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In my first observation I surprised myself. I think I had some expectations in my mind, abstract, but expectations. The teacher started the class with a short hello song, with the children gathered on a big mat, and then she sat down on a chair, and showed some flashcards from a book: Bebop 3, from Macmillan. That was the moment when I realised that they work with a book, and it is a centre, and it occupies big part of the lesson.
Commands like "raise your hand" are used.
The teacher managed a very loud and high pitch, there was little eye contact between the children and her. The class was really noisy.
The vocabulary taught in the lesson was games: hopscotch, soccer, skate, basketball and jump rope. They made some games with the flashcards, like "what's missing". An interesting strategy I noticed is that she gives options to the children when they don't remember: is it jump rope, hopscotch or soccer? In this way she repeats the vocabulary and the kids choose an option. After this they were invited to sit down on their chairs and the teacher handed out their books. A sequence of guided activities was coordinated by her, like playing "touch and say", with the same images they had seen before in the memory game with flashcards, but on their books. When this part finished, she told every kid to "put your book on the shelf".
She handed out a worksheet and black pencils, and she asked the children to draw themselves doing what they liked most of the games learnt.
She picked up the photocopies, and later she told me she makes a little port-folio with all their work and it's given to the families in July.
The class was about to finish, so they gathered again on the mat, and they sang a goodbye song.

It was really shocking for me to see how short these moments of gettinf together and sharing round circles was.

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In this observation I could recognise a couple more of strategies, like some attention grabbers. "5, 4, 3, 2, 1", she counts backwards and they make silence in 0. "silence 1, silence 2, silence silence silence please", was another.
The structure of the class was very similar, and this provokes in me a strange feeling of sadness. It contrasts deeply with the activities we're designing in our lesson plans, and also with the ones I'm used to in my own teaching.
I was an observer on one side of a table, as on the first class, but this time I was near a boy that was sad, he didn't want to work, and he told me "I don't like this", tearing apart the book.
I think they are very young to use a book systematically, they want to play, to sing, to use their bodies actively. I really hope that there can be a place in my practicums to give this to the kids in an armonic way.
The teacher started the class remembering the vocabulary seen on the previous class, with the flashcards. "what is it? Raise your hand". She presents her pendrive and puts it on the recorder. "stand up, let's dance!" "I'm going to put this song while I hand out the books, go dancing to your places. "
Constantly I'm surprised with the unexpected. I wouldn't have coordinated the activity that way, but anyway that's the way they do it in this kindergarten. (resignation feeling?)
So, what was different this class form the previous one, was that they worked with the audio files of the book: a song, and also a coordinated activity on the books, of joining with arrows.
I noticed that they already know the characters of the book, because they named them.
"Listen", "let's play soccer", said the character on the recorder. And they had to touch what they listened. She passed through all the tables to monitor and help the kids recognise what was said. She emulated the voice on the recorder.
"Now you're going to sing again the song, stand up and do the actions near your chair".
I think that she doesn't want the kids to move so much because it can be difficult to gather them again and focus without "loosing time of the class". I deeply reflect on this, because I think we're teaching habits... and we need to spend time teaching them, making them. I think they're too young to be sitting on a table so long, without making something creative. Will they develop love for the language this way? I don't know... Just reflecting.
They made another activity with audio and the book, matching with arrows a friend and what he liked: "I like basketball", and they matched the first kid with the basketball.
"put the book on the shelf", they went again to the mat, and she showed a picture with four bullets. She told a little "story", I don't know if it was a story.

To remark: she uses a lot of L1, the most of the time, and then she repeats in L2. She gives commands in english, the ones that they already understand and I've mentioned above.

She sang the goodbye song.

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After some weeks I could end my observation stage. Due to acts, and an illness of the teacher, we had to move our schedule 10 days.
I see that the teacher is a little bit overwhelmed by her work, she has also 1st grade and 3rd grade, as well as kinder ages 5 and 4.
In this last observation the teacher made me participate.
We went to the hall to make a game with hoola hoops. The good thing of being two is that we can show every dynamic with the children. We took each other hand in hand, and lined up. We showed how to play a hoola hoola game. The kids lined up and we went to the big hall. They played, they shouted a lot, they ran, and they had fun. We spent 20 minutes with this, and we went back to the classroom.
The children sat down on the carpets on the floor, and the teacher took out number flashcards that had short verses (but complicated) which explained how to draw the numbers. "across the sky and down from heaven, this is how we make seven" I remember that, because it was one of the easiest.
I usually work a lot repeating verses in my english classes, so I wanted to contribute with some strategy, which I tried. The teacher encouraged children to repeat, and I repeated as if I was one of them. To my opinion, this dynamic should have happened more times, with more repetition, since the verses were long, and not so many kids were fully engaged in the activity. The ones engaged wanted to repeat but the verse was very long: I would have shortened the parts, and make it more rhytmical, like a song, or even suggest some rhytmic pattern to accompany, like palms on the lap.
The teacher uses plenty of L1. I noticed that many children yet don't manage very well L1 and their sounds.

After this part, the teacher asked "¿Cómo era el 1 quien se acuerda?", "era un palito", "very well it was a stick", and she gave it to the children who remembered.

We sang goodbye song, and that was all.

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I'm writing a retrospective of all my assistanships together, because they all share some similarities.
The teacher asked me to help her in different ways: showing dynamics, bringing her some materials, assesing children at their desks, playing memory games.
These assistantships were very useful to make me feel part of the class, and get to know the children. They also get used to my presence, they learned my name and started resorting me for help on any issue: from tying shoelaces up to opening the book on the right page. In this way I was part of their dynamics, and understood better their rhythms and paces: how they work on their books and with sheets, and how to punch out their works and put them on their folders, that's also an important part of the way that they carry out this lesson.
These instances were very enriching and helped me a lot to release my lesson plans and to figure out what could be my useful contribution to these beautiful group of kids.

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I'm so happy to write this retrospective. The lesson developed very well, the kids were engaged, the timing was adjusted in some ocassions but it was fine.
We first started warming up with our song and with actions and commands. I was surprised to notice that they couldn't at first respond to any specific command. I started asking can you clap your hands? And just waited. No one clapped, so I clapped. And we made some more actions like touching nose, touching toes, stretching up high, ETC. Then we sang our song. We sat on the carpet and I showed them my friend Clown. Clown asked their names to them all, what's your name? and they were asked to respond "My name is". This was a hard task for them, some of them couldn't answer completely but it was a very joyful task. Afterwards we sang a fingerplay about 5 funny clowns, we did it twice. The teacher was really helpful with some comments, and inverventions.
After this I presented new puppets and then talked about circus and told them that they like to take photographs to them all, so I showed them flashcards with target vocabulary and we practised memory games. After this, I had planned an activity of performing and guessing, but I noticed that they were really tired of being sitting down on the carpet, and they are used to sit down on the desks for about 30 minutes. As we only had 10 left, I changed my activity and asked them to sit down on their desks and draw a clown with a very big red nose, as my clown "Clowny". I would have happily added this activity into my planning, but when I told the teacher about it she dismissed completely, alleging that they were not ready to perform this kind of unguided  or free activities . Now I know that I have to trust myself a bit more, because the activity developed wonderfully, they were really enjoying the task, they draw beautiful clowns and they coloured them as my puppet clown. I picked up the drawings and the teacher helped me to punch them after collecting them, getting the sheets ready to put on their folders.
Finally, they sat down on the carpet and we sang the goodbye song.

The lesson was developed almost as it was planned, respecting the timing, making some short adjustments... As I expected, they enjoyed singing and fingerplaying as well as drawing. I used a little bit more of L1  than I was expected, because children didn't respond to some tasks, so I recasted in L1 and in L2 one after the other.
I was happy about the teacher's help and presence, and this didn't make me nervous.

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This lesson had already contemplated an adjustment in certain aspects from the original lesson plan:
+ keeping the fingerplay, which they really enjoy and sing
+ adding an opportunity of managing the puppets when learning emotions vocabulary
+ telling the storysong while sitting in a circle
+ dancing and learning the song which was supposed to be played in the tape recorder to work with a worksheet of CUT-OUTS afterwards...

The first part of the class was from my point of view totally succesfull. Up to the emotions part the children were fully engaged, were happy to touch and pass the puppets, to sing them "how are you", and they fully participated in the 4 emotions
+happy, sad, tired and angry

Although the teacher suggests me to keep the circle short, up to 10 or 15 minutes (this is the way she works), it's part of my planning and project to keep this circle long, as 30 minutes, and to pass after this to the sitting part... Performing in this part the strong exposure to language: singing, fingerplaying, action songs, flashcards time, passing puppets or balloons, counting and naming colours...
I can say again that the part of having 24, yes T-W-E-N-T-Y F-O-U-R (oh, my god!!) children in the classroom it's not an easy task. There's plenty of chatting some times, and children loose concentration. But not all of them, some, and they're "always the same".
After saying this, I preceed to recount that aftearound 25 minutes of circle, I introduced the story song, and they started guessing what was happening, (the 4 characters of the book were acting out a circus). Half of the class had lost their concentratrion and were starting to stand up, asking for the bathroom and to drink water. This was a difficult part and I didn't know how to manage it... To add a little more of challenge...the light went out! jiji... so we weren't able to play the song in the tape recorder... On the way I had to adjust this activity, we worked on target vocabulary "I'll hand out the books, raise your hand, open the page, look for this page", and I went table by table assessing... Then we gave out scissors (the teacher helped) to cut the parts of the story and make a short book which we stapled. The idea would have been to play the music and share their books on the carpet, but that was impossible. In this sense, I really feel that the activity was not as meaningful as I would have liked to. Also, I'm asked dearly to work with the resources offered bu the book, which I really feel and know they limit creativity... I'm trying to do my best, but once again I want to remark that I feel really alone, feedbacks are hard, no positive things are marked by the teacher, just the ones to improve...
I came out of this class with a bit of frustration...

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At first when I went out of this class I though, "it wasn't as good as the first one". My class is full of emerging situations. Managing 24 children is a really hard task... Talking about this with the headmistress and other teachers made me notice that they just agree about this. Anyway, I'm facing the challenge with all I have!
This class started with a beautiful circle time, where we sang happy birthday to a girl. Then we made our hello song, performing actions, and then asking some kids "can you...?" and revising the actions of the song. As a transition we sat on the floor singing another song and continued to fingerplay. Up to here they were fully engaged. I continued to take out my finger puppet and a red nose, and to describe the colours of the puppet. We played an activity with balls and we worked on colours. The attention by this time was hard to keep. They're a chatty group. I reflect that using L2 all the time is really difficult for me... This doesn't happen all the time, but sometimes it does. Concentration was really hard to keep this class at this particular point and by the way I noticed that a huge mistake (which then I had the feedback of the teacher) was that my flashcards for numbers were too tiny ! Thankfully the teacher out of the corner suggested me to work with bigger numbers that were sticked on the wall... After this we  changed the dynamic to work on a worksheet, colouring different figures which had numbers and if they cooloured all the figures of that number with a particular colour, a circus performer would appear.

The teacher was helping me pretty much, indicating me some strategies she used.
This part of working on the chairs and desks its being a challenge for me... The class gets really noisy.
I started saying the colour they had to paint the numbers, and they really enjoyed this part. They spent almost 25 minutes colouring. Unfortunately my cellphone wasn't able to record this part of the class (yes the first 30 minutes) due to memory problems.
They spent a great time and then I repeated lots of times "write your name on it", "hand it in", "sit on the carpet", and when we finished we sang our goodbye song and finished the class.
After this class I had my first feedback with the teacher. She told me she feels I'm doing good about the timing, but that I need to use bigger resources for example... Or making different activities where they can handle the resources. She marked me about the tiny flashcards, the tiny puppets... and so on. I feel she's a bit tough with me, but anyway it was a nice conversation.

I feel that I have to process what happened today to get some insights about how everything's going.

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The lesson was good. We made our routine, song, fingerplay and emotions activity. They sit in a circle and they respond very well to what they are already experiencing,  recognising very well the routine. This is really enjoyable for me, as I see them enjoy, sing, participate, respond, understand commands, and even remember the actions thay we did last class... After this routine part, we passed to a pretend game with costumes. We revised vocabulary from the unit and they remembered all. This was really  comforting and exciting for me. We played, it was a nice mess. It's important to remark here that once again, the teacher is very reluctant to let me manage the class and the kids as I want to, she imposes herself. She tries to direct the activity and starts trying to set the pace of the way she would do it. She screams and she imposes some way... She tells me what to do, and this gets me really nervous. I wanted to explain the task while they were all sitting on the carpet, but she told me no no, no make them sit right now... My mind gets blank in these moments... So,  we sang time for tidy up, and everybody sit down on the chairs. I gave them the worksheet to circle the circus performers they listened to.
The class finished, we sang our song and we said goodbye!

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This last lesson was really nice. I told the children this was our goodbye. We did our routine, and they were as messy as always! Lovely 24 kids :P
We played and closed our unit, and it was so comforting to hear them all singing, fingerplaying, remembering all the vocabulary seen, and to close, they made a marvellous collage.
It was an excellent, and exhausting, experience =)

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This was a beautiful lesson. At this point I'm starting to feel relaxed. The group responds very well to our routine. They know our song, they know what's coming and that makes them participate. I focused myself in speaking a lot of L2, and I'm satisfied with my improvement on that matter. It was the first time that I read them a story, "the colour monster", and as they had worked on it (the PEI of the school includes working on emotions with kinder, that's the reason why I chose the book and the topic) and they were really engaged.
We sang our hello song, we said hello to our puppet friends, we asked them "how are you?", and we submerged in the story. Then I made some drawings on the board, revising emotions and showing how I drew the colour monster. They worked on their sheets with coloured pencils and they all made beautiful drawings of different monsters representing how they felt today. I think this activity is great to get to knoe better the children and understand them. As a class of 24 kids, there are many situations, and working with emotions helps us understand what happens to them. They chose to draw themselves as a sad monster, or an angry one, or a happy or a calm one... That says pretty much about them and what happens or how they're managing their feelings.
It was a nice class, without shouting and we worked really nice.
This class I was monitored by the english coordinator of the area, because the previous teacher is on a medical license. I will finish my practicums with this new teacher. She didn't intervene on my lesson and that was great.

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After giving this lesson and talking for a while with Miss Nati (my co-trainer teacher), I gained some insights on some loose ends.

The class started with our routine, which by the way I can assure now that it's very effective. Children are singing and they really enjoy this part. It fully engages them and it's so comforting to see and listen to them after these few lessons how they are learning the song and also fingerplaying joyfully. I was thinking of taking the fingerplay, but I really doubt it now, It's something I would like to adjust (keeping it).
After this I had prepared an activity counting balloons and singing a song, which I presented with the guitar... This wasn't written in the lesson plan, I'm so sorry but I though it would add some engagement to the singing part. They all sang, and the activity was donde really well. Kids were engaged. I tried to use as much L2 as I could... Trying to explain most of all in English, but sometimes I needed to reinforce in L1, and then go back to L2. Lots of times we had to stop the activity to set behaviour guidelines... It's a fact that we have multiplicity of factors in our classroom, and that this group (quoting the teacher) "hasn't conquer yet behaviours that would be appropriate to have acquired by this time".
Taking turns, and respecting silence, as well as taking care of the mate's body are not strengths of this group. Anyway, we're working on that, and I am, as a practitioner, emphasizing on this important area of children's development.
Reflecting on all this, I will focus my learning aims of the following lesson plans to these fundamental tasks, which underpine L2 curriculum, but are totally required for a good working atmosphere.

After this first long part of the class, which took 30 minutes aproximately, we passed to the second stage, to work sitting on the chair and desks, and working with their books. This is the hardest part for me, as I'm not used to work this way... I loose children's attention, as the classroom is so big (8 or 9 mts long) and the desks are displayed all along the class.
The teacher told me that in this moment she changes her dynamic and she starts giving instructions to each table... It's almost impossible to get them making silence and explain what to do in the front... So I know now that I have to change this strategy and focus on tutored, guided and scaffolded by one by one explanation as I go on to pass on the groups. At first this idea sounded bad to me, but I'm asked to do it. Reading on Mohammed theories, and reading about pretended play and free play, I'm reflecting that once they've got the material on their desks, and they're fully engaged on the task, they have an opportunity to put in practice what they've learnt on the lessson.

We worked with a listening comprehension activity, pointing to the characters we had learnt, counting balloons, and then with an audio-file they were asked to repeat what they listen "acrobat, ringmaster, balloons, train, etc". In this part we had another emergent between kids and not respecting their bodies... So I had to mark this, and then when the lesson ended I spoke with the director.

Going back to the last minutes of our sitting task, we pointed out the target vocabulary on the book, and with an audiofile and tape recorder, they repeated: this was nice, they were doing it so well.
Something to point out about the co-trainer teacher is that she gets involved in the lesson more than I would like to, even though sometimes she's helpful, in this lesson she ended changing the direction of the last part... As she introduced the chorus of the storysong I would tell, we didn't have the time to sit on the carpet again and see the story, which I will do on the next class. We ended the lesson singing, saying goodbye as always.

To reflect, this plan had some "improvised changes", which were little and I think were appropriate. I couldn't stop the teacher when she played the song, and I just let it happen... It's a bit tough to follow the plan line by line, but it's really useful to use it as a map, follow directions and arrive to the place you want to arrive to. I think this was guaranteed, as well as the enjoyment and learning of the kids. They are motivated.

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Today the children where particularly messy and noisy. It was hard to focus for them. We started our routine normally, but after the fingerplay, it was hard to mantain their attention. When I tried to tell the story  of the monster again, fostering interaction and speaking, it was impossible. I had to show them the playdough that I had brought for them, and this strategy of anticipating them what's next, helped me to gather them in silence and tell them that only  if they listened to the story they would play with the playdough. They went to their tables and they spent a beautiful time experiencing, but the closure was hard, as the tables were very dirty, and they had to wash their hands. I'm sorry that we couldn't make a more meaningful closure, showing each other's creation between mates.
Most of them wanted to squish their creations, so they took home the piece of dough in a bag, not the creation itself.
I think they spent a great time and this helped a lot to the aims of the lesson: recognising emotions, naming them, and also reviewing colours and numbers.
It was a good lesson. We're almost at the end of this path.