Developing my experience

1. Taller de Práctica Docente – Aurelia Velazquez
Mandatory Assignment –Reflective Cycle (by David Kolb)
Student: Paula Pilotti
Personal reflection
Having my first experience in kindergarten level, I learnt many new things. From
the early beginning, I could meet the group of students and realize about the
context they were learning in. I observed the classroom dynamic, the resources
they had, their interests and the level of English. One of the things I feared
about was the fact that the teacher gave them all the tasks in Spanish. Also,
they didn´t have concrete tasks in order to follow a sequence in the lessons.
Anyway, it was quite easy to include simple tasks using gestures, body
language and a puppet with a sound that helped me when I had to change into
another activity or if I wanted to catch students’ attention. Some of the tasks I
used were “Let´s watch a video, let´s sing a song, let´s play a game and let´s
make a circle”. After the first class, students were able to respect and
understand each one, some of them repeated some words and others translate
them into Spanish helping those who didn´t understand the task. My lessons
were based on games, videos and songs. They really enjoyed those kinds of
activities since they don´t usually work like this. I was happy to see the kids
motivated with my lessons. The observer made me feel comfortable and free to
organize the material, he was enthusiastic with the way I developed my lessons
and I think he could take advantage from them. He took same some ideas from
my practice since he found important the way I organized the kids in each
activity and the method I used that was PPP. Moreover, he realized that giving
simple tasks in English is not impossible to understand if we use the correct
strategies and techniques.
After each meeting, I came home and I reflected on my practice in order to
improve my lesson plan for the next day. That was an essential part in my
practice since I could develop my lessons better little by little. Taking into
account those things, I had more confidence which is a key factor when
teaching. I organized all the material I had to use in advance. So, I must
prepare many things like the number of copies I needed, the adaptations I had
to do, the boxes I prepared for the games, the videos and songs I downloaded
in my computer, the flashcards, the puppet, the presents and more. Fortunately,
the lessons were great and I never forgot anything. That organization made me
feel relaxing relaxedand enjoy each moment with my students.
A question comes to my mind: What can I do differently? I take many positive
aspects from my practice. Anyway, I am learning and I will go on learning from

2. each experience. Watching myself in the classroom and reading my teacher´s
feedbacks, I think it could be great if I consider some new strategies in the
warm-up stage. For example, a longer and engaging warming-up could be
positive and it could help students to focus their attention from the beginning of
the lesson. I think that those weak aspects can be improved with time, after
some meetings and practice.
For my next lessons, I should implement some concrete purposes in order to
obtain as many advantages as possible from each activity or resource I use. For
example, if I plan to listen to a song or watch a video, it is necessary to have in
mind the aims I want to cover. It is not just a matter of listening to a song for
pleasure, that is not bad, but we want to teach effectively. It requires being
creative to design interesting and engaging activities using the resources we
have selected. So, it is important to ask yourself: What do I use this material
for? The answer must be clear and concrete to have positive results the next
meeting with our students.