The co-teaching activity has been a challenging task, since it was difficult to create just one session that could be carried out in two different schools where the topics that had to be approached were really different. However, it was possible to find the way to relate our interventions and develop the workshops created successfully. This was mainly possible, thanks to the collaboration and the good understanding of both student teachers during the process. For this reason, I believe my partner’s performance was great and below there can be found a qualitative reflection of her role in the co-teaching activity.
It is important to mention that when going to my partner’s school I did not know the students, what made the implementation challenging. However, the advice about pupils behaviour given was useful to approach the session. This is an important aspect I would like to highlight, the students’ understanding and contextualization she made for the session to develop correctly. The activities prepared were based on content related to the teaching unit she had prepared for her individual intervention. For this reason, the activities were aimed to reinforce or develop those skills which were not much present before, such as speaking skills. Therefore, the intention was to work on gender inequalities using dynamic activities. The proposal my partner suggested using the activities we have thought about was very well adjusted to all the needs and elements previously commented.
During the whole co-teaching activity, she was very flexible. This means, she was opened to do any kind of activity and to prepare any material for both implementations, even whether it was in her school or not. This is important to take into account, considering that this attitude has allowed us face the challenge of creating two different co-teaching lessons. Moreover, she has shown group work and cooperation skills, which is important in this kind of teaching. For example, when preparing materials for both schools or when introducing explanations in her not internship school lesson. An example of her commitment was observable when introducing herself to students. She knew the relationship with students is important when teaching and, since she wanted to treat students personally, she asked them their names at the beginning of the lesson and during it to reach a closer environment. Her interventions when explaining grammar aspects when students asked was grateful because she exemplified what I was saying, making students better understand the concepts.
All in all, if I had to summarise her strengths in the co-teaching activity I would say she was very adaptable, interested in students, participative and supportive.
Although my partner’s attitude and help has been excellent during the implementation of the co-teaching session, I would like to mention some tips for her to improve as a future educator. As I said, I consider there are more strengths than weaknesses to highlight, but something I consider important as a teacher is the assessment. Even more regarding English teachers, who have not much time to do it. In this implementation there were three items in her school and one of them was based on speaking skills, which was the performance of the slogan. I believe it could be much better to ask students to create a short advertisement, since there would be much more to assess or to observe, such as writing skills and all members of the group speaking skills. Otherwise, just the pronunciation of the member reading can be assessed.
Another aspect I would highlight is timing. Of course, she knew here class better than I did, however she wanted to add an introductory activity apart from the ones we decided to talk about a film they were going through. I believe it was hard to adjust the lesson to the time we had because she had planned many things to do. As an improvement, I would suggest here integrating the introduction and the first activity. For example, instead of playing taboo students could have discussed in pair or threes different advertisements from the fifties and from nowadays. That way, advertisements analysis and promoting the use of English would have been done in the same activity and some time could have been saved.
Finally, in my opinion that is something teacher learn with experience and I believe it is something I need to improve too, which is classroom management. Students were working in groups and sometimes catching their attention back was difficult. Since they were going through a film during the year and it was also part of the co-teaching session, a nice way of telling students it was time to listen was by playing ten seconds of the film’s soundtrack. This is a simple way of highlighting the end of the group work and opening the whole class discussion or the teachers explanation.
In general, I would say her performance in the co-teaching activity was great and very useful to develop such dynamics.