UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA
College of Education
⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄⋄
TMS3734: Teaching Tourism in the FET Phase
Assignment 5: Portfolio | 2026
⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄⋄
TMS3734
Module Code:
Teaching Tourism in the FET Phase: Cur-
Module Name:
riculum Studies
Portfolio (Tasks 1 to 4)
Assessment Type:
Assignment 5
Assignment Number:
4 November 2026
Due Date:
100
Total Marks:
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for TMS3734, UNISA 2026
,UNISA | TMS3734 Assignment 5: Portfolio
Portfolio Task 1: Reflective Narrative on Teaching Practice Experience
1.1 Overview of my Tourism teaching practice experience
Question 1(a)
Describe the school where you did your teaching practice. Where is it located? What
grades did you teach?
My teaching practice took place at Jacaranda Ridge Secondary School, a public co-educational
school in Muckleneuk, Pretoria, a few minutes from the UNISA Muckleneuk Ridge campus.
The school draws about 1 100 learners from the surrounding suburbs and from Sunnyside,
Hatfield and Mamelodi, and it offers Tourism as one of its FET electives. Over eight weeks I
taught two Grade 11 Tourism classes, 11A with 42 learners and 11C with 47 learners, and
I covered one Grade 10 Tourism class of 38 learners when their teacher attended a district
workshop. The classrooms had chalkboards and fixed desks, and neither had a working
projector, which shaped how I planned every lesson. Learners’ names in this narrative are
pseudonyms.
Question 1(b)
How diverse was the learner population in terms of backgrounds and learning abilities?
The learners differed in language, home circumstances and ability. Home languages included
Sepedi, isiZulu, Setswana, Xitsonga, English and Afrikaans, and two learners from Mozambican
families spoke Portuguese at home, so English, the language of learning and teaching, was a
second or third language for most of the class. Economic circumstances ranged widely: some
learners owned the textbook and had data for research, while about a third shared textbooks
and had no internet at home. Abilities varied just as much. Several learners in 11C read well
below grade level, one learner with low vision needed large-print handouts and a front seat,
and two others had support plans for dyslexia drawn up under the SIAS policy (DBE, 2014). A
few strong learners finished tasks early and needed extension work. Planning a single lesson
that served all of them was the central challenge of the placement.
Question 1(c)
How would you describe your relationship with your Tourism mentor and the learners?
Give examples.
Mrs Nomsa Dlamini, my mentor, had taught Tourism for sixteen years, and our relationship
moved from observation to partnership. In the first two weeks she modelled lessons while I
recorded how she handled transitions; after that we co-planned each unit on Thursdays and
she observed every second lesson. Her Friday feedback was specific. After one noisy 11C les-
son she pointed out that I kept raising my voice over the noise and suggested that I stand still
and wait with a raised hand instead. The following Monday the class settled within ten sec-
onds, and I have kept the habit. We disagreed once: she preferred teaching map work from the
textbook diagrams, while I wanted learners to handle printed maps. We tried both with paral-
lel groups, and the printed maps produced fewer errors on the exit ticket, so she adopted the
approach for the next unit.
Page 2 of 26
, UNISA | TMS3734 Assignment 5: Portfolio
With the learners I built rapport through small, regular acts. I greeted each learner at the door,
learned names from the seating chart in the first week, and linked content to their own expe-
rience. Sipho, a quiet learner in 11A, began to contribute after I asked about the family trip to
Durban that he had mentioned in a journal entry, and by week five he volunteered to lead his
group’s presentation. Lerato, in 11C, struggled with reading, yet she became the most convinc-
ing tour guide in our role-plays, which changed how her classmates saw her.
Question 1(d)
Detail a memorable Tourism lesson you conducted. How long was the lesson? What teach-
ing and learning resources did you use, and how did the learners respond?
My most memorable lesson was a 50-minute Grade 11C lesson on calculating time differences
and flight arrival times. The objective was that learners could work out the local arrival time
of a flight from a time-difference table, a skill on which about half the class had lost marks in a
test the week before. I prepared one printed boarding pass per pair, each showing a departure
time, flight duration and destination city, a large time-zone map built from four A3 printouts,
and a number line drawn on the chalkboard.
The learners’ first reaction was a collective groan about subtracting across midnight, but the
boarding-pass format changed the mood. Pairs raced to land their flights correctly, and the
noise in the room became productive. Midway through I noticed that about half the pairs had
the right hours but had forgotten the change of date. I stopped the class, worked one example
on the number line, and asked every pair to recheck. This was reflection-in-action in Schön’s
(1983) sense, because the plan changed while the lesson was still running. On the exit ticket,
36 of the 47 learners gave the correct arrival time and date.
Question 1(e)
Considering your experience teaching Tourism, are you satisfied with your career choice,
or do you have any regrets? Explain.
I am satisfied with my career choice and have no regrets, although the placement tested me.
The workload surprised me: planning, resourcing and marking for 89 learners without a pro-
jector or enough textbooks took most evenings. When I worked through the placement with
Gibbs’s (1988) cycle, I described what happened, admitted that I felt exhausted in week three,
evaluated what had worked, and concluded that my best lessons were the ones in which learn-
ers handled real material, such as the boarding passes. That conclusion is what makes me con-
fident about teaching Tourism. It is a subject in which learners can see a route into work and
into the heritage and geography of their own country, and I enjoyed being part of that. For my
first year of teaching I intend to build a bank of low-cost, hands-on resources and to keep a
reflective journal.
Page 3 of 26
College of Education
⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄⋄
TMS3734: Teaching Tourism in the FET Phase
Assignment 5: Portfolio | 2026
⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄⋄
TMS3734
Module Code:
Teaching Tourism in the FET Phase: Cur-
Module Name:
riculum Studies
Portfolio (Tasks 1 to 4)
Assessment Type:
Assignment 5
Assignment Number:
4 November 2026
Due Date:
100
Total Marks:
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for TMS3734, UNISA 2026
,UNISA | TMS3734 Assignment 5: Portfolio
Portfolio Task 1: Reflective Narrative on Teaching Practice Experience
1.1 Overview of my Tourism teaching practice experience
Question 1(a)
Describe the school where you did your teaching practice. Where is it located? What
grades did you teach?
My teaching practice took place at Jacaranda Ridge Secondary School, a public co-educational
school in Muckleneuk, Pretoria, a few minutes from the UNISA Muckleneuk Ridge campus.
The school draws about 1 100 learners from the surrounding suburbs and from Sunnyside,
Hatfield and Mamelodi, and it offers Tourism as one of its FET electives. Over eight weeks I
taught two Grade 11 Tourism classes, 11A with 42 learners and 11C with 47 learners, and
I covered one Grade 10 Tourism class of 38 learners when their teacher attended a district
workshop. The classrooms had chalkboards and fixed desks, and neither had a working
projector, which shaped how I planned every lesson. Learners’ names in this narrative are
pseudonyms.
Question 1(b)
How diverse was the learner population in terms of backgrounds and learning abilities?
The learners differed in language, home circumstances and ability. Home languages included
Sepedi, isiZulu, Setswana, Xitsonga, English and Afrikaans, and two learners from Mozambican
families spoke Portuguese at home, so English, the language of learning and teaching, was a
second or third language for most of the class. Economic circumstances ranged widely: some
learners owned the textbook and had data for research, while about a third shared textbooks
and had no internet at home. Abilities varied just as much. Several learners in 11C read well
below grade level, one learner with low vision needed large-print handouts and a front seat,
and two others had support plans for dyslexia drawn up under the SIAS policy (DBE, 2014). A
few strong learners finished tasks early and needed extension work. Planning a single lesson
that served all of them was the central challenge of the placement.
Question 1(c)
How would you describe your relationship with your Tourism mentor and the learners?
Give examples.
Mrs Nomsa Dlamini, my mentor, had taught Tourism for sixteen years, and our relationship
moved from observation to partnership. In the first two weeks she modelled lessons while I
recorded how she handled transitions; after that we co-planned each unit on Thursdays and
she observed every second lesson. Her Friday feedback was specific. After one noisy 11C les-
son she pointed out that I kept raising my voice over the noise and suggested that I stand still
and wait with a raised hand instead. The following Monday the class settled within ten sec-
onds, and I have kept the habit. We disagreed once: she preferred teaching map work from the
textbook diagrams, while I wanted learners to handle printed maps. We tried both with paral-
lel groups, and the printed maps produced fewer errors on the exit ticket, so she adopted the
approach for the next unit.
Page 2 of 26
, UNISA | TMS3734 Assignment 5: Portfolio
With the learners I built rapport through small, regular acts. I greeted each learner at the door,
learned names from the seating chart in the first week, and linked content to their own expe-
rience. Sipho, a quiet learner in 11A, began to contribute after I asked about the family trip to
Durban that he had mentioned in a journal entry, and by week five he volunteered to lead his
group’s presentation. Lerato, in 11C, struggled with reading, yet she became the most convinc-
ing tour guide in our role-plays, which changed how her classmates saw her.
Question 1(d)
Detail a memorable Tourism lesson you conducted. How long was the lesson? What teach-
ing and learning resources did you use, and how did the learners respond?
My most memorable lesson was a 50-minute Grade 11C lesson on calculating time differences
and flight arrival times. The objective was that learners could work out the local arrival time
of a flight from a time-difference table, a skill on which about half the class had lost marks in a
test the week before. I prepared one printed boarding pass per pair, each showing a departure
time, flight duration and destination city, a large time-zone map built from four A3 printouts,
and a number line drawn on the chalkboard.
The learners’ first reaction was a collective groan about subtracting across midnight, but the
boarding-pass format changed the mood. Pairs raced to land their flights correctly, and the
noise in the room became productive. Midway through I noticed that about half the pairs had
the right hours but had forgotten the change of date. I stopped the class, worked one example
on the number line, and asked every pair to recheck. This was reflection-in-action in Schön’s
(1983) sense, because the plan changed while the lesson was still running. On the exit ticket,
36 of the 47 learners gave the correct arrival time and date.
Question 1(e)
Considering your experience teaching Tourism, are you satisfied with your career choice,
or do you have any regrets? Explain.
I am satisfied with my career choice and have no regrets, although the placement tested me.
The workload surprised me: planning, resourcing and marking for 89 learners without a pro-
jector or enough textbooks took most evenings. When I worked through the placement with
Gibbs’s (1988) cycle, I described what happened, admitted that I felt exhausted in week three,
evaluated what had worked, and concluded that my best lessons were the ones in which learn-
ers handled real material, such as the boarding passes. That conclusion is what makes me con-
fident about teaching Tourism. It is a subject in which learners can see a route into work and
into the heritage and geography of their own country, and I enjoyed being part of that. For my
first year of teaching I intend to build a bank of low-cost, hands-on resources and to keep a
reflective journal.
Page 3 of 26
