Journal of practicum experience in K level

1. Trainee’s name: Ludmila Ruiz Díaz
Practicum level: Kindergarten
Group: Sala Celeste, 5-year-olds
Date: 4th May 2015
Lesson number: Observation N°1
During this observation I made first contact with the L1 teacher of this preschool class, and the
students per se. I did not know what to expect because I have had no experience with learners
this young before.
I wanted to focus principally on timing and transitions because even though I’ve studied how
children learn and what to expect from them, I thought I needed to see the lesson actually taking
place to help me have a glimpse of what will benefit these students and how to carry that out.
As far as timing in is concerned, students seemed rather distracted and some were not paying
attention to the teacher. I will definitely need to look for strategies for this trait, maintaining
everybody’s attention is not an easy task so I reckon the activities I design will have to be
engaging enough to keep students devoted to the task.
Comentario [1]: Was the class
conducted in L1?
Comentario [2]: Yes, it was. The
students did not receive any kind of
input in L2. The only instances where
the teacher asked for students to use
L2 was when she asked them 'Que
color es este?' while she was
distributing pencils for students to
colour a picture in their class' books.
Comentario [3]: What would be the
relationship between time and the lack
of attention ?
Comentario [4]: I relate lack of
attention to timing because the activity
that the teacher planned for the lesson
was too long; it basically required that
students colour a page of the text book
they use for 20 minutes. This is a group
of learners who consist mainly of boys,
and I believe that they could benefit
more from hands-on activities or tasks
that they find more significant in order
to feel more engaged in it.

2. Trainee’s name: Ludmila Ruiz Díaz
Practicum level: Kindergarten
Group: Sala Celeste, 5-year-olds
Date: 11th May 2015
Lesson number: 1
After two previous observations, I realised these students were not used to interacting with the
teacher or each other in L2. I was then determined to bring this to the classroom but also adding
a communicative element so that learners could use L2 meaningfully. In order to achieve this, I
decided together with their English teacher to attempt to set a routine where students could
predispose themselves for the English lesson; starting and finishing each class singing a song to
greet the teacher, using resources which are significant and appealing to the children and
challenging them to build up thinking skills according to Bloom’s taxonomy. During this first
lesson I think the use of pictures of Peppa Pig was a success in terms that these were appealing
to them thus making them feel engaged during the presentation and the activities that followed.
Regarding learners’ reaction to my teaching, activities and material; I think it was very positive.
Their reactions definitely exceeded my expectations because they could follow the lesson with
much more L2 input than they are used to, and they did this with pleasure. Students took part in
the activities proposed, especially the one where they needed to come to the board and point to
the pictures; at the moment of closing this activity there were still children eager to participate.
I reckon the most successful part of the lesson was when the students were actively involved;
they agreed to sing a song to greet the teacher and each other - something they had not done
before, according to the teacher in charge of the English lessons - they were engaged during the
presentation of the the topic ‘family’ because the resources (pictures of Peppa’s family) was
appealing to them, and they enjoyed the activity where they needed to come to the front of the
class. I would also add that the rapport I could establish with the learners was also favourable.
I believe the aspect I need to work in the most is classroom management; the class is large and
at times children were not engaged or interested in the activity and wandered around the
classroom or did not participate. This situation in particular, not being able to control their
behaviour, makes me feel nervous and this causes that I get stuck and find it difficult to use the
right strategy to ‘bring students back’ to the lesson.
Another aspect I think I need to revise is transitions; thinking back I remember passing from
one activity to the other rather abruptly. The closing of the lesson was also awkward, I wanted
the learners to say goodbye with a song but this time the participation was less enthusiastic;
there were students who, I think, did not realise the lesson had come to an end.
Thinking about the future lessons, I think I would keep working with the context established
since the learners are familiar with it so I will use this as an advantage. Needless to say, their
curiosity is a valuable asset so I think I will also find the ways to trigger it, as I did during this
class, in order to make the lessons interesting and significant to them.
Comentario [5]: Excellent ideas
Ludmila! These are essential
components of any lesson.
Comentario [6]: Motivation is also a
determining factor.
Comentario [7]: Great!
Comentario [8]: What strategies did
you try to implement? Had you done
any research about this issue?
Did you use any song or rhyme to settle
them?
Comentario [9]: How had you
planned your transitions? Connections
between activities and stages also need
careful planning.
Comentario [10]: When I was
planning this first lesson, I thought
praising and drawing students' attention
to the next activity would do; e.g. using
visual aid, telling them to look at the
pictures again. However, for the
following lessons I needed to change
this.
Comentario [11]: Good thinking!

3. All in all, I really enjoyed myself during this class and it was very reassuring to see that the
students also enjoyed it. I was very nervous because I had never taught very young learners, but
I am more than glad to have experienced it.
Trainee’s name: Ludmila Ruiz Díaz
Practicum level: Kindergarten
Group: Sala Celeste, 5-year-olds
Date: 12th May 2015
Lesson number: 2
For this second encounter I also centred my lesson around CLT. This time, I wanted to offer
different activities from the previous lessons not only for the sake of variety, but also to get to
know what works best for these particular learners. This proposal was based on my
observations; during both lessons the activities were the same so I reckoned these students are
not presented with a wide range of activities.
I resolved to incorporate the greeting chant again to start the lesson, and also to fulfill the aim of
building up a routine for the English class. I added a TPR activity where students were to repeat
commands and perform them under my guidance and then on their own. We kept working with
‘Family’ as the main topic, and I resorted to the same context (Peppa’s Family) to develop
another activity in which I changed the seating arrangement to sitting on the floor making a
circle and they played a game in order to develop their speaking skills. Last, I added a problem
solving activity where students played a memory game with cards.
My perceptions during this lessons were varied; first of all, I had trouble organising the opening
of the lesson. The children were distracted, and I could not use a suitable strategy to make them
realise that the lesson had begun. This problem repeated every time between activities, so the
transition from one activity to the other was not as smooth as I had planned. I needed to resort
to L1 many times to call the learners’ attention.
I believe the main cause of these inconveniences was that I paid too much attention to those
students who were not engaged in the activity trying to get them interested, and I left the ones
who did follow unattended. So the class was disorganised during the transition stages.
During the time the activities took place, once I could manage the class, the learners showed
interest and participated. These instances are the ones that I value as successful; even though
they were challenged with diversity of activities in the L2 lesson, they were able to keep up with
them.
I surely need to improve my classroom management techniques in order to make the transitions
in between activities more fluent; to let the learners know that we finished one and now it is
time to start another.
Comentario [12]: =)
Comentario [13]: Very good research
strategy!
Comentario [14]: Ludmila, consider
that it takes time for learners to learn
how to behave. This depends on many
internal and external factors.
Comentario [15]: Great!
Comentario [16]: What course of
action will you take in order to do so?
Comentario [17]: I was advised by
the K headmaster to just tell them what
I expected from them when I said the
transition marker in L1. For instance,
telling them 'when I say... I expect you
to sit and listen'. She told me this group
in particular had serious issues when it
came to listening to teachers: that I
should not feel disappointed because it
was a particular trait of this group of Ss.

4. I will not say I feel frustrated or that I failed in this lesson because there were effective and rich
moments during it, but I would have liked to resort to ways of arranging the situations in which
I felt I was losing control of the class.
Trainee’s name: Ludmila Ruiz Díaz
Practicum level: Kindergarten
Group: Sala Celeste, 5-year-olds
Date: 18th May 2015
Lesson number: 3
For lesson 3 I wanted to closure the topic ‘Family’ and move on to ‘Toys’ as smoothly as possible.
My intention was to offer activities which were a little bit more cognitively challenging in order
to help students build up thinking skills also during the L2 class, but respecting their level of
maturity.
For this class, I had handed the Spanish teacher notes to send to the students’ parents asking for
a family picture. I organised then an activity where students could talk meaningfully about their
families, showing the picture to their peers, using the structure we have seen ‘This is my...’
In order to start with the topic Toys, I planned to take advantage of Peppa Pig’s theme since it
proved to be engaging and appealing to the learners. As a visual aid, I took a picture of Peppa
and George playing in their bedroom with their toys to bridge the topics, I also planned to show
students real toys that belonged to these two characters, to make the experience more concrete.
Finally, students were to do a matching exercise where they connected Peppa’s and George’s
toys according to what we had done previously.
However, I could not carry the lesson out as I had expected. The activity in which students
worked with the pictures and glued it on a template took too much time, adding a fact that I had
not taken into account: after working with glue, or anything that make their hands dirty,
students are used to washing their hands. This behaviour is deeply rooted because it is part of
the teacher’s aims over the years, and I could not foresee this beforehand nor was I able to
control the time they took for this task. So while some students were washing their hands, I
asked other learners who had not participated to show me their pictures and tell me about their
family. Formal presentation of the topic Toys did not take place as a result of this situation.
Students’ reaction to working with material that were theirs was very welcomed; everybody
wanted to share information about their families. I found this very rewarding because many of
them were actually willing to use L2 for this purpose; those who were more reluctant to speak
were able to point to their family member when I asked ‘Who’s your/mother?’. Some students
who had not brought the picture were to draw it and they also talked to me about their families.
I think this was the most successful part of the lesson because students were able to
communicate in a significant way.
As the previous lessons I had encountered difficulties in marking transitions, I have decided to
employ the same transition marker in order to make students settle. Again, it was hard work to
draw everybody’s attention; but I could notice this time that noise was more part of the work
they were doing than part of distraction or disengagement. However, I still need to work on my
classroom management strategies.
Comentario [18]: This experience,
and your reflections, are part of the
learning process. :)
Comentario [19]: Fantastic ideas! A
meaningful context and realia.
Comentario [20]: Wonderful! If they
were not ready to produce, they were
still able to understand the L2 and to
communicate.
Comentario [21]: What did it consist
in?

5. Trainee’s name: Ludmila Ruiz Díaz
Practicum level: Kindergarten
Group: Sala Celeste, 5-year-olds
Date: 19th May 2015
Lesson number: 4
As I had not fulfilled my objectives for the previous lesson, I resolved to have a word with the L2
teacher to define what to do next. We agreed to go on with what I had planned for the fourth
lesson and she would take care of the presentation of ‘Toys’ using the procedure and activity that
were in my lesson plan.
So for the 4th lesson I intended to involve learners in storytelling because it is a meaningful
activity and it requires deep involvement on the part of the learners. I planned to show them two
minutes of a Peppa Pig’s episode where Peppa’s brother’s toy (a dinosaur) is broken and his
parents go to the shop to buy a new one; this would also contribute to develop their listening
skills. I prepared pictures to pre teach vocabulary learners would need to recognise from the
video, I arranged a schedule to stop the projection at key moments so that I could check
comprehension and last; I organised a set of pictures for students to put in order after watching
the episode and then retell the story.
Once again, drawing the attention of the learners was a difficult task. I had decided to establish
some ground rules, so I told them beforehand what I expected them to do when I employed the
chant I use as a transition marker.
Pre Teaching the vocabulary from the video was not as simple as I thought due to the
inconvenience that I could not draw everybody’s attention; it took me a little more time than
planned but I showed the pictures desk by desk asking Ss to look at the pictures, tell me what
they see and repeat.
I think the biggest surprise I had during this lesson was while I played the episode; there were
some students who were not interested in the video at all so instead they kept talking or fighting.
Honestly, I had thought this activity would keep their attention focused on the story and
moreover; that they would feel motivated to follow it. It had nothing to do with the fact that
some learners knew what the episode was about; those ones showed more involvement in the
story than the ones who claimed had not watched it before.
I reckon the most successful parts of the lesson were first of all, that I did not need to encourage
students to sing the ‘Hello’ song to greet me, they did this willingfully and sang with me instead
of repeating the stanzas after me. Personally, this was gratifying and it gave me a sense of
achievement! Secondly, despite facing difficulties in calling learners’ attention to the video, they
could work perfectly putting the pictures in order so I could check that they had understood the
events in the story. All five groups but one could accomplish this activity; the group which could
not do it was because they were playing or fighting for the pictures. I took care of this last group
for a longer period of time but I was not able to have them organise the events in order; even
though they knew what the activity was about they were reluctant to carry it out. Retelling was
also a success, some students resorted to L1 as I had expected but others were willing to use at
least one word in L2 (e.g. Mr Dinosaur or garden).
Comentario [22]: Did you resort to
the L1 to do so? How did students
react?
Comentario [23]: Yes, but for this
time only. I asked Ss to repeat the
chant with me so that everyone would
become familiar with it.
Comentario [24]: Was this difficulty
related to the seating arrangement?
What do you think?
Comentario [25]: I wanted the Ss to
sit in a semicircle, but I had
experienced this arrangement before in
Lesson 2 and setting the mood had
been challenging. Besides, I was also
not possible to sit them that way
because of the location of the projector:
there was not enough space.
Comentario [26]: Why do you think
they were not engaged?
Comentario [27]: Honestly, I cannot
think of a reason. The ones who were
not involved were mainly those who
had not shown any kind of involvement
during the previous lesson.
Comentario [28]: Indeed!
Comentario [29]: Were they given
the pictures while watching the video?
Comentario [30]: No, the pictures
were distributed after watching it.
Comentario [31]: Retelling is indeed
a challenging task for a group that are
not used to being exposed to the L2.

6. I had my reservations regarding the performance of these learners because their L2 classes were
reduced to colouring pictures from the book with no L2 input whatsoever, but I think the most
valuable assets of this experience is that they were able to incorporate a small routine in a very
short period of time, that they were involved in activities that required more concentration than
they are used to in the L2 class and they were successful in performing them. For my part, it was
a wonderful experience that also helped me lose certain preconceived idea I had I was not able
to deal with so young learners. Comentario [32]: Why wouldn't you,
Ludmila?
How has this experience contributed to
your present and future development?
Congratulations on your work!
Way to go!
Cecilia