Reflection that is actually a diary

The draft is description plus conclusions, with the analysis missing - and that is also why it is 1,100 words. Three hundred and fifty words of narrative contribute nothing the criteria reward, which means the overrun is a symptom of the genre, not a separate problem.

• Cut the minute-by-minute description entirely. You may refer to a single moment as evidence ('in TP3 the gap-fill ran to minute 34 of 45'), and that is all you need.
• That cut alone gets you under 1,000 and buys roughly 250 words for analysis - the part that is being marked.
• Then convert each 'issue' into a mechanism. 'I need to manage time better' is a conclusion; the marker needs to see what produced the overrun, because that is the only thing you can act on. Same for 'clearer instructions': unclear to whom, at which stage, with what consequence?
• The tutor's sentence is not your analysis. 'My tutor said my timing was off, which is true' hands the thinking to somebody else.

Fix the genre first - every paragraph as claim, evidence, explanation, source, action - and the word count and the grade both move.

Issue: I consistently overran the controlled-practice stage, which squeezed out the productive task (TP 2: 12 of 45 minutes left for production; TP 3: 8 minutes).

Evidence: my planned timings against the trainer's observation times, and the two lessons in which the freer task was cut or truncated.

Why - the analysis:

• I was treating the exercise as the point of the lesson rather than as a check, so I kept going until every item was correct.
• I had no checkpoint to tell me the class was ready to move on; whole-class answer-checking item by item was my only instrument.
• I was reluctant to cut an activity I had spent time preparing - a planning problem showing up as a timing problem.

Source: methodology on aims and staging, and on teacher talk and checking procedures, cited properly at the point of use.

Action for TP 5: write clock times, mark one stage as droppable, and leave the exercise when monitoring shows 80% of pairs have the first four items right - checked by monitoring, not by whole-class checking.

How I will know: I will write down the time the productive stage starts and compare it with the plan.

What must change:

• As it stands the bibliography is decoration. Two uncited names look like padding and invite the question of whether you read them. Either cite them where they support a specific claim (author, year, page for anything specific) or remove them.
• Cite at the point of use, not only at the end: the reason a source is there is to support or challenge a claim you have just made.
• Keep quotations short and integrated; one accurate sentence beats a block quote eating your word budget.

A source you only half remember:

• Do not cite it. Citations are claims about what you have read.
• Either spend 30–40 minutes finding and reading the section, or use a source you did read.
• If you know the idea but not the source, write the idea in your own words and support it with evidence from your own classroom - that is legitimate in this assignment, which is about your teaching, not a literature review.

Finally: re-count the words. Adding citations and analysis while cutting description is the point, but the total still has to land inside 750–1,000.