PRACTICUM V
Co-teaching report
The outcome of this task was rather positive. Personally, it was very enriching to be able to see my peer teach and cooperate so as to build a better teaching. I appreciated the fact that some things I was missing out, she was able to notice and intervened in order to create the best learning environment possible.
There is no doubt that when teaching with someone else, both of you are bound to adapt to each other and sometimes you may even have to give up on an idea you strongly believed in. This happened in our case, but I believe that we were also subjected to the supervision of your school tutors who also had a say in all we did, somehow we felt as if it was not just the two of us and we both agree that had it been just us two, things would have turned out differently. However, it was truly a great opportunity to see what collaborating with another teacher actually implies, all the discussion that is to be held, the decisions that should be taken and all the hard work that should be carried out among others. Another thing worth mentioning is the fact that it being a single session was quite challenging as it would stop the pace of each school’s lessons and it had to be straightforward enough to be started and finished in a single session. I believe that our final choice was very appropriate as it is suitable for any kind of context and it is simple enough to be held in just one hour (even 45 minutes).
Undoubtedly, having two teachers supervising the lesson was very helpful as we had someone else to rely on and with whom to share the attention given to students. This allowed each teacher to spend more time attending students and solving any problems that arose.
In one of the schools, we had the chance to carry out the lesson in the gym and, therefore, the dynamic was much more active and kids seemed to enjoy learning English in a different environment and in a whole different way. Using material that is usually used in P.E lessons was also key to make the dynamic much more appealing as it was very game-like.
On the other hand, and so as to please some requirements of one of the school tutors, one of the sessions was held in the usual classroom and, obviously, some changes were done. In the classroom, we had the chance to include technology support such as Prezi presentations, online chronometer to track the timing and classroom management apps such as Class Dojo. Logically both situations, in the gym and in the classroom, offered different resources to be used and the pace of the dynamic turned out to be different in each lesson given the classroom arrangement.
Nonetheless, we do not regret any of the steps we have taken along this task and we strongly believe we did a good job and the results met the goals we set at the beginning.