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*What teaching strategies did you use? Which ones were effective? Why / Why not?

One of the strategies I wanted to apply from the very beginning was making the classroom speaking and listening experience as authentic as possible.

After the observation period, I was going on a trip to Europe, so I told the kids about it and that I was going to be back after that. The idea was to raise their curiosity and to use the trip thing as a tool to encourage authentic listening and speaking activities. I could do so, indeed. We had to start a new unit in their coursebook and its title was “Around the world”, pretty apposite. I took advantage of that context and my recent experience to bring photos of my holidays to show the kids and introduce the new vocabulary about countries and continents. I asked them to guess where the photos had been taken and then to point the countries on a poster of a world map. We talked about those countries, the language people speak there, typical food, famous places and sights,etc. Actually, we had a very entertaining conversation and it was highly effective as students felt excited about my experience and they even felt motivated to ask me questions about the trip. I admit I didn´t need to encourage them to do so at all! The interaction around an authentic experience was extremely useful to work on students’ speaking and listening skills and also to awaken their inner curiosity. I really enjoyed this first lesson.

*How did the students react to your teaching, to the activities and the materials? How did they react to the lesson?

Students participated actively during the whole lesson. They were very enthusiastic when I showed them my photos and wanted to know more about the trip. At the same time, they related all the information I was giving them to their previous knowledge about those places. So, for example, when we talked about Italy and they saw the photo of the Coliseum, they came up with stories as regards Gladiators. One of them told me that he had gone to an Italian school when he was little but that he couldn´t speak Italian.

Their reaction to the lesson and to the activities I proposed for this lesson was very positive. In addition, I observed that they felt comfortable with me and also free to ask me about my experience.

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*What do you find useful of this lesson that will help you plan the next one?

I prepared a speaking game called “Guess the country” to revise the vocabulary from the previous lesson. The idea was to give students clues using the information about the countries we had been discussing about in Lesson 1 and ask them to guess the country. I noticed that students get really involved in these kinds of guessing activities and that this interaction gives me the opportunity to encourage speaking in a fun way while we revise the vocabulary from the previous class. I think it will be a good idea to include guessing games in future lessons.

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*Video segment and metaphor to describe that moment.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1m6jlURgacxzigFwyL_ECgyxCicBahwPe

This lesson truly reminded me the image of a family, a quite big one! Actually, I think of the classroom as our home and of all of us as members of the family. I strongly believe that this lesson showed how relaxed we all feel during the classes and how each member contributes to the interactions and even to problem solving according to their different abilities and skills. That is what a family do: they all work collaboratively using their skills and experience in order to get better results which will benefit all of them.
The video segment shows this relationship clearly. During the game in which they had to put themselves into the correct position to form sentences, they all used their varied skills, depending on their personalities, to solve the problem. There was always a leader but all the members of the group tried to contribute to the discussion. Not only the memebers of the group who was performing the activity but also the rest of the students would comment on how they were doing!

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*What aspects of the lesson do you consider successful?

First, I think that the warm-up activity (which was a guessing game again using a piece of music) was a successful exercise to catch students´ attention and to create a relaxing atmosphere prior to start working on grammar which sometimes could be a bit boring for students.

Secondly, I think that it was a good choice to practise the grammar item (present simple tense) with the game of the colour balls. At this starting point, I believe it was useful to give students options or ideas, in a visual way,  to write their sentences. It also gave me the opportunity to revise the vocabulary we had been learning. Finally, it was interesting to read students´original and creative statements.

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*What aspects of the lesson require change / improvement?
I guess that I will need to check timing more carefully, especially for the production activities. Although they are a very dynamic group and they keep on working the whole lesson, they usually come up with a lot of questions and doubts during those tasks and that is a great characterictic of this group I want to take advantage of. They are not afraid of asking and most of them have a very creative mind´s eye. So, I believe we should have (or at least I should anticipate to have) some extra minutes to address those enriching debates without having to rush.

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*PHOTO
As you can see, this photo shows students as they were finishing the  design of their Profile Cards before presenting them. Kids really enjoyed the activity and came up with nothing but very original and, some of them, complex ideas they wanted to share. For example, one of them explained to me that  "although he attended an Italian school when he was younger, he couldn´t speak Italian" and he wanted to add that to his Profile Card! .... Their comments surprised me indeed!

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*QUOTATION
"Be stubborn about your goals and flexible about your methods"
I remember when I started teaching, many years ago, I used to be a bit narrow-minded when applying lesson plans. I mean, I would stick to what I had planned for the class as to reach to the goal for that lesson. In a few words, I was kind of "stubborn" about the planning and the methods. However, when putting a lesson plan into practice we should be flexible. Sometimes an activity may require modification or even more time to be performed, so flexibility is needed in order to enrich the task or in order not to "put the momentum out".
I started this lesson with a "Guess who" game so as to revise the Present Simple tense and some vocabulary. The idea was to devote just 10 minutes to that stage of the lesson. However, students were so engaged in the activity, they even started sharing more information about the famous people we were talking about that I had to be flexible and take some more minutes for that activity.Of course, due to that, we couldn´t finish the development activity that was planned for that class but I strongly believe it wasn´t a waste of time but a way to establish a nice mindset to start their production work.

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*Choose a moment that was important for the students during the lesson.
One of the most important moments for students was during this last lesson. The previous lesson, students started designing a Profile Card about themselves writing about some personal information such as the language they speak, where they live and their likes and dislikes. Some of them finished it during the lesson number 5 and could read their works aloud. However, there were still some left. Opposite to what students normally want to do (or don´t want to do in this case), ALL of them were eager to come to the front of the board and share their cards. It really surprised me because I guess it meant they felt comfortable and free to express themselves in front of me and their classmates. They were also very interested in their mates´works adding comments or questions to their presentations. I think it was the best "end of my practicum period" I could have. Therefore, this last lesson includes MY most important moment of the whole period ...

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*My important moment
As I mentioned before, this last lesson was greatly important itself. Firstly because the Profile Card presentation was a perfect closure for the practicum period and we all felt really involved in the activity. However, the farewell was my most important moment as I got a very nice feedback, not only from the teacher but also from the kids. We already know that kids are extremely honest: if they like something, they will say it, and if they don´t, they will say it too.... They sang a song to say goodbye and they were all very thankful and asked me when they were going to see me again ..... Of course it made me feel emotional but at the same time fulfilled!