Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

Reflection

The students I was observing this Teaching Practice (TP) had no English teacher, so it

was difficult for me to immediately jump in with a full English lesson. So I started off with Dear,

Zoo, the students were familiar with animals. Now that the students have prior understanding of

the animals, I was able to subtly introduce them to Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?.

I started off with asking them to put their thinking hats on to see if they can remember any animals,

that tapped into their prior knowledge and showed me what animals they remember. I also asked

them what colors they see or animals they see whilst reading the story to engage them and make

them feel involved. The students were engaged and answering, some even raised their hands to

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ask questions and make sounds of the animals. Before class I have found that the coloring book I

made for the students was too small, and a parent had asked us to use her activity which was also

small, but I felt that her activity would make her and her child proud. I felt that just the word red

bird was too difficult for the students to realize that they should color it red. I realize now that the

activity lacked differentiation and that it was very timid, I regret my decision to follow my teachers

instructions of using only one activity and my mistake of having a too small coloring book. I

scribbled the colors on each of the names to make it easier for them to follow. The students I felt

didn’t fully grasp the concept I took to the side to go through different questions and games to help

them build their knowledge. I used their coloring and checklist as the formative and summative

assessment, the students showed me they understood when they colored according to the color

they needed to and I used the checklist to ensure that all students grasped the overall concept of

the story. The disruptions that occurred were mainly from Hamdan and Saif, SEN students, they

would sometimes suddenly move and distract one another with animal sounds. I had yet to find a

strategy that worked effectively, my MCT stated that I focused more on the bad behavior rather

than good behavior, there was a student that didn’t sit nicely and I was asked her to sit nicely or I

won’t continue the story and she refused. Looking back, I believe that that was wrong of me, I

should’ve used positive reinforcement instead. My MCT also asked me to use the checklist I

created whilst working on the activity with the students, I was anxious and just kept in mind that I

would fill it out when I was done with the lesson, and I should’ve done it in class. She also asked

me to fix the columns in my lesson plan as they were in one box and were all in bold, and I will

work on that. My lesson did however meet my teaching goal, I used various tones and sounds for

the animals in the story, and the students were thrilled. My MCT and MST praised my tone and

said that I did in fact meet my teaching goal, I was shy at first making various animal noises, but

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when the students reacted positively it really drove my determination. The learning outcome was

“By the end of this lesson students will be able to identify and say the different animals mentioned in

the book, and the names of the colors”. The students met the learning outcomes and the evidence is

displayed in their coloring activity and the checklist I created to keep track of those who have and haven’t

grasped the overall concept, and I assessed it by asking questions.