Lylia Schoepp

Observation Reflection 9
11/21/17
Reflection of Seor (one of my old Spanish Teachers)

I was able to observe Seor teach two Spanish 2 classes. He was my old High school

Spanish teacher, I had him for 3 years of Spanish, and he is definitely one of the reasons that I

am going to be a Spanish teacher. I always remembered him as a great teacher who engaged

students in the language and throughout all of class, and I was so happy to see that when I

observed him.

I was happy to be able to observe a teacher who taught 90% in Spanish (I would say just

about) and only 10% in English. He only used English when clarifying unknown words, and the

rest of the class, he spoke Spanish, and encouraged students to speak Spanish as well. Students

did speak English to each other a little to clarify their own misunderstandings and in transitions,

but otherwise they were engaged in Spanish.

They started out the class in Spanish right away by discussing any plans for the holiday

weekend. Students told their partners in Spanish 4 things that they were going to do over the

weekend. Prior to this, the students were given the correct grammar form to use while talking

about future plans. The students were given a few minutes to talk in partners, then chose the

most interesting of their statements to share out to the whole class. Students used the

correct grammar form and did not seem nervous to speak.

The students then gave short presentations about their childhood, using preterit and

imperfect verb conjugations. They made PowerPoint slides (they were about 4 slides each) and

students would go up to the front of the class and basically read their sentences off of their

slides. It took about 1-2 minutes per student, which is a short amount of time for a

presentation, but they were pretty informal and good practice with speaking. Students also
Lylia Schoepp
Observation Reflection 9
11/21/17
were told they had to listen to their peers, and they followed this instruction well. It was a

good opportunity for them to hear one another speak and hear the words spoken, even if it

wasnt by a native speaker (except for 2-3).

After this, the students did a short activity with unscrambling sentences. They were

given a sheet of paper with 7 sentences on it, that had preterit and imperfect, and some of the

chapter vocabulary. They could work alone or in pairs to unscramble the sentences and rewrite

them out. They then went through them as a class and Seor asked for volunteers to read the

sentences out loud after they unscrambled them. Before reading them as a whole class,

students did get a chance to run through them in pairs quickly after writing them. If a student

had a sentence incorrect, Seor would ask either or questions to find the right answer (ex:

Should ______ go in front or behind of _______?), then ask the same student to repeat the

sentence the correct way. He himself would then read the sentence and then say it in English

so that students would hear it again and what it means.

After this activity, students were allowed to get up and move around, into different

partner groups than the people who sit by them, if they chose to. Seor passed out short

chapter books that they have been working on reading. I am unsure if this was an authentic

text or something created specifically for school use. He then asked me to read the first two

pages of the chapter that they were going to be reading. After this, he asked students to recall

what I had just read. They then worked in their groups to read two more pages in Spanish out

loud, and write a short three sentence summary of the two pages, in English. As this is only

Spanish 2 I thought that this was a really good idea, because they could focus on actually

picking out the ideas and not trying how to figure out how to write their summary in Spanish.
Lylia Schoepp
Observation Reflection 9
11/21/17
Then they went through their summaries in front of the class, and worked together as a class to

put together what had happened so far in the chapter. At the very end of class, the students

played Kahoot, and were able to move around the classroom to sit by their friends and have fun

with the activity!

It was strange for me to be on the other side in Seors classroom, and be an assistant

and a learner in a different way than I was used to. But I embraced this feeling and learned as

much as I could from him. I got to see how a classroom where the teacher speaks 90% in the

target language works, and learn how he uses his classroom for movement, and how he uses

his body language and own movement and involvement in the language to engage his students.

He even made me a list of strategies he uses for teaching grammar and vocabulary in the

classroom that I could take with to use in my own planning, which I loved!