Lylia Schoepp

Teaching Reflection 2
For this lesson, I was teaching about the cultural aspects of Barcelona to my college

peers. This lesson met two of the ACTFL 5 Cs standards: Relating Cultural Practices to

Perspectives, and Interpretive Communication. I think it also could have met interpersonal and

presentational communication if students were actually using the language (they didnt exactly,

because this wasnt in a Spanish class, just an education sequence course where I had to do a

peer teaching showing culturally relevant teaching). Students watched a video on castellers,

and then did small group investigations on their computers of the cultural aspect on the card

provided to them. They had to find the information to answer the questions about the aspect

that I provided for them. I ran out of time, but if I was able to finish the lesson, they also would

have shared out what they learned to the class and then related what they learned to their own

funds of knowledge. I was well prepared, as I had the cards for them with the questions and

slides that also had pictures to match up what they found.

We had a limit of about 15 minutes for this teaching, and I think I would have just about

met this with what I had planned, but I didnt even get 15 minutes to do my teaching. My

teaching was at the end of class, so I only had about 10 minutes to do my teaching, and about a

quarter of the class left when I started my teaching, because it was only 5 minutes before class

ended. I was definitely frustrated that I didnt get to do my whole teaching, because I wanted

to see how I did through my video, but it is what it is!

I consider my lesson to be successful in the sense that I was able to use the language as

much as I could with a class that was super super novice. I did have to do some translating to

English because this was a stand-alone lesson, and they havent learned Spanish since high

school, but I thought I did a good job of answering their questions in Spanish and then only
Lylia Schoepp
Teaching Reflection 2
translating one sentence or key words, except for the directions to the assignment. There were

no behavior issues in my lesson, because these are college students. I think the lesson was

pretty student-centered, because they were finding the information themselves instead of

listening to me explain all the information. I actually heard some of my peers reading the

questions in Spanish, and trying to write in Spanish (I did tell them to write in English, due to

time constraints and the fact that they dont know enough of the language to write what was

needed to answer the question). When the one group I got to for sharing the information read

out their answers, the student read the questions in Spanish and then in English, which was

great! She also did some Spanglish with her answers (she said, people y language), so I

think they were really open to trying to use the language.

A goal for improvement is my use of expressive body movements. I tried hard to use

body movements that matched up with what I was saying, but as I have never actually been

able to teach in the language before, I think that I need to work on this a little more. I need to

work on using movements that match up with what I am saying in the language a little better.

I presented my teacher persona by first asserting the signal that we use when I need to

re-gather the attention of my students. I also talked on a level with my students that was more

conversational then lecture-y (I asked them questions and built on this). I moved around the

classroom during the activity and monitored what they were doing and answered any questions

that they had. I tried really hard to very clearly use the language and speak clearly and at a

more novice level.

In the future, I would not translate as much back to English as I had to in this lesson. I

would also try to include some movement into the lesson so that students are able to get up
Lylia Schoepp
Teaching Reflection 2
and not just sit and become restless. I would maybe do this by having them move into different

groups for the research part of the lesson.