Reflection on high school

1. Materia: Taller de Práctica Docente
Alumno: Laura Román
Tutor: Aurelia Velazquez
Reflection on High School Practicum Period
Concrete experience
I carried out my high school practicum in the same school I did the primary school
one, in which I have worked since 2010. So, I was thrilled to go through the experience
with my own students. This group was quite different, though. They are only 6 and their
English level is already high as they are graduating this December.
I have had the group since March this year but I’ve known 3 of them from primary
school. This was great because I know them quite deeply and they know me. Sometimes
there is a bit too much familiarity between us, but I try to use it to my advantage, that is to
say to engage them in the learning process, choosing the activities and strategies I know
work best for them. The group was in the middle of a crisis due to personal issues, which
affected their usual participation and attendance during the eleven short classes of my
practice.
By the time I started my practicum, we had already began working on a new unit on
people and the mass media. The aims of the unit were to discuss how people interact
through the media and even the way the media influences our relationships and general
conceptions about the world. In order to do so, I presented them with specific vocabulary
in use in articles, advertisements, radio interviews, essays, blogs, and pictures. The target
grammar points were mixed conditionals, inversion and alternatives to if, linkers of
contrast, reason and sequencing. The students also worked on speaking strategies such
as softening and emphasizing one’s opinion. Finally, we worked on the structure and
organization of opinion essays, by reading and writing different essays on the unit’s topic.
Ten of the eleven classes included in my practicum were only 40 minutes long, and
the other one was 80 minutes long. During this period, many of the pupils were absent
because of health issues or trips. For this reason, I had to recap constantly during the first
minutes of each lesson.
Some of the most meaningful and productive activities I carried out during the

2. practicum classes were the deduction of meaning and form of mixed conditionals
through an article about two famous actors and how their fame affects their lives on the
first class; the revision of conditional types in which the students had to put together a
poster on the second class; the guessing game on apps and two movie extracts to practice
mixed conditionals on the third and fourth classes; the discussions of different ways of
protesting and demonstrating against social issues on the fifth and sixth lessons; the
reading, discussion and writing about gender-neutral and gender-specific toys in
supermarket ads on the ninth class, in which I could include Comprehensive Sexual
Education content.
I also carried out a written test in the penultimate class, which included a listening
comprehension activity, a reading comprehension task, a vocabulary activity and two
grammar tasks. I assessed opinion essay writing separately as usual, working with drafts
and a final version which was handed in on a subsequent class.
The students already knew the observer – the English department coordinator
professor Vicente – since they occasionally have extra classes with him when preparing
for the international oral examination we have each November, Trinity GESE.
Nevertheless, the headmistress, the coordinator and I thought I should wait to start
recording the videos since the group was going through some personal issues.
Reflective observation
I was happy to see the pupils participated eagerly in all the activities presented. They
seemed very interested in talking about the actors in the magazine article and had their
own opinion about them, which they discussed. Once the class had finished, two of them
stayed with me while I was putting my things away and we kept on talking about famous
actors and movies.
They also appreciated the poster reviewing the conditional sentences types so they
could resort to it in later classes. It was a good way to have them work together as one big
group again. The guessing game about social media and apps turned out to be a fun
moment. Some of the apps were a bit dated, according to them.
They got particularly interested when I presented them with pictures showing public
ethical issues, such as bull racing, fur wear, street harassment, vegetarianism, and testing
on animals, among others.
The activities related to the structure and language in opinion essays were not as
controversial or heated. Nevertheless, they carried out the activities related to gender

3. issues and public figures’ private lives with interest since many of them have participated
in marches and leaflet-handing denouncing violence against women.
Finally, I was quite contented with the way the performed in the test, and I believe an
important factor was the thorough explanation of each tasks of the exam. The general and
personalized feedback on the test mistakes done the following class was meaningful and
useful since they had to work out the correct form of the incorrect answers they had had.
There was a special case with one of the girls, who has more difficulties learning the
language. She had done only of the activities from the test, and I had seen her copying
from a classmate. When I began giving the general feedback she asked me out loud about
her performance. I gave her the personalized feedback out loud as well. I should have
talked to her privately because even though it is a small group where everyone know
everything about each other, I unwillingly and unnecessarily exposed her.
Abstract conceptualization and active experimentation
All in all, I think choosing present-day topics and authentic materials to contextualize
the target lexis and grammar is much desirable so that the classes are truly meaningful for
the students.
Although I had already introduced the main topic of the unit before this practicum
period began, I am pleased with the fact that I had the opportunity to show all the stages of
a unit development: the language noticing, meaningful practice, personal application,
evaluation, feedback and further work on weak aspects.
For my future work with high school students, I plan to do as much as I can to keep
myself posted on society’s current important issues, and especially the issues related to
adolescence and Comprehensive Sexual Education. I also plan to organize myself much
better as regards the planning time, so that contingencies do not delay my classes.