reflection about the subject is that I enjoyed using my knowledge
of PowerPoint and Photoshop design to prepare the presentation about
Animals. It took me a while to prepare the memory game then, but it was worth
it. I feel that the theory helps me understand what aspect of learning a foreign
language we have to consider and how our students’ cognitive process works
when they have to face new vocabulary or how to activate schemes, for example.
Motivation and fatality are also two concepts that I will engrave to my
“pedagogical heart”. We have to make our pupils feel that we value them and that
no mistake can make them inferior to others. Finally, I appreciate the opportunity
to do my practicum in the way that I did. I want to highlight how supportive the
teachers and my pedagogical partner were with me.