The student teacher observed a workshop on road safety that lasted over an hour. The student teacher only had 5 minutes to explain the activity and was unable to provide examples or vocabulary practice. While the activity was appropriate, using "must" and "mustn't" may have been better than "can" and "can't" when discussing traffic laws. The mentor teacher took on too large a role during the workshop and did not give the student teacher enough opportunities to lead. For future observations, the student teacher needs to take a more active role in teaching and not let the mentor teacher dominate the classroom interactions.

1. PRACTICE II, DIDACTICS OF ELT and Practicum Primary School
level. Adjunto Regular a/c Prof. Estela N. Braun (2017).
Teacher Assistants: Prof. Vanesa Cabral and Prof. Maria Lis Luján
Ramos. ETA MA John Brakke.
REGISTRO:
ALUMNA RESIDENTE: Laura Ramirez
COLEGIO: Escuela 4. 5th Year.
DOCENTE CO-FORMADORA: Romina Cheme
Fecha: 22/09/2017
Today, both groups are together in the video room because they are
going to have a workshop about Road safety.
Unfortunately, I could not observe you teaching because the talk lasted
mora than one hour, you had just 5 minutes to explain the activity.
Even more, you could not give examples or work with the vocabulary,
what had been necessary because they had to do it at home by
themselves.
The activity you prepared was very nice and appropriate for this level
and for this opportunity (special class on road safety) and what is more
important is that this lesson was planned in accordance with the new
curricular guidelines forteaching English (Road safety, relation to CLIL)
and you could embed contents (rules/modals) within a topic which is
meaningful for their citizenship education. Excellent!! Although I think
it would have been more appropriate to use must/mustn´t because we
are talking about traffic laws. We must wear helmet/we must wear

2. seat belts/we mustn´t ride our bicycles on the sidewalks. I know that
you are teaching “can -can´t” but it can be a bit confusing.
I think you could have been in charge of the class perfectly well, in this
case, you had a passive role and you did not intervene. I think that
there was an overlapping of roles. The mentor teacher was in charge
of the class introducing the new people to the students, asking
questions, repeating some information, making them reflect about
certain points or actions instead of giving you the opportunity to be in
that role.
This can happen because of two reasons: the mentor teacher did not
notice that she was not giving you the chance to be observed or you
could have taken that role immediately and tell her that you could do
it too.
Sometimes, you must take that place with decision, you cannot stay
on a side of the room as observers, you must know that when you are
doing your practices you are the “main characters”, you are the ones
who must be in charge of the class, it is that way, there is no other
possibility. It does not matter if it is a common class or a special one
(we are doing something different: watching a film, talks by external
people, workshops, among others), you cannot let the mentor teacher
take your role, even more if this suggestion was made before.
Don´t be afraid of being in front of the class or of taking Romina´s
place. She generously accepted having trainee teachers with her, so
take advantage of that and be sure that you are doing a great job!
Prof. Vanesa Cabral