"Here and now" as a teacher

- What was useful, what wasn’t so useful in terms of your classroom practice?

Sincerely, at the beginning of the semester my knowledge about approaches was not the best. Nowadays, after the lectures, the activities I have designed and the texts I have read I have not only learnt about new strategies and their theoretical foundation but also I have been applying them at school and analyzing what works and what it does not and how to improve them.

I would never thought about leaving my students to speak aloud at the same time during classes. I was always concerned about what other teachers and coordinators would think about the noise. In that sense, I would like to highlight a point that I have applied during the semester which is to let my students speak aloud, despite the noise and the “mess” that they could create.

From this course, I learnt to try new things and encourage my students and myself to different activities. They are able to follow new instructions and it motivates them. At the end, I am investigating what types of activities do work out with my students and which one do not.

I do not have a negative comment.

- What things you enjoyed/didn’t enjoy about the sessions

I enjoyed reading in class all together and talking about the article/ text immediately. When we read at home there are few things which we forget, therefore it was helpful to reflect about them during classes.

At the beginning I didn´t know what the aim of the course was, so I felt a bit lost. I think what happened was because of the lack of knowledge we had before starting the semester.

- What you think would improve this module and why.

Doing the presentations is very useful, but while my classmates presented each approach it would be better to hand in something written (a summary) in order to have the main ideas of each one.