1. I can select from and plan a variety of organizational forms (frontal, individual, pair, and group work) as appropriate.
The most effective forms of organizing students from my practical teaching were according to the activities, tasks and fluency in class. In this respect, frontal organization was the general classroom arrangement since such organization offered a better view and communication towards the class. The same way, my classroom arrangement skills permitted other organization forms as appropriate to the type of activities at hand. Firstly, individual work was planned for checking every single student understanding about a particular topic studied in class. Secondly, pair work was arranged for sharing knowledge and discussing about the task performance. And thirdly, group work was done in order to apply collaborative skills among learners as well as motivating to compete through
games. It is also fair to say that children reacted better to playgrounds which involved kinesthetic stimulation and speaking skills for the performance of the exercises. In spite of this, it was required to establish a balance in activities due to sometimes learners focused more on aspects of the class enjoyment than in the lesson content.
2. I can plan for learner presentations and learner interaction.
In the perspective of my teaching experiences, I can fairly say that a significant part of the sessions development was focused on the performance of learners, mostly through speaking and writing skills. In other words, the lessons were planned in connection with the class functional environment and students’ proficiency levels. On the one hand, by introducing activities such as Pictionary, Telephone and Crosswords learners could put in practice their speaking-writing skills in English. In addition, learners had the chance to collectively present when learning about traditional customs, dance and music in the schoolroom. On the other hand, interaction among students was performed through group discussion or while playing games. The same way, listening-speaking interactions were exhibited in class by listening to songs and singing along. It is also important to add that classroom activities were focused on teacher-student and student-student interaction as a way of exploring diverse teaching methods different from the usual lecture-focused one. In this sense learners could acquire knowledge from both, presenting their knowledge and interacting with others.
3. I can plan when and how to use the target language, including metalanguage I may need in the classroom.
When planning lessons in my academic teaching, I always had to think of different ways of integrating and using the target language in a simple but also a descriptive way.
Throughout such practical experiences, it was imperative to consider whether or not using Spanish was suitable to correlate components from the target language and vice versa.
In a first instance, the appropriate moment for using English was from the beginning to the end of a class which included warm-ups, reviews, introductions and other stages that allowed language content input. The same way, WH-questions were employed when asking for language elements such as vocabulary, nouns and adjectives. On the other
hand, the way in which English was approached to students was through class enjoyment, visual support and authentic practice across activities, games and tasks in the classroom. In addition, when planning, I took advantage of different types of grammar metalanguage that could be found in reference documents such as the Suggested Curriculum by the MEN (2016). This alluding book include suggested content such as grammar, expressions, vocabulary and other language items that were used in my lesson plans according to the level and module explored in a course. A conclusive anecdote from all this is that, while introducing English, I not only discovered new teaching techniques but also the language content that children were more attentive to.
4. I can plan lessons and periods of teaching with other teachers and/or student teachers (team teaching, with other subject teachers etc.).
In any course of my Bilingual Program, it was common sense to know that, at some point, all of them required to work collaboratively with others whether we like it or not.
Regarding my academic teaching, I experienced such thing in my Initiation to Teaching Practicum Course. In this respect, I, alongside with another practitioner had to plan, distribute and carry out lesson plans according to the amount of hours given for teaching youngers. First, after deciding the topics to teach, we usually divided the hours into two classes weekly. Second, every week each student teacher had the responsibility to plan and design the lesson plan for one of the classes and while the other worked as support within the sessions. And third, for the last sessions we agreed to make a review and compilation of all the topics studied throughout the entire team teaching experience. The aim of doing this was to observe students´ understanding and achievement in the period of teaching English. Even though there were some duty difficulties along the way, we both managed to make our way through teaching and learning from such team teaching events.
Conducting a Lesson
Introduction
The section on conducting a lesson focuses on what teachers do in Modern Language classrooms and on the skills required. The first of these, expressed as a broad category, is the implementation of a lesson plan. This takes into account an ability to sequence activities in a coherent yet flexible way, to take account of learners’ prior learning and to be responsive to individual performances in class.
This section also identifies as significantly important teachers’ interactions with the class during the teaching and learning. Within interaction consideration is given to an initial settling down and to maintain attention, as well as to encouraging learner initiatives and responses, and to working with and being responsive to a range of learning styles and learning strategies. Also identified in detail is the teacher’s ability to manage classroom events, organize different ways of working and use a range of resources, instructional media and ICT.
The final group of descriptors focuses on the teacher’s use of the target language in class. Experience and research tell us that the skills involved here have to do with
deciding when it is most effective in terms of learning to use the target language and for what purposes, and when recourse to the home language might be more appropriate.
Also involved is the teacher’s ability to help learners understand what is said or written, as well as to encourage them to use the target language when communicating with the teacher and with each other.