David Pennino

Please write a reflection about the mini lessons in which you were both teacher and student.

Please use the following questions to guide your reflection.

1. As a teacher, what was your biggest challenge while planning the lesson?

a. The biggest challenge that I had while planning this lesson was constructing it in

another language. I did mine in German, but I hadn’t actually taken a German

class in years, so I was rusty at it.

2. As a teacher, what challenges did you face when trying to teach your lesson/content to

the class?

a. The biggest challenge I faced while trying to teach the lesson to the class was

trying to avoid looking at the board when teaching. This was something that I

really was not good at. The reason why I was so reliant on looking at the board

was that I was trying to make sure I pronounced all of the German in my

slideshow correctly.

3. What did you do to “overcome” these challenges?

a. Well, I tried my hardest to not look at the board as much and try to make eye

contact with members of the class as much as I could, but I am not sure if I really

did a good job maintaining eye contact with members of the class.

4. As a teacher, how did this activity simulate trying to instruct one or more ELL students in

your classroom? How did you use "language" in your instruction?

a. This assignment simulated trying to instruct one or more ELL students in the

classroom in that the presentation I gave was entirely in German. For the most

part, nobody in the room could speak this language, yet they still had to keep up
 with the lesson and learn what I was trying to teach, something that they may

have struggled with if they didn’t already know German.

5. As a student, what did you rely on most to comprehend what was being taught?

a. As a student, one of the things I tried to do in order to understand what the

“teachers” were trying to teach is pay attention to the visuals they included in the

slideshow. The visuals helped me understand the words they were trying to say,

as pictures were often paired with words. I may not know or understand Arabic,

but I can tell from a picture in a slideshow if “shopping” or “reading” is being

described in the presentation.

6. As part of the "class", how can you relate this activity to the experience of ELL students

in an English-speaking classroom?

a. Well, since I couldn’t understand the presentations that were in Spanish, Arabic,

Gaelic, and even German, I can imagine that for ELL students who speak little to

no English, school must be a challenge! It must be hard for them to stay focused

on the lesson the teacher is trying to teach if they can not understand anything the

teacher is saying.

7. Overall, what do you think was the purpose of this activity?

a. I believe that the purpose of this activity was, ultimately, for us to put ourselves in

the shoes of ELL students. By having to try and learn from and participate in

lessons that were taught in a lesson other than English, we got a glimpse of how

life at a new school must be like for non-English speakers who enter the

American public school system.