Primary level

The Institution:

The private school "Nuestra Señora de la Misericordia" from Casilda is a respected and recognized institution with the aim of showing the Divine Kingdom of Mercy. With this style of education, the institution has 105 years of experience leaving footprints in the city: in the lives of their students, former students and their sons.

The institution is a congregational school of "Las Hijas de Nuestra Señora de la Misericordia" which belongs to the religious province of Rosario. Its goal is to promote the full realization of the person according to God's plan.

With regard to the educational proposal, the school is committed to the ideology of "Nuestra Señora de la Misericordia", interested in humanizing, predisposed to continuous updating, open to dialogue with the family, and creative and innovative.

Since I could not teach in a place which I do not known because I must respect certain rules and ideologies, I tried to know the institution in order to promote learning according to its style of training. This helped me put myself in the place where I will make observations and practices, and to feel part of the teaching team, knowing I am able to contribute with my actions to its students' education.

This is a brief description of the group:

Valdez diagnostico de grupo - nivel primario - a from Ivon Juani Spiller

These are my lesson plans:

Tpd valdez-lesson plan primary 1 from Ivon Juani Spiller

Tpd valdez-lesson plan primary 2 from Ivon Juani Spiller

Tpd valdez-lesson plan primary 3 from Ivon Juani Spiller

Tpd valdez-lesson plan primary 4 from Ivon Juani Spiller

Tpd valdez-lesson plan primary 5 from Ivon Juani Spiller

Tpd valdez-lesson plan primary 6 from IvonTPD2015

And this is the journal:

Valdez primary journal from Ivon Juani Spiller

Personal evaluation about this period:

In this second level of my practicum, I worked with students of 3^rd grade from “Nuestra Señora de la Misericordia” school.

In this report, I hope to think about my own practicum retrospectively and objectively in order to evaluate it and get to know my weaknesses and strengths.

In order to do this, I will follow the adapted text “Dimensions of Reflective Learning” by Karen arnstable (2009): I will recall the original aims in order to check whether they were reached or not, I will think about how significant activities were for the students, I will try to be aware not only of other’s points of view but also of my emotions and feelings about this teaching experience, and I will think about how this experience could help me improve.

Consequently, in this personal evaluation I present both successes and failures which appeared during the teaching experience process and how they affected it, in order to take full advantage of this self-assessment to help me to improve.

Thinking back about my practicum in the primary school, I wondered whether the Natural Approach to the language was an appropriate approach for these young learners. According to the group dynamic I observed before planning my lessons for them, these children needed more exposure to the language in order to use it to express themselves. They also were used to following a coursebook under the teacher’s guidance, so most of the times there wasn’t any transition between activities. Then, I think the selection of the approach and of the PPP method of organization were suitable.

Thinking forward about what changes I would make if I had to develop this practice again, I can’t help remembering the students complaining about not understanding a word I said. I think they must have felt so frustrated and impatient because they weren’t used to listening to the target language that much, that they didn’t even realize I was gesturing and miming to help them understand. What I would do differently is to tell them beforehand how we were going to work: explain to them I would use English but also Spanish when needed, and that I would gesture and mime to help comprehension, as if it was a challenging game for them. I think that way they wouldn’t have been so anxious. In spite of that, as time went by, students became more and more confident.

When thinking inward I have to confess that I felt between a rock and a hard place most of the time because of the little flexibility I encountered regarding activities. Nevertheless, it was an enriching experience and I’m satisfied with the way I delivered the lessons since I think I could manage to keep a balance between the course teacher’s requirements and what I thought it was the best for the learners.

Lastly, thinking outward and reflecting on the world around us, I want to say that although I’m sure I made several mistakes, reflecting about them is to take a first step towards improvement.

During this period I met a new group of students who were less used to communicating in English than I thought they would, and a teacher who relied too much in the coursebook. However, little by little students felt more and more confident about working with different activities and were able to produce some output.

I think that if I had spent more time with this group, I would have seen more progress on their part. Therefore, my conclusion is that students need more input in the target language in order to take full advantage of the Natural Approach.