The implementation of the teaching unit was not always as expected. It was hard to deal with students who are not used to cooperate whatsoever. As an inexperienced teacher I found myself in a desperate situation when I did not know how to manage kids not being able to collaborate among them. Nonetheless, I did managed to work things out and eventually they created working bonds and ended up working as teams. This was achieved with a lot of patience and trust projected over the kids, as well as creating an atmosphere that was inviting and relaxing. Sometimes we had background music, and students could pick the song they wanted to listen if they behaved properly.

 

As far as results is concerned, I believe that the teaching unit was a success, students loved getting out of the comfort zone that the usual curricular book implies and they found themselves enjoying while learning. They regarded the tasks as duties and they seemed happy of being given such responsibility and the products of their work were, generally, very original and thorough. As a teacher, it was very enriching and fulfilling to see students working hard, encouraging their team to get things going and organising themselves without any adult involved.  In my opinion, they are ever given such responsibility and they appreciated this chance and, most importantly, they made the most of it.

 

As a teacher, though, there are many things to be improved being time organisation the main one. Some lessons I had planned had to be prolonged as just one hour was not enough. At some points I found this quite overwhelming as I kind of prioritised finish the Teaching Unit over the quality of the lessons. But I eventually learnt that it was fine and that I had to give them more time and adapt to them which would lead to a better learning and more quality productions.

Regarding class managed, as mentioned above, it must be said that there were some tough moments in which I found myself a  bit lost. Some students even refused to work in groups and I ended up giving in and letting them do what their wanted. Now that it is done, I know it was not the right thing to do and I should have worked on those problems and try to solve them instead of giving up so fast.

 

Another thing that should be mentioned is that given the fact that English was the vehicular language instead of the object of language as usual, students did not regard it as important. Even though they did make the effort to use English and they did a great job, they did not pay attention to the scaffolding given and the material was regarded as secondary. Probably as a teacher I could has pointed out the importance of such grammar and structured for the task and give them tools on how to take advantage of the material given.

 

The dynamic to arrange group was considered really original and fun for students and they enjoyed it a lot. However, some groups ended up exchanging pieces of the puzzle and arranging their own groups. This implied that some groups where very imbalances and some of the most disruptive students were all gathered together. This situation lead me to think that the teacher making the groups would have been a better idea so as to avoid groups where other students faced many challenges.

 

All in all I believe that with this project I had the opportunity to put into practice a lot of the theory learnt during the last 4 years and it was the first chance for me to implement a whole project in an actual class since the previous one belonged to the P.E curricular area. I enjoyed it as much as students seemed to enjoy it and it was a very creative project from which we all learnt so much. The teacher was rather a facilitator and the representative another country just like them and this enabled them to experiment and have a free range to carry out their work.

 

Last, but not least, it is worth to mention that the passport which was thought to be a material around which all other activities evolved ended up being a secondary support. If I was to implement this teaching unit again I would have students fill in the passport first and later on create their own products. Once they had created the poster or triptych it was quite useless and boring for them to fill in the passport and ended up being a tedious chore instead of a meaningful and fun activity. However, they all loved the passport and the fact that it was their own and thoroughly differed from all the material they are used to which tends to consist on books and worksheets.