Eta orain, zer?

Gradua bukatu ondoren bi aukera nagusi ditut buruan datorren urteari begira, eta pentsatu dut ibilbide horretan bloga bezalako tresna bat lagungarri bazait ez dudala honetan idazten jarraituko. Nolabait, hau graduko ikasketen ibilbideko kontakizuna izan da, eta hortik aurrerakoak beste toki bat eskatzen duela iruditzen zait. Internet unibertsoa bezala bukaezina dela dirudienez, libre naiz beste zerbait sortzeko.

Beste zerbait prestatu arte interesgarriak iruditzen zaizkidan gaiak hemen biltzen jarraituko dut, eta aurrerantzean jarraipena beste bide batetik ematen badiot, estekatuko ditut biak. Bukatzeko, ikasturtea bukatu berritan nola sentitzen naizen ondo islatzen duen abesti batekin itxiko dut bidalketa hau.

Zergatik dira gure eskolak hain pobreak arkitekturaren ikuspegitik?

Ikasturtean zehar ez dut denborarik izan blogera irakurri ditudan hainbat eta hainbat gauza ekartzeko. Orain, uda iritsita, ez daukat asmorik honetan lanean aritzeko, baina arkitekturaren gaia ekarri nahi nuen, zeharka baino ez dudalako aipatu orain arte, eta oinarrizkoa iruditzen zaidalako.

Ikastetxe batean funtsezko osagaia da arkitektura, eta horrek baliabideak baldintzatzen dituen modua ia aldaezin bihurtzen da. Ikastetxeko giza-baliabideak eta baliabide tekniko-teknologikoak ia etengabe aldatzen dira, baina arkitekturak sortu eta moldatutakoak hamarkada luzeetan bere horretan mantentzen dira.

Gurean, badirudi ikastetxeak eraikitzeko orduan bizpahiru eredu daudela, eta edozein tokitan aplikatzen direla, bertako baldintza espazialak, klimatikoak, sozio-ekonomikoak eta abar kontuan izan gabe.

Hezkuntza eredua aldatu nahi dugu, baina erabakiak hartzen dituztenak antzaz ez dira konturatu horretarako eskolak ere alderdi fisikotik hasita aldatu beharko ditugula. Eduki berriek edukiontzi berriak behar dituzte, eta berrikuntza komunikatzeko modu eraginkorrena itxura aldatzetik hasten da maiz (noski, itxuran bakarrik geratu gabe).

Hona hemen eskolako espazioak sustatu nahi diren elkarrekintza eta ikaskuntzekin batera pentsatu, diseinatu eta eraiki diren adibide parea, Japonian bata, eta Finlandian bestea.

Gradua, zifretan

Lau urte, 34 ikasgai, 240 kreditu eta blogeko 330 mezu ondoren, Haur Hezkuntzan graduatua naiz. Blog honetan zehar graduko ikaskuntzak kualitatiboki aztertzen eta adierazten joan naiz, eta alderdi kuantitatiboari ere erreparatzeak merezi du, agian. Ikasle moduan maiz kexu agertzen gara, zenbaki bat baino ez garela esanez. Ikasle bezala identifikatzen gaituen zenbakia baino ez gara maiz unibertsitatearentzat; graduan sartu ahal izateko selektibitateko nota baino ez ginen izan zerrenda batean, Minorra aukeratzeko orduan hirugarren maila arteko espedientearen notak ordezkatu gintuen, eta laneratzeko orduan ere zenbaki bihurtuko gara egoera askotan. Nolakoa naiz ni, Haur Hezkuntzako graduko zenbakitan? Bat egiten al dute zenbakiek azken lau urteetan zehar hemen bildu ditudan iritzi eta sentsazioekin?

Emaitza akademikoen datu hutsek honelako itxura dute:

• Batezbesteko nota: 9.61
• Ohorezko matrikulak: 14 (kredituen %42.5)
• Beste kalifikazioak:  17 bikain (kredituen %50) eta 3 oso ongi (kredituen %7.5)
• Lehen deialdian gainditutako ikasgaiak: 100%

Noski, datu horiek interpretatzeko testuingurua ezagutu behar da. Interesgarria litzateke promozioko batezbesteko nota ezagutzea, baina ez dago eskuragarri, agian iraila arte ikasturtea amaituko ez delako. Garai bateko ohituraren kontrako muturrera jota, egun unibertsitatean oso gutxitan zabaltzen dira ikasle guztien notak publikoki. Ondo iruditzen zait izen-abizenak erabili ordez NANa erabiltzea, baina norberaren emaitzak taldekideen artean nola kokatzen diren ez jakiteari ez diot abantailarik ikusten, egia esan. Azken batean, lanak guztien aurrean aurkezten dira, eta ez irakaslearen aurrean bakarrik, eta lanak neurri handi batean publikoak badira ez dut ulertzen zergatik ebaluaziotik eratorritako zenbakia ez den publikoa.

Lehen begiradan, nire zenbakiak oso potoloak iruditzen zaizkit, baina graduan zehar ikasi dut horiek bere tokian jartzen ere. Lehen mailan lehenengo hamarra jarri zidatenean, irakasleari nire kezka adierazi nion, zenbakia altuegi ez ote zelakoan. Hark emandako erantzuna oso interesgarria iruditu zitzaidan, eta lagungarria izan zait ordutik hona: notak 0-10 tartean jar daitezkeen arren, hark oso argi zuen 11, 12 edo 15eko ikasleak izan zituela. Ondorioz, lasai asko jartzen zien 10a.

Irakaslearen aldetik arbitrariotasuna behin bakarrik sumatu dut notetan, hilabetez espedientera ohorezko matrikula bat igo ondoren irakasle batek beste ikasle bati kontsolazio-sari bezala emango ziola esan zidanean. Baina, noski, agian nik ere jaso dut horrelako "sariren" bat ezustean eta ez dut jakin atzetik zer gertatu den.

Bestetik, gradu osoan sei ikasgaitan ezagutu ahal izan ditugu talde osoaren notak (kasu batean, goiz eta arratsaldeko taldeen notak). Orokorrean, ez dago ia inor ikasgai horiek gainditu ez dituena, klasera joaten ez zen ikasleren bat salbu. Ikasgaia gainditu ez dituzten gutxi horiek alde batera utzita, hiru ikasgaitan ez dago ikaslerik 6ko notatik behera (ikasgai batean notak 7.7etik gorakoak dira). Orokorrean, ikasle gehienek 7-8 bitarteko notak dituzte, eta ikasgai batzuetan 9ko notak ikasle mordoxka batek jaso dituzte. Datu horiek ikusita, nire zenbakiak ez dira hain deigarriak. Nabarmenena ikasgai eta ikasturte guztietan maila bertsua izatea da, agian.

Bestetik, goizeko eta arratsaldeko taldeen notak eskura izan ditugun ikasgaian deigarria da orokorrean nota baxu gehiago daudela goizeko taldean, eta arratsaldekoak altuak direla orokorrean. Gradu osoan zehar hainbat irakaslek aditzera eman digute arratsaldeko taldearen maila altua zela, oso motibatuak geundela eta gogor egiten genuela lan. Gainera, ikasteko baldintza hobeak izan ditugu ere, taldea nabarmen txikiagoa zelako. Beraz, talde horretan egoteak mesede egin die nire emaitzei, dudarik gabe.

Bukatzeko, emaitzen eta nire pertzepzioaren artean alderik ote dagoen pentsatuta, jasotako notaren arabera ikasgaiak ordenatu eta nire iritziarekin alderatuko banitu, alde batzuk egongo lirateke, niretzat zentzua dutenak, baina kanpotik ikusita hutsalak izango liratekeenak.

Orokorrean, esango nuke zenbakiek ondo islatzen dutela ikasle heldua eta aurretik goi-mailako ikasketetan eskarmentua duena naizela, eta graduan zehar ia lanaldi osoan lanean aritu naizen arren ikasketak eraginkortasun handiz burutu ditudala. Nolabait esatearren, lanbidez ikasle naizela diote zifrek, eta horrekin konforme nago. Hori guztiaren azken arrazoia motibazioan jarriko nuke nik; neronek nire buruari eragindakoa eta nire gelakide eta irakasleek eman didatena, landu ditugun gaiak hain interesgarri izana gehituta.

Catching up

Unfortunately, the dissertation was so time consuming, that since I went back to work full-time on it I had no time to document the process. Now, a few days after the defence, I can write a few lines on that.

Writing the results was a real challenge. I thought an undergraduate dissertation wouldn't give me a chance to feel the water coming up over my neck, but I was wrong. The results were hard for many reasons. On the one hand, they brought the evidence of mistakes in the methodology. I had noticed some while I gathered my data, and managed to fix a few in time; but some others were unforeseeable to me at that time, and "emerged" like ugly warts when I did my data analysis. This is absolutely normal, because this dissertation was my first piece of empirical research ever, and I knew hardly anything about research methods in the field. So, by the time I was close to the end of the dissertation, I knew enough to spot my mistakes (some of them, because I still don't know enough to discover others, I am sure), but nothing could be done to fix them. As a result, there was this "moment of panic" weekend, where I was thinking "oh, my god, this doesn't make any sense!".

The other difficult part of dealing with the results was the fact that I analysed my data from every angle I could think of, and there was a moment when the results were far too many to map in my mind. It took me some days to select the relevant results and construct a story that made some sense with them. Because, at the end of the day, a dissertation is a story; a narration telling that you started off with a sound knowledge on your research topic, you discovered the niche you wanted to occupy in the field of your research, you carefully thought of how you were going to solve the riddles you had in your mind, you went out and proceeded exactly as planned, you analysed your data according to the plan, and you reached your conclusions afterwards. And, well, my dissertation didn't follow a linear path like that. It wasn't a complete mess, but it wasn't exactly as I told it. And I suspect that is true for many other pieces of research, at least among the less experienced like myself.

And, then, the results seemed to go on and on. I had to do a crash course on statistical analysis on the go, which didn't help speed up the work, either. The whole month of May I sat in front of the computer writing the results, and at one moment I thought I wouldn't be able to make it on time, because I didn't want to rush and end up producing something I wasn't happy with. Even if I had tried to be very concise, the methodology and results chapters were long, and my text ended up being a few thousand characters over the limit. Therefore, I had to leave out a whole subsection of the results, and cut as much as I could from the rest.

Another difficult aspect of the dissertation was the extensive reading I had to do in order to cover the topics chosen. When I narrowed down my research topic to autobiographical storytelling, I thought I was going to be fine. Although storytelling is a very wide topic, personal narrative is a manageable sub-category, and I believed I was safe after I chose it. The problem is that the sort of variables I decided to analyse (comprehension, motivation, engagement) belong to very wide research topics in language learning, and it was difficult to learn enough about them in the seven months I spent working on the dissertation. I believe that the most interesting results of the project actually came from the analysis of how those variables interacted among each other, but I pushed myself very close to my limit.

I was also lucky during the process, because some of the decisions I took in the early stages, particularly when I made my experimental design, turned out well, even if I didn't know enough about what I was doing at the time. For example, I decided that I should have different sources of data, like a questionnaire and video recordings. It seemed common sense to me at the time to have additional sources of information to study if one of them went wrong because I had designed it badly, or something went wrong during the activities. I had to take those decisions in January, when I hadn't finished all my reading, and I didn't know enough about research methods in social sciences. Later on I learned that what I called common sense was actually called triangulation in the social sciences. To be completely honest, I think that this sort of luck is the one that goes together with sweat, but chance was partly involved in the results, and it happened to be on my side.

Of course, not all (good and bad) was due to myself and to luck. As for the good, I received a lot of help from others, some known and some unknown. My dissertation and school placement supervisors gave me very useful advice and proofread the document, giving me very valuable feedback. All the teachers in the units of this last year focused on the dissertation, and how they could help us improve our skills to do better through the assignments for their units. The rest of my teachers during the degree have also helped me greatly during the four years, so I could construct my personal map of what education is, and gave me opportunities to train the skills needed to complete the undergraduate dissertation. And, of course, in a degree where most units are based on group work and collective assignments, whatever I have learned was always with the help of my classmates and group-mates. The undergraduate dissertation is an individual piece of work in the last year of your degree, but the resources you use to complete it have been shaped during the previous years in the interaction with others. Well, at least that is the way I have grown to see what learning is, within Vygotsky's sociocultural theory of learning. Internet, on the other hand, gave me the chance to access guidelines and advice on how to tackle an undergraduate dissertation, and that was of great help too.

On the other hand, I decided to go for a formal poster design that would match the general tone of the dissertation, and that made it very easy to prepare. It would have been nice to experiment with more exciting layouts, but considering that my timing was tight, I think I made the right decision.

Finally, regarding computer problems, I was extremely lucky. My computer decided to crash during one of those operating system automatic updates, but thankfully that was two days after I had handed in the final versions of the dissertation and the poster. I spent two days recovering the original OS, updating it manually and recovering some software such as the browser and its plugins and addons,  which are essential to open the dissertation document. Honestly, I can't imagine what it would have been like if it had happened a week before.

So, in summary, I think that the undergraduate dissertation has been a very good addition to the degree. It gives you the opportunity to learn new things compared to the rest of units in the degree, and it is of great help to build the researching teacher profile that our university wants to promote, which happens to be the profile I like the most myself. After completing an undergraduate research project, teachers are likely to be better prepared to take part in research projects in collaboration with university researchers and other teachers, and I think that will help improve education in the long run.

Minorraren inguruko feedbacka

Ingeleseko ahozko azterketa taldeko eztabaida bat izan zen, gure irakasleak entzule lanetan zeudela. Guri jarri ziguten gaia Minorraren inguruko feedbacka ematea izan zen. Beno, egia esan, borobilean eseri eta Minorrari buruz ordura arte esandakoaz gain beste ezer gehitu nahi ote genuen galdetu zigutenean galdera izotzaldia urtzeko sarreratxo bat zela ulertu nuen, eta "benetako" azterketako proba ondoren etorriko zela uste nuen.

Gauza da ez nintzela oso gustura geratu eztabaidaren emaitzekin. Ikasleon aldetik feedback negatiboa egon zen ia bakarrik, eta esan zen gauza positibo bakarrari heldu eta hori pixka bat landu beharrean, segituan eman zitzaion buelta alde txarra bilatzeko.

Gure irakasleek ez zuten ia hitz egin, guk hitz egiteko momentua zela adierazi zigutelako. Irakasleen artean gure iritziek izan zuten harrera argitzeko, haien hitz batzuk ekarriko ditut hona. Ez ditut hitzez hitz gogoratzen, baina honelako zerbait izan zen:
A: Tira, ba zuen kexa horiek guztiak idatzi egin beharko zenituzkete eta "B"-ri bidali - ezkerrean zuen irakasleari zuzenduz - zuzendaritzako taldeko kidea baita.
B: Beno, agian "A"-ri bidali beharko zenizkiokete, bera baita Minorreko zuzendaria.
A: Zuzendaria ez, koordinatzailea.

Hori guztia irribarreen artean esan bazen ere, iruditu zitzaidan ez zuela lagundu ikasleon eta irakasleen arteko harremana hobetzeko eta konfiantzazko giroa sortzeko. Agian orain ez dauka horrenbesteko garrantzirik, ez baitugu ia elkar ikusiko hemendik aurrera, baina ez ninduen ondo sentiarazi, hala ere.

Behar bada feedbackaren inguruan dudan iritzia lanean partaidetza prozesuak dinamizatzetik datorkit. Hain da nabarmena jendearen artean aurpegira botatako gauza negatiboak positiboak baino gehiago direnean prozesuak emaitza garratzak izango dituela, unibertsitateko eragileen arteko harremanak ere arreta berarekin behatzen ditudala, eta antzeko jarrerak ikusten ditut.

egon + egin = izan

Graduko lau ikasturteetan zehar ikasi dugu irakasleak bi lan nagusi dituela: egotea eta egitea. Horrela ulertu dut nik behintzat. Graduko ikasgai guztietan izan dugu aukera egoteari eta aritzeari buruz ikasteko. Hala ere, ikasgai batzuk bereziki zuzendu dira egotea lantzera, eta beste batzuk egitera bideratu dira. Lehendabizikoen artean jarriko nituzke Hezkuntzaren Soziologia, Hezkuntzaren Teoria eta Historia, Irakasle Funtzioa, Hezkuntzaren Psikologia, Eskola Inklusiboaren Oinarriak eta Zailtasunak Garapen eta Ikaskuntzan. Garapen Psikomotorra I eta II egotea eta egitea estuki uztartzen dituzten ikasgai moduan bizi izan ditut nik, baita Ikastetxearen Antolakuntza ere, hiru Practicumekin batera. Gainontzeko ikasgaiak, orokorrean, egiteari buruzkoak izan dira, irakasleren batek edukiak egoteari buruzko gogoeta egitera bideratu bazituen ere.

Ondorioz, esango nuke gradua egoteari buruz ikasten hasi genuela, eta hortik aurrera egitearen inguruko ikasgaiek nabarmen hartu zutela aurrea. Batzuetan faltan bota ditut egotea lantzeko aukerak azken bi ikasturteetan. Nire ustez, zailagoa da egotea lantzea eta hobetzea, eta zailago izate horrek azkenean garrantzitsuago bihurtzen du. Zer egin errazagoa da ikasten, baina nola egin... hori beste kontu bat da.

Bestetik, beldur naiz nire gelakide gehienak ez ote diren azken bi ikasturteetan gehien landu dugun horrekin geratuko, egitea alegia, egotea alde batera utzita. Azken batean, hogeita bi urte dituzunean duela lau urte egindakoa galaxia urrun batean dago.

Back on the road

I finished with all the assignments, and now I only have the dissertation left. I have been dreading the moment when everything else but the dissertation was finished. I thought I had probably forgotten where I had left it two months ago, as well as the contents of all the articles I had read.

But today I just couldn't delay it anymore, and I went back to writing. It was actually a nice surprise to see that I remembered the only small bit I had left without finishing in the methodology chapter, and I found the articles I needed for that immediately (good thing I had classified the articles in topics that made sense to me). It turns out my old brain is not as bad as I thought.

Now I "just" have to write the results and the conclusions, and go back to the literature review and fix it. And I have four weeks left until I hand in my final draft and the poster. And after that, a couple of weeks more to present the poster and have the oral defence. I prefer to think it's going to be a piece of cake!

Aurkezpenetarako eta irudien ediziorako tresnak

Aspaldian nire buruari jarritako etxekolanen artean bi tresna hauek blogera ekartzea zegoen. Bata, PowToon, animazio motzak egiteko da. Egia esan, lanen aurkezpenak eta bideo motzak egiteko Prezi baino interesgarriagoa iruditzen zait; Prezi beti iruditu zait lioso samarra eta gelakide bati baino gehiagori arazoak eman dizkio. Itxura ez-profesionala duten adibideen artean hauxe gustatu zait gehien:

Beste tresna irudiak editatzeko freeware-a da, GIMP izenekoa. Ez dut probatu oraindik, baina itxura ona du.

Whom is your text suitable for?

During the degree and the Minor, we have often discussed how important it is to use texts suited for the audience we intend to reach. I have come across a tool that can help in this sense, a website named "Analyze my writing", which gives a set of readability scores for any sample text you copy and paste into it. It offers details about the readability indices it includes and is very easy to use.

I have given it a try with a quite informal text for my self-assessment on a unit in the Minor, the autobiographical story I told a group of fourth-graders during the school placement, and with a sample from my dissertation, and the scores are quite different.

I think it can be useful to test the difficulty level of texts before taking them to the English class, as well as to check that we are producing the right type of texts for our most formal assignments, like the dissertation.

Dissertation, what's that?

I have hardly touched my dissertation since we went back to our university lessons back in February. It's been almost two months now.

I am not terribly worried yet, but I need to get back to it as soon as I can. I am finishing off some last assignments now, and once I get that out of the way I will take out the piles of articles and books again.

This long break has some advantages and disadvantages. I will need to re-read many of the articles, because they are not fresh in my mind any more, which is a bit of a pain. That's the worst part. The good side is that I should be able to have a more objective view on what I have done so far, which is also dangerous, because I might decide to change many things. All in all, I think the break will be for the better, because having finished too early would have made me forget what it was all about by the time I had to present it, and it would have been much harder to maintain the tension I still need to keep until the end of June.

Right now, my body and a good part of my mind want to rest, believe it's all done, and relax. But this is not over yet, and I need to continue thinking day by day for another two months. And regarding the dissertation presentation, our last group presentation of the term reminded me that I need to hope (and work hard) for the best, but prepare myself for the worst at the same time. So, yes, there is plenty of work ahead.

Last reflections on the diary

We have been asked to reflect on the experience of having kept a diary for one of the units during the whole academic year. I have been keeping a diary during the whole degree, which I have used as a learning tool, so it is obvious that I find it very useful. To me, the diary has great benefits:

• It shows me "how much" I have learned. I like to have physical evidence and record of what I learn, and the diary gives me that. Besides, since I am afraid I will forget things, it acts as an external memory to which I can come back.
• It reflects the process of my learning, my struggles, my mistakes, my interests, my fears. They are all there, very clearly stated. That's why I don't like editing posts once I have written them, unless it is to add a few things I realise I have forgotten to mention soon after closing the post. What's done, is done, and if I change my mind, or I need to go into something deeper, I do so in another post.
• It helps me clarify ideas, arrange them, "digest" them, as it were. Writing forces me to think better and slower, it is a good exercise for me.
• It gives me an excuse to summarise. In several units where we have had no exams and no assignments which required us to summarise all that we had learned in the subject, I have done that summary in the diary, and it helps me a lot to see the general picture. The diary is a good companion to the notes I take during the lessons, which I also keep.

I am clearly a great fan of the diary, although I can understand that it might be useless for others. Compared to the rest of the diary, where most of the posts were only written for myself, and not for my teacher to read (except for the posts on the school placements), I have to say that there is little difference between the diary I have kept for this unit and the rest. I have been as honest as I am in the rest of post which nobody needs to read, even though there have been times when I thought it wasn't particularly wise to do so. If I had written the diary only for myself, I would have probably described the warmers in detail, and create a label for them, so I could retrieve them easily afterwards, but I think that is about the only difference I would have introduced. Well, and most probably I wouldn't have written about every lesson. In that sense, having the diary as a requirement for the unit has helped me a lot to be more constant, and I am very grateful for that, because when it isn't an assignment, it tends to be left for last.

What next?

The visit we received yesterday from former students who graduated last year raised questions and comments about our nearest future once we finish our degree. In her last words, our teacher encouraged us to continue sharing our practice with other teachers, to discuss, to question, to challenge, to collaborate.

She also mentioned something which troubled me. She told us that she really liked the way Artigal linked things which apparently had nothing to do with education, while he watched a film, an opera, or listened to a song. I picked on her idea of how great it was that he was constantly thinking about education, and I felt terribly guilty, because thinking about work all the time is just the opposite of what I intend to do if I start a new career. Ricardo Semler explains quite well in this talk my reasons for that:

There are two things he mentions which I liked a lot in his talk: the fact that nobody in their deathbed will be wishing they had spent more time at the office, and his advice to ask three consecutive "why"s to ourselves when an automatic answer comes to our minds.

When our teacher encouraged us to do the same as Artigal and to share our experiences with each other I thought "what on earth will I share, that I am some lazy teacher not willing to stay late to prepare some exciting material for I don't know what?". I have friends fighting cancer, others who died even before we finished our first degree. I already regret having a niece who will turn one soon and whom I have seen half a dozen times, even though she lives across the river. I want to try live as if I were to die tomorrow, and to work as if I were to live forever; and not the other way around.

Thinking about it later, I have come to the conclusion that maybe that is what I will have to share: the experience of somebody who tries to be a good teacher and finish work at 16.30 at the same time, which is one heck of a challenge, come to think of it.

Last lessons

This week we have had two talks by Josep Maria Artigal and Saro Manrique, creators of the methods and materials for learning and teaching English applied in two fee-paying Basque school groups: ikastolak, and the religious schools. Unfortunately, I could only attend the first one, by Artigal.

I found it very interesting and enlightening, after having done my school placement in a school that applies this method. In summary, I would say that Artigal creates a setting for the foreign language lesson which is directly based on narrative, being the basic structure used by humans to construct meaning. Children can construct meaning in a foreign language starting from day one, when they can hardly take advantage of purely linguistic cues, because it is conveyed within a supporting system they are already familiar with: the story. Artigal shared with us how he thinks stories need to be told in order to function properly as scaffolding elements in the foreign language learning process. He also stressed that it is only when students retell stories that they actually learn the language. That made me realise that what I experienced in my school placement was very far from what he intends, because we didn't give children opportunities to retell the story themselves.

Still, there is something too audiolingual in what he does, in my opinion. Why so much emphasis on repeating after him when he performed the German mini-lesson with us? Is that what he means by retelling? But I wasn't retelling the story as I repeated after him, I was only repeating sounds that made no meaning to me in isolation, although the general meaning was clear.

Artigal was also a very good speaker, as several classmates pointed out in the discussion we held yesterday, on the last day of class. He made us experience first hand his method, he used metaphors and plenty of visuals, which made it easier to understand what he meant, even if the contents of his talk didn't follow a very linear order.

My overall impression on his method is that if you only read his teacher's guide, like I did, you will most probably get it wrong. Besides reading his texts, you need to attend his talks. I don't know if this is due to a commercial strategy, because we can't forget that at the end of the day he runs a business, or he has improved his message over the years and he hasn't taken the time to write it down, but whatever the reason is, I am very grateful we had this talk.

I could sense that our teachers were a bit disappointed with some of the comments that were made on the two talks. There was certainly a lot of negative feedback. I agree with our teacher, when she told us that we should have said those things during the turn for questions after each talk, and that if after a talk we feel that the speaker didn't tell us anything we didn't know before, maybe we should wonder whether they had explained it so well that it seemed too simple. Nevertheless, I have to say that personally I wouldn't dare share some of my doubts with an expert who is a stranger, when I am aware that I don't know enough about the topic to say much. It is much easier for us to share those thoughts with our teachers, who are also experts, but close to us.

The very last day of class we received some guests who gave us interesting information on a Master's degree, and we also had the chance to see what some of our classmates did on their school placement. We learned about interactive groups in Orokieta Herri Eskola, which I found very interesting, and about how they manage to get students to talk English among themselves in Txantxiku Ikastola by turning it into a collective challenge.

Both experiences were fabulous, and terribly inspiring, and they reminded me of how bad I would have liked to do the school placement somewhere where exciting things are being done, and with supervisors working on action research, which I have been interested in since the first year of the degree. Instead, I had to choose my school with a very practical objective in mind: being close to work, because I needed to work for a bit over six hours everyday. I know I did the right thing, and I think I learned very useful things, but when I see things like the ones our classmates brought I can't help to think that I would have loved to be there.

Ereindako hazitxo batekin topo

Atzo arratsaldean iloba zaharrenaren bila joan nintzen eskolara, ikasturtean lehen aldiz. Lau eta bost urteko gelan zegoenean bere eskolan egin nituen praktikak, ondoko gelan. Hortaz, atzo haur horietako batzuk ikusi nituen.

Bat gerturatu egin zitzaidan kasu egitera. Ez zuen nire izena gogoratzen hasieran, baina lehen silaba esan nionean etorri zitzaion burura. Sobra ere, nire izena ahaztu arren ni gogoratzen ninduela adierazi nahi zidan, eta honelaxe esan zidan: "zuk egun batean paper bat eman zenidan, eta luma bat zuen itsatsita, eta luma berdea zen", eta jarraitu zuen azaltzen, airean lauki bat marraztuz "honelako baten barruan liburua zegoen, eta horrek zituen lumak". Gero agur esan, eta lagunekin jolastera joan zen.

Aurreko ikasturtean ipuinaren tarterako egin nuen zorroaz ari zen haurra. Haur honek ez zituen ipuinak gustuko, ezta irakurri eta idaztea ere orokorrean. Lau urteko gelan zegoela iritsi zen eskolara eta aurretik ez zuen euskararekin harremanik izan. Ipuinetako hizkuntza zailegi egiten zitzaion ulertzen eta normalean deskonektatu ohi zuen. Ikasle bihurria zen, gainera; beste haurrekin eta irakaslearekin gatazka mordoa izaten zuen horietakoa. Berak eta beste batek ipuina gordetzeko zorroari lumak kendu zizkioten, eta haien apalean gorde zituzten. Baina horrelako sekretuak ezin dira luzean gorde gelan, eta beste haur batzuk azkar etorri zitzaizkidan bi gelakideek egindakoa. Lumak "konfiskatu" nizkien, baina berriro itsastea ez zen posible, eta haiekin positiboa zen zerbait egin nahi nuen. Horrela, erabaki nuen haur bakoitzari praktiken amaieran idatzi nien olerkitxoan itsatsiko niela luma bana. Lumak bildu zituzten biek jaso zituzten txikitxoenak.

Hori guztia gogoratu nuen atzo, haurrak ipuinen zorroa eta lumen kontua azaltzen zidan bitartean. Eta pentsatu nuen haur horrek ipuinak bere gustukoa izan zen zerbaiti lotzeko balio izan bazuen, merezi zuela ipuinen zorroa egin izana. Iruditzen zait norberak atseginez eta gogo handiz egindakoa besteengana iritsi ohi dela, eta horrek eragin positiboa duela.

Closing up on feedback

I am taking it easy during our Easter holidays. I have mainly been practicing some "active rest", hiking and enjoying life outdoors. Four years ago I spent all Easter holidays studying for the university entrance exams, and after four years I deserve some rest, I need it, and I also owe it to my family. And I still can't believe I need to justify that to myself; self-imposed duties are too deeply rooted in me, and when it comes to rights, I am always last, and those closest to me come the ones before last... Just the opposite of what it should be.

Anyway, back to the diary. Out last week before the holidays was short, and the last lesson was a bit bumpy, due to changes in the schedule brought by another teacher. Nevertheless, we managed to close the feedback on the lesson we have been guiding, and to close off the unit before the Easter break. We changed the dynamics of the feedback slightly, so this time each group mentioned one thing they liked about each presentation, and one thing they would consider for improvement; then, the next group did the same, and so on. And our teachers also reduced the amount of aspects they mentioned as feedback. Before starting with the feedback on the last two groups, they did a general round up of all the lessons we have had, and they stressed that the outcomes were very good, that there has been a great improvement since the previous lessons in the first term, and that we all had to be very happy with our work. They also reflected on how feedback needed to be in order to be the most effective, and mentioned that they are still working on it, since they had noticed that some of us had felt a bit down after the feedback sessions.

I intend to close the topic on feedback myself, for now at least. Feedback and assessment have really interested me during this last term, and I have been thinking on why this was. I have come to the conclusion that my interest is mainly due to wanting to improve as a feedback giver. Being on the receiving end of the feedback process has helped me a lot to realise how much I have to improve when I am on the other side, and I have learned a lot.

To finish with my reflections on feedback, I would like to mention a very interesting point, which was made by one of our teachers during their reflection on feedback in general. When our teachers commented on the fact that they have tried to give us the maximum amount of feedback on our lessons, so we could learn more on the things we need to improve, and how difficult it was to do that while maintaining our motivation at the same time, one of the teachers mentioned that novice teachers make the same common mistakes. At that moment, I didn't think about it, as we continued with the feedback on the last two lessons, but that comment came back to my mind in the following days. It seemed to me that it implied that one of the objectives of feedback, maybe the most important, was for them, as experienced teachers, to point out mistakes in our lessons, so we could avoid them when we become teachers ourselves. That seems to make a lot of sense.

Then I thought of a different situation which resembles this in a way; let's imagine somebody very experienced in life giving advice to somebody much younger, maybe a grandparent and their grandchild. What would the grandparent's objective be, to point out all possible mistakes one can make in life, so the grandchild would know about them and thus avoid them? Is that actually feasible? Is it desirable?

I would say the grandparent might want to make the grandchild aware of some fatal mistakes, the sort of mistakes which will not allow them to grow in life, because those are the only ones which one really needs to try to avoid, and which might be feasible to actually pass on. To me, that is the real objective of feedback: to promote growth, to create conditions for that. Not to avoid mistakes. And, as a feedback giver, you always need to ask yourself if you are "watering" the plant just right, so it will grow at its natural rhythm, or you are trying to "speed up" its development using too much fertiliser.

Coming back to the feedback session we had that day, the things we mentioned are very similar to what I had written right after the two lessons, but there was a very interesting idea which I hadn't picked on, and I think is very important: the second lesson, the one on children's worries, dealt with highly emotional topics, which must be handled with care. The teacher needs to take enough time to give adequate emotional support in an activity where children are sharing personal concerns, so children will feel that their concerns are being given the importance they have for themselves, and not treated lightly.

It was also interesting to see that some of my classmates found the story that was told on the first lesson - a story about Easter eggs, close to the fable of the golden eggs - a bit too childish for fifth graders. It's funny, because I didn't, and some other classmates taking the degree on pre-primary teaching didn't either. I think that the last cycle of primary is a great moment to bring fairy tales, fables and other classics to the classroom, because children at that age enjoy discussing ethical and moral issues, and those stories are full of them. If we don't want students to feel treated as if they were toddlers, we can use versions containing "different" illustrations. Here are a couple which came to my mind, from Rébecca Dautremer and Marcia Brown:

Finally, we also took some time to give our teachers feedback on the experience of preparing and putting into practice lessons with "real children". We all agreed that it was a very good experience and a great chance to receive feedback on our practice, and that even if it involved a great effort to organise it, it was worth it with no doubt.

Our last lesson before the holidays started with a warmer called "hidden sentence", which was a lot of fun. It could be used in the English class once students begin to be fluent enough to produce a short dialogue on a given topic. We also went into some practical aspects about the last lessons after the Easter break, our teacher gave us very useful information on summer courses and options to continue training after we finish the degree, and we also discussed the items we should include in our self-assessment for the unit. She brought the items that students had used for self-assessment in previous years, and I found it very helpful and reassuring, because we realised we had listed almost the same items as others had.

Lastly, we received some very interesting feedback on the subject from our teacher. She brought back the "contracts" we had designed in groups at the beginning of the academic year, with a column for what we expected from the unit, and another column with what we were willing to offer. I have to say that I had completely forgotten about that. I only remembered it when our teacher called out the members of our group; then I remembered where and when we wrote it, but not the contents. Having the long school placement in the middle of the academic year has made me forget a lot of what we did on the first term, and I think that has caused a distortion in my perception of what we have actually learned. It was fantastic to go back to this lists, because it made me realise that what we have learned exceeds the expectations, but also that we had quite clear ideas on what we wanted to learn in the Minor. To me, this has been one of the best activities we have done in the whole year, because it has given me an accurate measure of what I have learned. I remember I was aware of the accomplishment at the end of the first year in the degree, but after that it was much harder to realise what we were learning each year, because it was built on top of what we had previously learned. I think giving students tools to measure their learning is a great thing, and this activity could also be adapted to the English class.

There is hope for the humour challenged

I can't help but bring this post with some proposals to use humour in the classroom, which are suitable even for those of us who are humour challenged.

I would love to be able to slip jokes when I talk in public, like the man who run a short seminar on speaking in public last week at university, which was meant to help us with our dissertation presentations. Unfortunately, I have no such talent, but I like the advice in the post, because I see things which even I would be able to do. I especially like the idea of having students bring humour into the class. It is always a good idea to invite more skillful people to contribute, and there are always a couple of students who are good at humour in each group.

From the pre-primary teacher point of view, it is a very important subject, as children start to develop their sense of humour in those years, and they enjoy a lot playing with humour. Besides, it helps them greatly to develop their language skills, as telling jokes is a difficult thing where you need to use rhythm, body language, memory, tone and others in an specific way if you want your audience to laugh. And humour is a great way to bond and enjoy life together.

There was a time when I created a tag for cartoons in the blog, and would bring some once in a while, but I haven't done it lately. I should go back to it. Even though it is not suitable for children, I bring a funny monologue by Rowan Atkinson welcoming his audience to hell. It could be used in an English lesson for adults, for instance. It can even be found with captions.

Very hard work preparing the lessons

This morning, during a short break between two lessons, some of us have been talking about the feedback sessions and the lessons with real children we have recently finished.

I've had a chance to know that the group who proposed a lesson on prehistory actually went to another school to rehearse the lesson with students of the same age as those who finally visited us at university. They were telling us that because those children couldn't follow some of the activities very easily, they had decided to make them a bit simpler in the lesson at university, only to find that the group that came that day understood much better and, as a result, some of the activities were a bit too easy for them.

This is just an example that shows how hard we have been working during the Minor; it is great to see that we are so engaged and really try our best. Good teachers are bound to come out of that, no doubt.

Last two lessons (in the academic year, and the degree)

On Monday, we had the feedback session on the two lessons of the previous week. I agreed with many of the things that were said, but I must say that I didn't agree with a basic aspect: it seemed to me that from the quantitative point of view, the feedback given to the first group was way too negative, whereas the feedback give to the second group was much more balanced, especially thinking of the five-to-one rule that I mentioned in my previous post.

I am not that sure if students go into the depths and subtleties of qualitative aspects of feedback when it comes to interpreting it. At the end of the day, most of the negative feedback that the first group received could be summarised as "you could have taken more risks, be more ambitious", and that doesn't seem a terrible problem to me. I think their lesson was a very good model of what we should aim at when we first start working as English teachers: small steps, but steady. In my opinion, after having made that point clear, all we needed to tell our classmates was: "since you are brilliant teachers, there will come a time when simplicity will not be enough for you, and you will want to introduce more challenging objectives such as...", and then we could have mentioned most of the things that were mentioned in the feedback.

I think that we all lack basic skills when it comes to giving feedback, mainly due to our education system and our culture in general. It reminds me of a sitcom I have been following at times, called Modern Family, where one of the couples, Jay and Gloria, have very different styles when it comes to education; he likes a marine-style with plenty of crude negative feedback, while she believes in being "the wind behind your back, and not the spit on your face" and praises her son all the time. In general, our culture is much more marine-like; we believe that only negative feedback will take you far, when most of the time a gentle wind on our back is so much more effective. I think that we haven't been given enough opportunities to learn how to give effective feedback, and how to take it, just like we don't know how to deal with praise (giving it and receiving it). I say this for myself mainly. I hate coming up with these smart-ass ideas now, when I reflect, and not then, when they would've been useful. Somehow, I have the feeling that reflecting on things doesn't take me half as far as I would expect and like to.

Well, let's continue. A very useful remark that was made during the feedback session, which is something that we have been told several times during the Minor, but is nevertheless worth repeating is the fact that the shorter the message (input), the harder it will be for the student to understand. So, when it comes to language learning, simple is not necessarily short. It might be a good idea to have short activities, but not short messages (unless they are well known from before, such as short imperatives like "stand up").

And now, it is time for the reflection on the last two lessons. I have to say that what I have been writing down on the lessons was meant to be a collection of notes for myself; I would never give that to my classmates as feedback. As a matter of fact, I have hardly mentioned any of the negative feedback I have been writing down in our feedback sessions. Usually, what I did was think of the one thing I thought could have really made a difference in that particular lesson, and choose that one as the thing to say in class, if nobody else pointed it out. On the other hand, some of the things I have written down are opinions based on a very personal point of view, which don't need to be in agreement with what others might think, and needn't be mentioned. I would say that others will be shared by most, and those would be the ones worth bringing up.

The first group of classmates changed the topic, but only partly, as in the lesson of the first term they chose Halloween, and now Easter. So, in general, we could say that they have been working on the topic of celebrations. During the academic year we have had some debate over this topic about celebrations coming from other cultures (Halloween, Easter). I have to admit that I don't like them (for now; I am open to changing my mind), and I wouldn't encourage them in my class. The reason is very simple: they are merely a commercial celebration. From the point of view of a resource for education, in the way they have been imported so far, they don't offer much, they are just an excuse to spend money and promote consumerism.

I have to say that our classmates have really made an effort in this sense during the academic year, when they taught us the origins of Thanksgiving, for example. That could be a way to tackle the topic in an educational way, but I am still not sure. So, I have to admit that what I had in mind when I saw the Easter eggs that our classmates brought to us in this lesson was my young niece last Saturday stopping at the windowshop of a bakery in the city centre, admiring the chocolate eggs and saying how much she would love to buy them all. "A dozen "buñuelo", that's what you are going to get from your aunt, miss!", I thought to myself. All my ideals on good education down the drain, while the dragon of traditional education came out of my chest like the alien in the film, only with blazing fire coming out of its nostrils... ha-ha-ha.

Bearing in mind that my opinions on the topic of the lesson should not interfere with the assessment of the lesson itself (how one can actually manage to do that, I don't know), these are the things I liked about it the most:

• They started the lesson posing a problem that students needed to solve. Problem-based learning is good, as we have seen many times along the degree, but too often we use problems with only one right solution, and that is where I think we fail to get the most out of this resource. We should work more and more with problems with multiple solutions, or even with no clear solution.
• They used a video with a real person speaking, who was non-native and didn't speak too quickly. This was an improvement compared to what some of us had done in the previous lessons.
• They carefully picked the story in order to avoid introducing religious matters in the lesson. I learned about this after the lesson, when we commented on the lesson with the group, and I think it is a very good thing to consciously try not to influence on your students' beliefs and values in that way. Taking into account gender, culture, ethnicity, religion and other aspects when planning a lesson is very important, and our classmates showed great consideration towards their students in this respect.
• They used visual support to tell the story, applying what they had learned during the school placement (similar puppets to the material in Artigal). I liked the poster and the puppets.
• They gathered students sitting in a circle to tell the story. This helps so much more to achieve close interaction and ensure attention. Even in 5th grade of primary, it is a great idea to sit in a circle to listen to a story. That way, also, you avoid the problems of images or text being too small to be clearly seen from the desks in the far end of the classroom.
• They made groups randomly, based on the colours of the stickers they had given students. It is a good thing to alternate between letting students make their own groups and pushing them out of their comfort zone. Still, in general, I think it is better to let them organise groups themselves, because it is an activity which yields a lot of learning. The only time when the teacher should take over is when they observe that some students are being left out, or when the grouping criteria followed by students leads to very homogeneous groups where not much learning will take place. Again, discussing and reasoning about these matters with students before making groups can be a great way to avoid such problems.
• They used a song proposed by students as a formal ending for the lesson, which was really nice. Not only was it nice, but it also left a final feeling of competence in the students' minds, which is always a good thing, as we have been told that the last memory is what we most vividly remember.

Among the things I liked less, or I would take into account if I were to use this lesson in the future, I would mention the following:

• The origin of the problem was a message that our classmates said they had received from someone who was visiting for Easter holidays, and it happened to be a king Charles III. It didn't sound too real. I would rather use more realistic proposals.
• Our classmates didn't manage to handle the video not working as well as some other classmates. The three of them were silent while they tried to get the video to start, and they could have used that time to review the problem and the context. It is easy to say, and difficult to do, but others have managed, so it can be done!
• As it has happened with some other lessons, there were things to improve in the quality of input (writing "Charles's castle" and pronouncing it /iz/ instead of /isiz/ and more basic errors). Some of them could be prevented just learning what we have been taught during the year, such as the example I mentioned. The video of the king talking didn't offer much input quality either.
• There wasn't much excitement in the storyteller, as if she didn't like the story much. If you don't like the story, it will be impossible for your students to like it.
• It was a bit strange to use inferring questions while telling the story. It would have been just fine to ask what the students thought would happen next if the teacher had been reading a story, because the audience could think that she didn't know the answer herself, but being as it was so clear that she did, it seemed a bit awkward to me. I would use those questions only when reading aloud, and not when telling. In the latter, I would use more "why" questions.
• Some of the activities were not very well linked; they seemed to have no purpose, like when one of the teachers came in with an Easter egg drawing and read the clues on the back. At that time, it made no sense and lead to nothing, and only later did we realise she had given us a model of an activity that would come later on. I think models work better if you actually make it explicit that they are an example of what students are meant to do.
• Most of the activities worked on receptive skills, and in 5th grade of primary students are already quite articulate, so it might be more challenging to propose activities to work on their productive skills.
• Just like most of the lessons have not managed to finish on the given time (30-35 minutes), this group finished too early (just a bit over 25 minutes). They didn't go particularly fast over the activities, which means that they could have added maybe one more. Children could have written a letter to king Charles III, telling him what they had found and where, for instance.

The second group of classmates had the same group of students, with whom one of our classmates had done the school placement, as we all had an opportunity to find out when they sang a farewell song to her in the end. This group of classmates also changed the topic of their lesson (they had parts of the body in the first term), because they found no way to adapt it to the age of students. I have to say that I loved the topic they chose - children's worries - because it should lead you to a student-focused lesson almost without noticing, and it offers plenty of opportunities for communicative activities. These are the things I liked the most in their lesson:

• They used a real problem. That caused other problems (the video being too hard to understand), but I think that using real material and real tasks is very important to increase student engagement.
• They underlined the topic of the lesson with the written material that was on the wall. Visual support is very helpful, especially for those students who get lost easily.
• They explained the three steps of the task very clearly, and explicitly marked the transitions from one to the next, so students knew at all times where they were. I like that, because it gives students control over the lesson. 
• They alternated activities in pairs and in the large group. Mixing different types of grouping during the lesson helps greatly changing rhythm and provides opportunities for all students to participate.
• Again, like in the previous lesson, students were sitting on the floor. This informal setting helped them loosen up, I think, and created an adequate atmosphere to discuss personal matters, such as worries. Spatial aspects have such a great influence on the outcome; much greater than we often realise.
• They provided an structure to organise and classify worries in several types, and also to arrange them according to their importance. It was visual, clear and simple, and made with unsophisticated materials. I liked it a lot.
• They showed a map to locate the country for the comparison on children's worries, and also another video. This last video had no words, only music, and it was nice to include an element of little language difficulty into the lesson, to diversify rhythm again. In this case, the text was easy (non-existent, as a matter of fact), but provided that the task is challenging enough (putting the story in the video into words, for instance), it can be great for a language lesson. It reminded of the time when I bought a picture book called Journey, without knowing it had no words. When I received it on the post, I thought it had been a complete waste of money, but then I realised its language potential: I could use it to ask children to put words to the story, a perfect excuse to produce output. Depending on the age, children will need some help (maybe taking turns in "reading" the story), but stories with no words are a great resource to learn language.
• One of the teachers insisted on students talking in English, instead of giving the Spanish translation of new vocabulary. She said it firmly, but in a very friendly way at the same time. I thought that she got the right tone, and children answered wonderfully to her demand. She only needed to ask for it twice, and students automatically did a small click in their minds and spoke English after that. It can be as easy as that, really, so we shouldn't give up before trying. Never.
• They gave a proper ending to the lesson, with the picture they took for the researcher that had brought the problem. They closed the circle, and it all ended well, with a sense of accomplishment and a group activity. After that, children sang to the classmate who had been with them during the school placement, which was very nice too (personally, I wouldn't have liked that to be done in front of all my classmates). It was a good chance to think of activities which a teacher can propose to thank a trainee teacher, and promote language learning at the same time.

The things that I liked less, or I would bear in mind if I put this lesson into practice are the following:

• At the beginning of the lesson, the teacher let students get away with translating into Spanish all new concepts. She should have changed her strategy. Instead of asking "what does "worries" mean?" or "what is a sociologist?", she should have asked them to explain it in other words, or to give examples, and insist on students speaking in English. As another of her groupmates proved, she would've succeeded.
• The video was difficult to understand, mainly because the researcher was reading, instead of talking freely. I wonder if adding English captions would have been enough for students to understand, because they weren't that far off. I think I would've given captions a try, and see what happened.
• The teachers gave no explanation on what worries are. I think it would've been good to give examples or a short role play to show the central concept of the lesson explicitly.
• Students read the card with their worries to the teacher, not to their classmates. The teacher asked them to read louder once or twice, but I think she should have insisted more on it. I like the idea of students embracing a very basic concept: they are doing the activity for themselves and their classmates, not for the teacher to mark. Driving them once and again towards the real purpose of activities is vital, in my view.
• After watching the second video, the one that had no voice, the teacher made some questions, and students raised their hand to ask for turns to answer, but the teacher ignored that and let students speak freely. Nothing happened, because they were very well behaved and waited for others to talk, but the teacher missed a golden opportunity to arrange turns. If students have acquired a good habit we shouldn't encourage them to lose it!
• Towards the end of the lesson, after the second video, our classmates drifted and changed the topic altogether, from children's worries to moralizing on how we should help the poor. I found it awful, I have to say. Contrary to the previous group, who made an effort not to impose their values and beliefs, this group failed in that sense, in my opinion. The last part of the lesson was a collection of clichés, in my view, and they weren't brought forward by the students, but forced by the teachers themselves. This is something I strongly think should be avoided.

One final remark on the worries children had: what on earth are we doing soooo wrong in education, when 10-11-year-olds are only worried about exams? One of them mentioned his grandfather being ill, a couple talked about having a job (normal in the recession we are currently facing), and another one mentioned having no friends and being alone. The majority only mentioned exams. On the one hand, it is good to know that children have their most basic needs fulfilled, but this obsession about exams doesn't sound healthy at such a young age.

Reflections on feedback and motivation

Last week, when I wrote about the lessons that we had watched during the week and about the feedback that we give to each group, I tried to look for information on a very basic question: what is the right ratio of positive to negative feedback? what is the most effective?

Unfortunately, I didn't have enough to time to research on the issue, and I had to finish writing my diary without dealing with it. This week, I stumbled upon an answer, in the form of a post in a blog I follow (not that it means I can read every post...) titled Strategies for helping students motivate themselves. The author claims that you need a ratio of positive to negative feedback between 5 to 1 and 3 to 1 in order to promote healthy learning. The problem is that when you pull the thread of the "extensive research" that he mentions as a source for that statement, you find evidence coming from business management and academic research subject to recent controversy, which doesn't seem that "extensive". Still, even if the main reference were Gottman's five to one - as being the ratio of positive to negative interactions that a couple needs to accumulate over time in order to remain married - I'll say I buy it. It makes sense to me, and no harm can come from it, even if the author doesn't provide solid proof of the exact extent of its benefits.

So, if you want to help your students becoming successful learners, when it comes to giving feedback, you should have the 5-to-one ratio in mind. And the same goes for your partner, friends, employees, workmates etc.

There are more things that I liked in that post, though. Autonomy, competence, relatedness and relevance are concepts I had already come across in the little reading on motivation I have been doing for my dissertation, and I totally agree with the idea that teachers should focus on feeding the intrinsic motivation of students, rather than using extrinsic motivators. I liked the idea of providing cognitive autonomy support through open-ended problem solving, and I especially liked the proposals around making thinking processes visible. I found this last idea absolutely inspiring for teachers in general. From the language learning point of view, it can be very helpful to promote communicative activities in the classroom.

Another thing I really liked from the post, which is closely related to feedback, was the recommendation to praise effort, instead of intelligence (aptitude, outcomes). The statement by Carol Dweck on the fact that praising intelligence takes people to play conservative because they don't want to risk their "genius" status is very revealing. On the other hand, a student who tries hard is bound to succeed sooner or later, and will be much more resilient when it comes to facing obstacles.

Whereas I see the other three concepts absolutely related to intrinsic motivation, I have my doubts about relevance. Too often we use relevance as an external motivator ("now, let's see, who can tell me why we should learn English? what will it be useful for in our lives?"). It must be handled with care in order to use it right and improve intrinsic motivation.

Slowly, but ahead with my dissertation

I haven't mentioned anything on my dissertation in a long time now. I would like to write more on my blog but I just don't seem to be able to find time to do so. Cheap excuse; I know.

Well, about my dissertation, I have to say that I was quite pleased with the result achieved up to the end of my school placement. I didn't manage to finish all that I had hoped (produce the final draft of the whole document), but I knew my objective was far too optimistic. By the time we went back to our university lessons, I had written the theoretical part, collected my data and written down the chapter on methodology. At the same time, after having reached that point, I realised I would need to re-write part of my theoretical chapter, as the readings on the topic of the dissertation had lead me to aspects I couldn't anticipate when I started my writing.

After having gone back to our lessons, I have hardly touched the dissertation, I must admit, because I use all the time I have for other assignments. Still, I have to admit that I am not worried; as a matter of fact, I think that finishing the dissertation too early could be a bad idea. The presentation will take place in June, and I think it is better to have the contents as fresh as I possibly can in my head, so if I were to finish my final draft in March or early April, it would be way too early.

I plan on using my Easter holidays to write the results, and start with the conclusions. After that, when we finish our lessons, I should have more time to polish it and send it to my supervisor for the last feedback.

Reflections on lesson planning

These last weeks we have been dealing with lesson planning in all of our units. We have been planning and putting in practice lessons ourselves, and at the same time we learned Penny Ur's guidelines for ordering the components of a lesson plan from her book A course in language teaching: practice and theory:

• Put the harder tasks earlier
• Have quieter activities before lively ones
• Think about transitions
• Pull the class together at the beginning and at the end
• End on a positive note

By all means, Penny Ur's guidelines are essential, and I would say that the easiest ones to tackle as a novice teacher are the ones about ordering the activities (putting harder tasks earlier, having quieter activities before lively ones, so the teacher will not have to make a great effort to calm the group down). On the contrary, I find that managing transitions in such a way that the overall outcome will feel balanced and harmonious, and the lesson will flow naturally, is much harder at the beginning.

Especially in pre-primary, I see a lesson as a unit in time and space, when and where the teacher must create an atmosphere which will resemble a big balloon that holds the whole group inside. It is the teacher's task to blow this balloon up at the beginning of the lesson, with the class together, as Penny Ur suggests. This first blowing up is not that difficult, as children are curious by nature and will be interested at first. It is maintaining the balloon with the right amount of air throughout the lesson what is really hard.

Frequent problems are the balloon going flat because the lesson lost momentum, or bursting it. In my experience, based on what I have seen and done myself during my school placements, losing momentum is mainly due to "losing air" during transitions, but also because the teacher decides to maintain an activity after its peak of interest and excitement for students, thus letting it die slowly. On the contrary, "bursting the balloon" is often due to excess of lively activities, excess of stimuli, or lack of ability to return the class to a calmer situation after lively activities. Teachers must acquire the right skills to manage these situations gracefully, monitoring the class to know when the balloon is deflating, in order to pump in some air, or when it is so tight that calming down is essential for it not to burst.

Certainly, knowing what the teacher should do is one thing, and managing to do so is quite another. Only experience, together with determination, will train the teacher in this sense.

Wonderful modelling and great lessons

This past week we received the visit of an English teacher at Orioko Ikastola, where one of our classmates did her school placement. This teacher actually brought her class to our school last week, for one of the lessons conducted by us students, but since they went with the other group of classmates, I didn't have the opportunity to watch them.

Lucky enough, our teacher invited her, so we all got to learn from her. She teaches English in pre-primary and in the first grade of primary, following the same method used in the school where I did my placement (Artigal in pre-primary and Eleanitz in primary). Still, the videos she brought showed children who were more fluent and accurate than the ones in my school. I especially liked the fact that they used very actively the language; they really made the most of what they knew, and since they spent most of their time touching their limits, that encouraged them to learn more. Having your students walking on the edge of their knowledge without feeling frustrated isn't easy, and she did it just great.

I particularly liked the story children created collectively, in a purely Rodari fashion. It was absolutely great, and you could sense how engaged they were and how good they felt about themselves. It was great to give them back a very accurate measure of what they knew by having the story written down and drawn on a booklet; physical evidence of the achievements made is truly important to boost motivation.

We also learned that believing in yourself and in your students is vital. This teacher didn't stop to think if children in the second year of taking English lessons would be able to tell in English what they had done over the weekend; she simply believed they could, made them believe it could be done, and it happened. Creating the kind of atmosphere where students will feel confident and at the same time not pressured to be perfectly accurate is a key to success.

She also taught us to focus on what is really important; she spent a whole lesson introducing the visit to our university, creating the conditions for a successful lesson, anticipating with students what they would experience and who they would meet. Finishing all the unit's activities or even all the units for the academic year didn't seem to rank on top of her agenda. Instead, she recorded her class often and showed colleagues and parents what those children were able to do with the language. And that was enough.

She seemed to be telling her students and us "don't be afraid to try, nothing too bad can happen, really". And she is right; leaving aside sick ideas directly intended to make students feel miserable, nothing too bad can happen if you try something in education, provided that you are honest and assess the process and the outcomes regularly. This is not brain surgery or sending rockets to the moon; we are talking about small steps in a process which doesn't have only one right way, as happens with most things in life. So, if you believe children can communicate in English from day one, learn as much as you can about how that can be done, and go for it! I really loved this talk.

Now, I must return to the lessons lead by our classmates. Unfortunately, I could not attend the day when feedback was given on the lessons of the previous week, but my classmates told me afterwards that what was said was pretty much in the line of what I wrote last week, so there isn't much to say on that. This week, we had two more lessons, both with the same group of fourth graders.

The first lesson was on prehistory, the same topic our classmates worked on in the first term, but adapted to a different age. In my opinion, the lesson was absolutely fantastic. These are the things I liked the most:

• Our classmates introduced the topic using a mind map that they had drawn on the board, which had several gaps where the students placed the flashcards that were on a side of the board, guided by the questions posed by our classmates. It was simple and worked just great, ordering concepts and new vocabulary. You don't need the fanciest technology, sometimes good old chalk is enough.
• They used an old French TV series (Once upon a time... man), and played it stopping when the concepts they had previously introduced were mentioned, to make sure they were noticed by students.
• Students took part very actively during the whole lesson. They were paying attention, following with interest and engaged.
• Our classmates proposed two activities in the large group, a quiz and a mimic game, but they were short, so students didn't get bored and it allowed them to finish the lesson on time. If you are going to have several activities, they must be short; otherwise you will be in serious trouble to finish within the 30-35 minutes the lesson should last.
• The whole lesson was very consistent; it dealt with the same vocabulary and concepts along all activities, from beginning to end, giving students confidence. It was a solid and sound lesson, with limited and clear ideas.
• Finally, our classmates gave students a time warning while they were doing the activities, allowing them to gain control over what they were doing. This is a small, but very important thing that can really make a difference in a lesson.

Among the few things that could be improved, or I would bear in mind if I were to do a lesson like this I would mention the following:

• The flashcards could have had words printed in a larger size, in order to be easily read by students. Using a generous size and a font which is easy to read is very important. I remember that one day in my school placement the English teacher used a font where some letters were easily confused, which made children feel very frustrated.
• Children didn't understand the initial bit on going back on time and a time-machine, but it didn't matter, because what they understood was much more than what they didn't understand. Besides, teachers didn't go over and over those things; they just jumped to the next, not making a big deal out of it. As long as what is understood during the lesson is more and more important than what is not understood, it is alright.
• The quiz consisted on multiple-choice questions. Only questions were read aloud, leaving some of the answers not understood. It would have been better to go over the questions and all possible answers.
• The last activity was the only one done individually and in writing. It was perfectly fine, but it made me think if it could send the wrong message to students, something like "important things (written exercises) are done individually, while trivial things (games) can be done in group". If we always design our lessons in this way we might be reinforcing this idea about games being stupid things and writing being something where real learning takes place. It reminded me of a book I am reading, where a literacy teacher tells an anecdote: a headteacher went to watch a lesson in order to assess a teacher, and when he saw that the teacher was telling a story, he left saying that he would return later, when the teacher was "actually teaching"...

The second lesson followed after a break, and this time our classmates actually changed the topic of the lesson, compared to what they did on the first term. This lesson was about senses, and since it was with the very same group of students, it gave us the chance to see that the proposal for a lesson really makes a difference in the outcome, since this time students weren't half as confident and active. The things I liked the most about this lesson are these:

• The topic, senses, is very interesting and can lead a very diverse and attractive activities.
• The five senses and the organs related to them were introduced clearly by our classmates.
• Students had a real purpose to do the activities, as they were detectives facing challenges to solve a problem. This is a great way to engage students.
• Our classmates spent time with the five groups of students while they were doing the activities, although they couldn't stay with one group all the time, because there were three teachers for five groups of students.
• They used a virtual friend to introduce the problem on the screen, which can be an attractive way to start the lesson. We have seen things like this before done, for instance in the project Reconstruyendo a Miró, and it can be really great.
• They used a song, which always helps to create a joyful atmosphere and provides a fun way to memorise vocabulary.

The things I think could be improved, or I would take into account to design a lesson like this are the following:

• The video with the virtual friend explaining the problem was very difficult to understand. As a matter of fact, only one student managed to understand it. It would have been better to record their own voices in order to control the flow of speech. Tellagami allows to do this, and would have produced a similar video.
• When our classmates explained that they would be solving challenges in order to get clues about where Nina's glasses were, they handed out the sheets before they finished with the explanations. As a result, students started reading and discussing, instead of listening. One must make sure to give all instructions before handing out attractive material!
• The instructions for the game weren't understood. Some children went to ask their teacher for help. Something didn't work there. As a matter of fact, the two teachers that cam with the group of students took part in the lesson, when they hadn't done so in the previous lesson, which proves that they felt they had to.
• The scents for the first challenge were cinnamon, coffee, vinegar, strawberry, perfume and vanilla. I reckon students were likely to know the names of two in English, and one of them they wouldn't even know what it was exactly in Basque. They were way too difficult, although finding scents to give to students was very difficult itself. Maybe it could have been done with more familiar material, like common food items or things used at school.
• The second challenge, a puzzle made up of pieces of a sentence which had to be placed in order, was also a bit difficult if the objective was to get it done quickly. It took so long that they actually didn't give the feedback about the answer, and the clue it lead to.
• The song in the third challenge was way too difficult again, with plenty of vocabulary that they hadn't worked on before. They sang very fast and the text was too long. Students decided to forget about listening to the song and concentrated on trying to fill in the gaps using information from the context, but they needed a lot of help from their teachers and our classmates to finish the task. They should've either chosen an easier song, or used only the most familiar vocabulary (senses and organs) for the exercise. Besides, not even all of our classmates knew the song, which didn't help much.
• Our classmates didn't use the flashcards they had put on the board, nor the cards with drawings that they had given students at the beginning of the lesson. Showing material and not using it causes confusion to students, I think, because one expects that they will be used and is waiting for that moment.
• There was a feeling of rush during the whole lesson; teachers and students weren't relaxed. This was very obvious after the previous lesson, where the atmosphere was much more relaxed. Running behind is a bad thing in an English lesson, and it must be avoided at all cost. It is better to forget about doing several activities once you realise that there will not be time to do them all. In this case, it would have been a good idea to give each of the five groups one or two challenges on one sense, and then have them share the results with the rest. That way, you would create an information gap and make the production of output more meaningful.

Not-so-graceful knockout and more lessons

This was a long week, and there are lots of things to comment on. On the one hand, we received the feedback on our last week's lesson and, on the other, we had four more lessons conducted by our classmates.

I will start with our knockout. This is one of those times when you wish you never wrote a diary, because you feel like you would like to swallow up all your words. So bad, that it is even funny. Our teachers' and classmates' opinion on the lesson had little in common with my impressions. These are the things they liked:

• Our general attitude or style as teachers.
• The way we started the lesson, especially with the skirt full of pockets (there we agreed).
• The way we ended the lesson, with a farewell song.
• We only used English.

The list of things they didn't like was much longer:

• The quality of the audio in our story, the fact that we spoke too fast, and the difficulty of the language. Also, we got the impression that overall the video was perceived as being a bit tatty.
• The topic itself, whatever each is good at, was seen as not adequate by some. Also, introducing the structure "to be good at" was considered a bad choice.
• The story itself was difficult to understand.
• It would have been better to tell the story ourselves, without using audiovisuals.
• Asking children to fix their attention on what each animal in the story was good at was a bit too forced.
• Our explanations about what is to be good at something, the examples we gave, weren't understood by children.
• Children didn't understand our instructions about how to play the game either, although the picked it up when we started playing.
• They thought we helped children too much or too soon when they were doing the game.
• When each pair had their turn to solve a challenge, the rest got bored.
• Watching the video with the story didn't help children when it came to play the game. They used the cards we gave them with the animals to check what each was good at.
• Asking them to teach us a goodbye song in the end was a bit risky, because what if they had said they didn't?

I didn't have much time to think while they gave us the feedback, but two flashes came to my mind: first, "oh,my god, I have lost my judgement completely, being so happy and excited about the idea of finishing the degree has blurred my mind and I haven't seen any of this", then I felt guilty, because I had actually been the one who proposed to use this story, which had been created previously with another group of classmates. The worst thing is that when the four of us in the group met to discuss the feedback after class, we realised that we had similar opinions about the lesson, which differed a lot from the feedback. The only concern that we had when we prepared the lesson was the speed of our speech in the recording, which we couldn't change because we didn't manage to find another suitable song that lasted over 3 minutes in time to record the voices again. We were also aware that children wouldn't fully understand the story after watching it only once, and that is why the main purpose of the game was to actually be a means to understand the story, with the help of the cards we had given them at the beginning.

The feedback received from the English teacher of the class who came to visit also points out that the story wasn't clear, and adds that we worked on receptive skills but did little about production. It agrees with the feedback we had received in class on several positive aspects (good beginning and ending), as adds a few more positive things: we gave good input, the topics were adapted to the age of students, and the materials and resources were adequate.

The group that did their lesson after us, with the same group of children, received much more positive feedback, even though they didn't have a good impression themselves (funny world, the opposite that happened to us!). The emphasis was placed on how good their story was and how well they told it taking turns the three of them, which I totally agreed with.

Of course, it was a pity to end our group presentations in the degree with a failure, because the four of us agreed that this was the most negative feedback we had received so far, but I won't complain one bit about it, because I believe that failure is essential for learning. I was an undergraduate student at this university 25 years ago, and comparing to those times (I know it is almost prehistory for my current classmates), one of the few things that I feel has changed for worse is the fact that students are given very little opportunities to face failure nowadays. The other bad thing, and this has remained the same since back then, is that the university is an institution that has no will to learn; as a matter of fact, it refuses to learn and puts all sorts of obstacles to learning as an institution. But that is another topic altogether.

Thankfully, I have failed in all possible areas of life - personal, professional and academic - so I know it is not nice, but it can be good, if you learn how to deal with it. Also, I know that thoughtful teachers give negative feedback in the quantity that they believe the student can handle, which turns the whole picture into something actually positive.

Next, we will have to design a set of five activities or so before the end of the term, and describe the procedure to put them into practice in class. We were given the choice to link those activities to the lesson we had prepared, but considering the negative feedback we had serious doubts about whether we should continue with the activities we had already started to outline, or drop the idea altogether. On the other hand, this story was really inspiring for us, and it made us think of all sort of exciting activities which we thought were worth sharing. It is hard to draw the line between not giving up, and being plainly stubborn.

So, after discussing in the group during the week, we have decided to try to improve the story as much as we can, to finish designing the activities we had originally thought of, bearing in mind the aspects that were pointed out in the feedback, and we will also develop some ideas for activities linked with the lesson we prepared during the first term, which received far more positive feedback. A compromise between not giving up on our ideas, and acknowledging that when all the rest agree on something, and it is only the four of us who don't, no doubt they are right.

But, as I said, we have had four lessons during the week, so there is still a lot to comment on. We had two lessons on Wednesday, and another two on Friday, all of them with different groups of children. The first group on Wednesday had a real challenge: one of the groupmates fell ill at the last moment, which must have altered greatly their plans; the two teachers that accompanied the group of students kept on taking part in the lesson, which seemed extremely rude to me; the group was really loud, which was a big challenge; and in the first activity, their key wasn't attracted by the magnet, contrary to what would've been expected. I think they did very well overcoming those initial difficulties, to be honest. These are other things I liked:

• They gave English names to students, and children loved it. It didn't help much addressing students by their name, because they didn't have enough time to sink into their new identity in only one lesson, but it proved how good the idea is.
• Using science activities in the English class is a great idea. They were very attractive activities. Activities that involve manipulation are very interesting.
• The students were really engaged in all activities.
• Using the surprise factor, with one of the teachers entering the classroom with an urgent problem is also a good idea to use once in a while and break the expected routine.
• The materials that children could use were very clearly presented with large flashcards.
• They asked students to first explain how they would get the key out of the bucket, and then to actually do it; thus pushing them to produce output.
• The activities had a purpose for students, and not just for the teachers; students had to experiment and solve problems, and then explain their outcomes, and that was a wonderful idea.
• The lesson had a closing activity, where students received a diploma after having done so well, Again, if used in every lesson it would lose its strength, but it is a very nice thing to do, and will be especially helpful when the class is learning very challenging content, or is struggling with things that seemed easier. It's a resource to keep in mind when students' motivation and self esteem need a boost.

Among the things that could be improved or things that need careful attention, I would mention the following, and most of them are related to mistakes that I recognise in myself. Actually, more than feedback for our classmates, they would be notes for myself in case I decided to put their lesson into practice in the future:

• It was obvious that saying that touching the water was very dangerous in order to justify that the key couldn't be taken out of the bucket using their hands acted as a powerful magnet. I can't think of a better way to present the activity as a problem that students need to help solving, but maybe it would be more simple to just present it as a challenge with a condition: try to think of ways to get the key out of the water without touching the water.
• It is difficult to speak clearly while acting as being agitated, so children didn't understand what the teacher who came in with the bucket said. As a general rule, I think that if one can avoid acting agitated, it is better, unless the only thing that students need to understand is that one is agitated.
• If students had had access to manipulating the materials while thinking and writing down alternatives to get the key out of the bucket, they might have come up with more imaginative results. Also, it might be difficult for some students to postpone the manipulation until all the thinking and explaining is finished. That is something that the teacher will need to adjust to each group of students; it worked fine with this group, but it might not go that well with other groups.
• It would have been a good idea to give a time warning before finishing each activity ("you have 2 minutes left"). We tend to forget that even though we have a very clear idea of how the lesson is going to develop, students don't, and too often we forget to anticipate the change of activities to them. Just like we wouldn't like our teachers at university to give us an assignment and them telling us without notice that the time to finish it is over, we must try to get in our students' shoes and act the same.
• In general, the teachers' style seemed a bit bossy to me, but maybe it is because I come from the pre-primary education degree, and I guess that our classmates who are taking the primary teaching degree probably think that we act childish and a bit like clowns.
• One of the groups didn't get to come to the front and show the rest what they had thought of, because they were told theirs was very similar to the previous group. Children might have thought that it was unfair, because in reality all solutions were very much alike.
• After the students showed their solutions, the teachers explained another option to get the key out of the bucket, using only the magnets. I feel that this went against the task feedback circle that we have learned, in the sense that students were given a task (coming up with a way to get the key out of the bucket without touching the water), and they succeeded, so why did the teacher have to come up with another solution? Students might interpret that their solutions were not good enough, so it is something to use with care. The teacher could have proposed a new challenge instead: "seeing that you did so well, how about an even more difficult challenge: try to get the key out of the bucket using only one type of material".
• The problem of the key not being attracted to the magnet could have been avoided with rehearsal. Another graceful - but very difficult - way to deal with the situation would have been to say something like "I also would expect the key to be attracted to the magnet, should we try with another key?". I myself wouldn't have been able to come up with that solution then and there, but it's an idea to keep in mind for the future.
• As it was pointed out when our classmates prepared a lesson on magnets in the first term, it would have been a good idea to give different materials to each group, in order to create an information gap that would have made students more interested in listening to the other groups' solutions, in both of the first two activities.
• The third activity, going fishing, was very good too, but since our classmates were pressed with time, and it was more complex than the other two, students failed to understand the instructions at the beginning. I am sure that our classmates introduced this new activity so that it would be clear that they had worked on the proposal they did for the first term, but it wasn't necessary. Having three activities made then go over their time, and the lesson would have been just as good with only the first two activities.
• Finally, the quality of input could also be improved, partly with things that can be easily done, such as knowing all the vocabulary involved in the lesson (bucket, for instance).

The second group that morning changed their lesson compared to the proposal for the first term. It was also a lesson around science activities, so all the positive aspects pointed out for the previous group on the topic are also valid for this one. This time, it was a lesson around density, floating and sinking. One of our classmates had done her school placement with the group of students, so we expected them to feel very comfortable and spontaneous. The things I most liked from this lesson are the following:

• They used an autobiographical story, which sparked students' interest (well, maybe not that much this particular group of students' interest, as they seemed quite a challenge in that sense, to be honest).
• Our classmates stayed each with one group of children, monitoring, giving input and helping them.
• They involved students in the activities, although maybe they could have given them more leading and protagonist roles.
• There was group discussion and teamwork involved in some of the activities.
• All activities were very well linked with each other, in the sense that each lead straight into the next; as a matter of fact, so directly that it seemed too much of a coincidence, but I will come back to that in the end.
• Students got to manipulate objects after having expressed their hypothesis, in order to test if they fulfilled or not. Again, chances to manipulate are a great source of interaction in the classroom.
• Even though the video about the experiment of throwing a bowling ball into different waters was difficult to understand by the students, the task that was proposed to them (identifying the types of water bodies where the ball was thrown into) was achievable. As a matter of fact, even if students didn't understand a word that had been said, they could still answer.

I would point out the following as aspects to improve or to bear in mind when putting into practice a lesson like this:

• The autobiographical story was only partly believeable, as some of the objects are not usually carried in a handbag (a stone, clothespins). Making the autobiographical story as truthful as it can be is an important aspect in my opinion, because otherwise students can think that the teacher is pulling their leg or taking them as very gullible persons.
• No time warning to finish the activities was given, and it would have been very helpful.
• Some of our classmates sounded a bit bossy, but my impression could be linked to what I explained above.
• Even if students did the testing on the first activity in groups, they were given an individual sheet to complete a table. That could have been done in groups too, leading to more interaction and negotiation among them.
• Students hardly participated, produced very little output, and showed no enthusiasm at all. This surprised me, as from what I have seen in my school placement the last cycle of primary is when students start producing much more, after having worked on their receptive skills for some years. But maybe that only happened in the school where I was, and is not a general thing.
• Students had no purpose of their own to do the activities, except for maybe the first. It was more a collection of demonstrations conducted by the teachers than activities where the focus was on students. Students were like the magician's helper in the circus.
• It would have been nice to have a more formal ending activity. Maybe there could have been something that made them return to the opening story, as a way to close the circle, or something like that.
• This group also went over the time limit set for the lesson. The lesson could have been just as good with one less experiment, really.

Finally, it was a bit awkward to see that even though students participated and produced little, when they did, it was with exact terms in response to very open questions. Students answered "sink", "shape", "density" and "Dead Sea" to the open ended questions almost immediately and, at the same time, they didn't seem to be fluent at all in English. It seemed like they had either worked on this topic before, maybe in their regular Basque lessons, or they knew beforehand about the lesson they would be doing. Some of us in the audience had the same feeling but. of course, we could be wrong, and maybe they felt especially shy for some reason, and didn't show how fluent and accurate they really were. Even if the lesson was a repetition of something they had already worked on, or if they had received prior information, that wouldn't change the fact that the activities were very good and could easily be put into practice making students the protagonists. I find more intriguing what would bring a group of very good classmates, capable of designing an excellent lesson, to try to have a perfect lesson. Would something like that happen if you got too carried away by the experiments you came up with, and tried to do them all in the same lesson, thus needing perfect transitions and having to do them all yourself not to waste any time? would it be excessive pressure to produce a lesson where everything comes out well? excessive competitiveness towards your classmates?

The first lesson on Friday morning was prepared by a group of three classmates. They maintained the topic chosen for the first term (things we are good at, and things we are not good at), but only partly, because they also introduced the circus topic. These are the things I most liked about the lesson:

• They had three corners in the classroom, and each corner had a different activity lead by each of them. Therefore, children were doing different things at the same time. This is a very interesting idea.
• Our classmates introduced a drawing activity to synthesise and express what had been learned during the lesson. This is a very good idea too: having a final activity that will round up what has been learned, and using means other than writing to summarise. For the younger students, drawings offer a great support to later on explain ideas with words, because the rest of students have a visual source of information which complements what is often hard for the student to express orally.
• Students were encouraged to interact with the audience, thus multiplying the opportunities to receive input during the lesson, and to produce. That was a very good idea.
• Those students who had finished drawing started to rehearse for the show, while the rest were given time to finish drawing. Having an activity for those who finish early is also a very good idea.
• They had a formal ending for the lesson, with the show they put up for the audience.
• The topic, a circus show, is very attractive and rich. It offers opportunities to design an awful lot of activities around it.

These are the things that could be improved or I would bear in mind for the future:

• Having no name stickers for children was a pity, because it didn't allow to personalise the lesson and diminished the interaction among teachers and students.
• Acting agitated at the beginning of the lesson caused the message not to be understood, especially because it had to be inferred by the part of the telephone conversation we could hear. As a result, students didn't understand the purpose of the activities they were about to do during the lesson. I would chose another way to explain the problem in a simpler manner.
• Students changed activities with no time warning, and too quickly. The result would have been just as good if they had remained in one activity all the time, because they would have spent more time on it and in the final show they would have been more eager to see what the other groups had been doing.
• It would have been a good idea to have a song for the rope jumping activity. That would have also helped get the right rhythm, as it was a bit too fast for children.
• Asking students to repeat parts of a sentence they don't understand, like they did in the final show, doesn't help them much. The teachers could have acted as master of ceremonies, and it would have been just fine.
• The lesson had too many focal points; it would have been better to concentrate only on the topic of what we are good at and what we are not that good at, or on the circus, but trying to go for both was to much.
• The amount of activities seemed excessive; students had too many stimuli, and they had difficulty choosing where to focus their attention. Some of the activities could have been saved for further lessons, and it would have been fine too.
• One of the students was left standing for some moments, waiting to perform her hula-hooping, which created a bit of an awkward moment. This proves that it is difficult to distribute duties when several teachers are conducting the lesson, but it usually seems like a bigger deal to adults than it does to children.

The last lesson of the week was prepared by four other classmates. They didn't repeat the topic of the first term exactly, but it was linked to food and based on manipulation all the same, so the essential idea remained. This is was I most liked about their lesson:

• They had a solid structure for the lesson: a warmer to review parts of the body, another warmer to review names of fruit, and an main activity where the vocabulary reviewed would be used. All that in a very creative framework.
• They had both calm and lively activities, with a lot of changes in the rhythm during the lesson.
• The main activity was very creative and manipulative: making a face with pieces of fruit.
• Students were distributed in four tables, standing, with the help of one teacher per table, and doing the main activity in groups of 2-3. It seemed like a very good grouping to me, because making only one face in a group of 4-6 would have been too crowded.
• They had planned to show the result of the activity to each other, so each small group would explain how they did their face, following the model given by the teacher ("a kiwi for the eyes"). They also asked questions letting students fill in the gap ("what did you use for the ...?", pointing to the nose).
• Part of the content was probably known by the students, such as the names of parts of the body and some fruits. That helped students feel confident, as the lesson built up on what they already knew. Introducing some things they already know, and some which are new is very important.
• They had a song with parts of the body to end the lesson, which was very appropriate.
• Getting to eat what they had built was great.
• Students were encouraged to interact with the audience, offering fruit.

The things I think could be improved, or I would take into account in the future are these:

• It was difficult to calm students down after the two initial games, which were increasingly exciting. It is ok, but it just needs to be taken into account.
• It would have been good to review the names of fruits before beginning the second game, because students only used the names of the fruits they already knew. Also, it would be better to play that game on the floor, instead of sitting on chairs, as students get very excited and can hurt themselves.
• It could have been nice to show a model of the face made up with fruit. As a model made with the exact fruits they were given would most probably caused all of them to copy it, another kind of model could have been offered, in order to promote challenging solutions, such as any work by Arcimboldo:

• It was difficult to show the face done to the rest of the class, because if the plates were tilted, the fruits slid. If there were several lessons on the topic, the teacher could take pictures of the faces, put them all up, and then have students presenting them.
• Students didn't pay attention to the presentations of other students. Maybe each group could have created a different part of the body, to introduce an information gap. Alternatively, all students could have been asked to leave their plates on a table, sit down on the floor in a circle, and then have each group present their work.
• Not all groups had the chance to present their work. Maybe the lesson could have had only one warmer, and use the main activity to introduce and review the rest of vocabulary, so there would have been more time for presentations.
• Towards the end of the lesson, teachers introduced a new topic (the number of pieces of fruit we are meant to eat everyday). Students didn't understand the question, as it wasn't related to what they had been doing during the lesson. It would have been better to leave it for another lesson, as the lesson itself was already great.
• Some of the teachers didn't know the final song, which could have easily been prevented with rehearsing.