Changes and reflection after implementation

Session 1:

The letter of Shrek was very successful; actually, it caught children’s attention and arose their motivation.

The idea of revising food vocabulary at the same time that some new words are introduced by drawing on the blackboard was very successful; children paid attention and participated in a very enthusiastic way. Nevertheless, the activity took too much time. After this one, I changed my mind and, instead of just thinking of dishes for Shrek, I decided to "prepare a menu" all together for Shrek for the seven days of the week due to that they have studied them in the topic before. A language is not learnt by "parts" so I decided that this could be a small good opportunity for giving sense to what they know and revising more than food.

Session 2:

This session was best organized in the implementation because the creation of the list of ingredients needed more time. However, the session was poor. The beginning of the session, dividing the class into six groups, telling what the session is about and giving the material was fine. The presentations of the lists of ingredients were also fine but the part where they had to prepare that list in groups was what I think a failure. I was wrong because only one person of the group had to write and the others did not get involved or got bored. In addition to that, the list of ingredients of some dishes was very obvious and short and others were more difficult (paella) and some groups finished in ten minutes and others needed twenty. I thought of a solution and one was that all of them had to write a list, but I thought that it was not real workgroup so I saw a group of children who were rotating the list. I was quite surprised because they were not supposed to do it, only the “list responsible” had to, but they said that all of them wanted to participate. My last conclusion is that this could be the right way to work in a cooperative way doing this task.

Session 3:

During the implementation of this session I had a serious problem. I had planned a class of one hour, but that day it was only 45 minutes with split group. Nevertheless, I thought I could manage to do a more participative class due to the low number of students (12).

Consequently, I thought I could tell them in a quick and clear way what the role play was about and prepare in three groups a mini-role play with fruits and other toys from the English classroom in order to let them understand and practice what they will have to do in the next session. Honestly, the change was really good and the evidence is that I could do this with a group of third graders but with the other one I couldn’t and I did it exactly as it was planned. With the group in which I had to change my planning, everything was successful but with the other one it was very chaotic.

Session 4:

This session needs more introduction than what I thought. This is due to that students are not used to this way of working, and they have to understand exactly what the role play is about, which is a complex activity (coupons, language, list of ingredients, fake money…), and the peer assessment with the comprehension activity, that has to be done at the same time than the role play.

As a result, I also observed that due to the increase of time for the explanation and the performance of the six role plays there is not enough time at all in just one session. Consequently it has to be done in two sessions, which is perfect because you do not have to do things quickly and students understand everything better.

Session 5:

The beginning of this session had to be finishing the role plays of the last session and then everything could be normal except that it had to be shorter and the part where I wanted to talk to them and make them reflect and think of what they had learnt had to be quite short (5 minutes). It is obvious that the planning was better than the implementation in that case but it was because of the timing of session four. This teaching sequence should have six sessions, with a couple of sessions to do the role plays and the letter and a last one for teamwork assessment, self assessment (which is not included and I would like to do it) and reflection time.