Reflections

Reflection 1:

As Practice VI is focused on planning, it was not a surprise that the first partial was related to that. In trios we had to complete a TBL lesson plan keeping in mind the three main steps said by Willis, J. (1996) in his book "A framework for Task-Based Learning" which are:

• Pre-Task
• Task cycle
• Language Focus

I did this partial with my classmates Noemi Gaete and Niria Rojas and it was excellent working with them. We had to read about TBL because it was something new for all of us, but it was easy to understand. Something that called my attention it was that TBL approach works well with real beginners and students will learn by doing, because learning is part of the task itself.

Planning a class has been always hard for me. However, as we investigate and read the text it was easy to complete and identify which part of the Unit should be Pre-Task, task cycle and so on.

As we choose a 5th básico we had to do a lot of research related to the learning objetives, the contents but up to this point we are familiarize with those platforms.

Knowing how to do a clase based on the TBL approach was something really useful as a future teacher!

Reflection 3:

The creation of an English teaching kit was a total new experience for most of us. However, I've been working with teams my whole life as a student, so that was not a problem. Práctica VI as every practica course is divided into two main categories: Teorical and practical. During this semester he have been studying different contents related to what we are supossed to learn through the semester. Nonetheless, as I had mentioned before, due to COVID-19 we were not able to have the practical part, which is kind of sad, because the whole point of that part, is the interaction with my students and my life as a teacher.

The English teaching kit replaced the practical part, but it was good at the same time because we have to put into practice everything we have learned so far. It took us some time to get organized as a group, and to understand the objectives of this activity, but at the end we were able to achieve every point of the KIT. Every meeting that we had with the teacher in charge of this task (Ms. Loreto) was absolutely helpful, because she was all the time trying to answering the different questions we had.

It was a new experience, at times difficult, but at the same time we were able to identify new resourses and activities to use with our students in a near future.

Final reflection:

Every day I'm more sure that being a teacher involves plenty of hard work. You not only concern about the contents, but also what is the most effective learning strategy for my students, how many of my students have the appropiate materials to learn, are they having the appropiate environment to learn, and so on.

With Práctica VI I realized that planning involves going beyond the content. I need to consider every aspect of my students so that I can have an effective learning process. There are different alternatives to assess my students during the class period and that is something really useful as a teacher. There is a formal way to asses my students but also, an informal one which is really important because I can be checking constantly the performance of my future students.

Despite that this semester I've learned new things, regarding to ways of testing, assesing, learning and so on I still miss my school practice. Living the experience in a school help me not only to be more empowered with my rol as a teacher, but also knowing how to deal with every kind of student.