Nancy Valley reflects on her lesson plans and teaching experiences during her practicum. She found that more time was spent organizing lessons than executing them, and that her estimations for time usage and activities were often inaccurate. However, she showed improvement over time in areas like choosing appropriate content, providing clear instructions, engaging different learning styles, and balancing practice time. Overall, she identified many skills that she needs to continue developing but felt she made progress in self-reflecting on her teaching and identifying deficiencies compared to best practices.

1. EDUHUB - Lesson Reflection Assessment Nancy Valley
August 5, 2010
One of issues with this assignment was to try and compile my lesson plans. As you will notice,
some are very well organized, but more time was spent on the organization of the lesson rather
than the execution. You will notice that the structure and organization changed. As well, some of
the lessons have modifications. I am still trying to find a proper format for lesson planning that suits
me. I have found that a lot of modifications were needed, as my estimations for time usage and
proper activities were inaccurate. These are definitely issues that I will be working on during the
next practicum.
Lesson Reflection # 1
French, Year 8
07 May 2010 – ER verb revision (First Lesson)
What was good and needs to be continued:
The structure of this lesson was good. I started with a warm up, by putting a phrase on the board
and asking students to tell me about the verbs they saw (i.e. what they mean, how they are
constructed). This was essentially to see what they knew. The next part of the lesson revolved
around reiterating the theory they had been taught and then practicing it with a game.
I was not sure what to expect from the class, so I had less expectations about what they should
know. I know it is good to expect that children can be capable of great things. However, I noticed in
my later lessons that my expectations, in terms of content mastery, were too high.
What was bad and needs to be improved upon:
There are some skills that need to be built upon, such as writing up on the board (I.e. the act of
doing it and choosing much or little to write while still be engaged with the class). While I know that
these skills need to be developed, I have decided that less is more in terms of the amount and that
should be written down. Write down the key things, so you do not overwhelm students. Also, for
LOTE this is probably better as students should not be reading to learn proper pronunciation. For a
little while, I practiced using flash cards, coming in early and getting students to help me.
Another aspect I need to improve upon is monitoring the class during games. It’s very hard to be a
judge when you’ve got to watch what 26 girls are doing. I think part of the selective attention skills
comes with practice, but also in having a very well designed game and a very clear idea about
what behaviour, skills and other attributes are important to encourage or discourage.

2. EDUHUB - Lesson Reflection Assessment Nancy Valley
August 5, 2010
Lesson Reflection # 2
French, Year 9
17 May 2010 – Unit 1 and 2 Test (Two Lessons with two different classes)
What was bad and needs to be improved upon:
The main issues with this lesson revolved around content and administration. In terms of content, I
was tasked with writing a text for units I had not taught and was told to take the information from
the text, some of which was never studied. Therefore, the content of the test was not something
that most students could have been reasonably be expected to know. With regard to
administration, the first group of students seemed to be particularly nervous and stressed about
doing a test first period on a Monday. The group that came in period four seemed a lot more
relaxed. To cope with these issues, my mentor teacher and I decided that it was important to take a
lot more time in explaining the tasks included for the test and to change some of things that the
student would not understand.
What was good and needs to be continued:
The second administration of the test was better. Although I had encouraged the girls to ask
questions in the first class and many did, I went over the issues with the content much better the
second time. I also wrote changes down on the board and explained that I had made a lot of
mistakes in writing the test, so students should feel very comfortable about asking for clarification
when needed. For future tests, I would be really important to keep in mind what you want students
to know and give them a clear idea about what will be on the test, as studying for the test will
probably be the most important change to reinforce generalization grammar rules and exceptions.
It is also a really good idea to be really clear about the instructions that you need to give to
students for those who may not read them or may be stressed and need reassurance.
Lesson Reflection # 3
French, Year 8
18 May 2010 – Listening tasks and learning time
What was bad and needs to be improved upon:
Although the students were used to playing games as practice, I felt that it was important to get
students practicing the content in other ways. I decided that the way to do this was by choosing
some listening tasks from the textbooks. I hoped that by doing this I could assist some of the
students that complained because their language learning goals were to learn how to speak, and
being able to listen in an integral part. They seemed fairly straightforward and were inline with my
mentor’s suggestion about the importance of using the text. These tasks were entirely too difficult
because I had not gone over the material enough and I had not given the proper instructions the
students would have needed to pick out information without the tasks seeming overwhelming.
Overall, there was not enough foundational work done to allow the students to feel comfortable
with listening to the target language. My students had absolutely no prior experience in listening to

3. EDUHUB - Lesson Reflection Assessment Nancy Valley
August 5, 2010
French in authentic contexts and should not have been expected to be okay with that all the
sudden. This created a lot of classroom management issues.
What was good and needs to be continued:
I think that it was a really good idea to give students tasks, as way to enrich their knowledge. It is
especially important to give them tasks, which are difficult. What I took from this lesson is that it is
important to have high expectations for students and to challenge them. However, it is important to
challenge students in a way that gradually increases the difficulty and independence.
Lesson Reflection # 4
French, Year 8
25 May 2010 – Integrating time expressions
The goal of this lesson was to re-gain control. The Chisholm 2 Year 8 class was a difficult to
manage class that was actually the subject of a school wide staff meeting. Listening activities that
were too difficult (I.e. inappropriate materials), left the door open for classroom management issues
to occur. This class got control of me and they knew it. A dictee was a chosen warm up activity that
was meant to capture the classes attention and keep them with me, although, I should say that
most girls were well meaning and were fairly cooperative even when they were at their worst.
Modification two minutes before the class was necessary to make it appropriate for the level of the
learners and this worked.
I started off with the class’s attention with the warm up dictee. Then, I moved swiftly through a
game to give practice time and then on to discussion groups where the students sat in groups with
my mentor and myself so that they could ask questions about what they had already learned and
wanted to know. Having a very well timed lesson with appropriate activities and individual attention
was the key to the success. Unfortunately, this seemed to occur almost by accident, as you will
notice that this was not in my lesson plan. However, I should say that I had plenty of backups (I.e.
theater schedule writing task and book exercises). I took from this that the key to becoming a good
teacher will be to find a balance in content, pace, student-teacher relations etc. I still need to
develop all of this.
Lesson Reflection # 5
French, Year 9
26 May 2010 – Futur proche (Two Lessons with two different classes)
This was my best lesson for several reasons. In previous lessons, I had figured out that I really
needed to pick one thing and repeat it to death. For this lesson, I chose to integrate a grammar
concept with vocabulary from the chapter. I target the different learning styles by speaking to the
class and by using a PowerPoint, which also helped with structure. I introduced theory and
scaffolded in language and conjugation goals with the class as a whole.

4. EDUHUB - Lesson Reflection Assessment Nancy Valley
August 5, 2010
One issue that I had was giving adequate practice time for the weaker students that still engaged
the stronger students. Although I did not agree with my mentor’s choice to do nothing but play
games with her students all the time, after having a difficult lesson before, I figured they deserved a
break. Ultimately, it gave everyone a chance to practice a vital conjugation skill and integrate some
vocabulary from the chapter we were studying. Monitoring the game and keeping everyone
engaged are still pedagogical skills that I know I need to work on. That said, I feel that is was a
good lesson, where every student left having learnt something and feeling confident of this
themselves.
Overall, I think that I have a lot of things that I need to work on, but that I made a lot of
improvement in terms of both skills development and the ability to identify deficiencies in my own
pedagogical practice in comparison to a clear definition of what is needed to be a good teacher. In
this sense, I cannot wait for the next practicum.