Diego and Kim's last class

We observed the last class on November 9th. We observed Diego and Kim's class. They taught a grammar lesson about the body parts. This time, they had different students. These kids were more hyperactive than the other ones.

Diego: He is very friendly and kind with the kids. Before the class, he played rock, papers, scissors with the kids. He had a very nice start.

Warm-Up: Review of the vocabulary presented in the last class.
The T paired SS and they played rock,paper, scissors. The one who lost was going to be asked the name of a body part.

This activity was pretty interesting, it showed that the kids are competitive and like to participate. However, the kids did not look like if they learned the vocabulary that was presented in the last class.

Presentation: Introduce the grammar.
The grammar was "I have/I don't have". He presented the grammar using flash cards with vocabulary and signs with the grammar and the numbers 1 and 2. Then, he asked each student to go to the board and paste a flash card next to the most appropiate option. Also, students could decide which number was the most appropiate for the sentence. (e.g. in "I have 2 heads", a student changed the number "2" for the number "1")

The presentation was really good and students seemed to understand.
       
          +During his presentation he said "I don't have two foot" and the correct way is "I dont have two feet"

Practice 1: Identify and pronounce the body parts.
Students were asked the names of the parts, while using the grammar structure, and each student pasted a body part on the board in order to create a whole body.

   +T was asking "how many x do you have?" he did not present that question and students did not seem to understand.

Kim: She had a good start, but she could have raised her voice more because students were no paying attention at all. Fortunately, that was just at the beggining.

Production: Apply the grammar they learned so that they say the body parts they have.

The T asked SS to sit on the floor. Each student was given a flashcard and T was asking the name of the body part that they had on their flashcards. This was a Domino activity.

This activity was good to have students speaking, but they were not using the grammar. The objective was to have students using the grammar they were taught.

      + Kim was asking "How many X do you have?" and "what is this?", as I stated before, they did not present such questions.

Wrap-Up: Review the parts of the body.
SS were presented a song.

That song was good. Using songs to teach is a very good way to have our students learning vocabulary and grammar structures.

     +Kim misspronuonced the word "ear", she said "er".

Teaching grammar is a real challenge. We will have to practice more in order to get better teaching grammar lessons. I could see how my classmates had improved, and I have to say they improved a lot. This experience, just like all the other classes they have taught, will be helpful for them to become better teachers. Generally, it was a very good class.

Note: I already shared this link, but I will do it again just in case. It contains lots of grammar activities that you can do in your classes.


https://sites.google.com/site/easygrammar4kids/to-be-present/to-be-present

3rd time teaching.

On october 19th, I taught my 3rd lesson. It was a grammar lesson. I think that grammar is the hardest skill to teach,it is even harder that listening and reading. I really had problems with the acitivities. I used just one grammar activity, but it was too easy for the kids. Besides that, I did not find any other activity.

My classmate taught the first part of the class, he taught the vocabulary and practiced a little. I practiced the vocabulary too and the grammar, but as I said before the activity was too easy for the kids.

The kids were kind of hyperactive during this lesson and I tried to keep the control of the class. At the end I could not do it, I needed to raise the volume of my voice. Also, I had a hard time trying to make students speak using the grammar in a short roleplay.

However, this was not a bad experience, it was just a chance to learn more.

Now I will share with you a link. If you are going to teach a grammar lesson, and you do not have activities for the class, I recommend you to visit the page. There you will find a lot of activities that you can do.


https://sites.google.com/site/easygrammar4kids/to-be-present/to-be-present

Diego & Kim

On monday 17th, I went to observe the class that Diego and Kim taught. It was a listening. Listening and Reading are very hard to teach, specially if you lack of experience. It is necessary for our students to know the vocabulary that will appear in the listening. Thus, we have to introduce and practice such vocabulary before going through the listening. If our students do not know such vocabulary, they might get confused. Chants and songs are part of the listening skill too, and can be used as a listening in the class.

How to teach listening/reading?

In Listening/Reading you will have to follow the Pre-During, During, and Post-During pattern.

+In the Pre-During, the teacher has to present the vocabulary that the students are going to listen in the during part. Also, teachers have to practice the vocabulary so that they can make sure that students are able to identify such vocabulary.

+In the During, teachers must play the listening and afterwards they have to ask things about the listening. There are 3 durings. In during 1, teacher always have to ask what the listening is about, but not just that, as teachers you have to present some options, something like "Is it about animals? Or about food?". It is easier for students to answer if teachers do that. In the during 2, in this teachers have to ask students to order events in the listening. This part tends to be pretty hard as students might not understand if they are told to order the events. So, teachers have to model the instructions and to find ways to make the explanation easier. In during 3, teachers have to ask students information questions like "What is the color of the shirt?". This part is not as hard as the 2nd during, but it does not mean that it will be easy because sometimes students might not get the answer or will simply ignore the listening.

+In the Post-During, teachers must try to make his or her students speak because that is the goal of the listening (In the reading, the goal is to make students write). This part tends to be hard because kids are shy and cannot establish a conversation. Also, teachers have to figure out how to make students confident. Writting in the board what they have to say is a good idea. Teaching a listening is pretty hard, but as you gain experience it will get easy. 

My classmates taught a good listening class, but there are always some little details like things that can be improved. For example, Kim was speaking too much during his lesson and students might feel frustrated if the teacher talks too much. Also, Diego used an actity that he had already used in the last lesson, and teachers must have a great amount of different activities so that they do not repeat them. However, as I said before, these are just little details, generally, the class was good.


In the next link you can find several listenings for different topics. If you have to teach a listening class and you have not found the listening, you might find it there.

http://www.123listening.com

2nd Teaching Experience

I taught my second class on September 28th. Compared to my first class, I had a huge improvement. This time, just half of the class attended, like 8, and we taught school objects with a listening about that.

I was the first one who was going to present this time and I did not feel nervous at all. In the warm-up, I spinned a bottle and the student which was pointing at was going to say the name of the school object. I was using flashcards to ask the names of such school objects, but the flashcards already had their names on them so I had to cover the names with my hand. 

In the presentation, I introduced new school objects (Sharpener, Colored Pencils, Pencil Case, Tape, and Crayons) and some colors (Black, White, Grey, Pink, and Brown). I had to introduce the colors because there were some colors that the students did not know, and that were part of the listening.

In the first practice, students were given worksheets in which they had to match the color to its name. In this part, some students had trouble matching because they did not know the spelling. Also, I had to check individually because I did not have a method to check. To avoid this, we should have a column with numbers, and the other column with letters.

Then, in the second practice, I gave students worksheets in which they were going to match the picture of a school object to its name. Here, students also had problems while matching. They confused crayons with colored pencils, and Pencil Case with Colored Pencils. Also, I had to check individually, I had the same problem like before.

Finally, in the third practice, students played scramble in the board. I wrote the words of the vocabulary that was presented. Students really liked this activity, they are kind of competitive.  I should have written the words while they were busy with the worksheets, but everything went good.

2nd Observation Class

On September 26th, I went to observe the class that was taught by my classmates. Compared to the last time, both had a very slightly improvement since the last time. This time, very few students attended to class.

Seriously, I think that both teachers need to improve a lot their pronunciations, or at least the pronunciation of the vocabulary that is going to be presented. It is recommended that we check the pronunciations, in dictionaries, of the vocabulary that is going to be presented.

The volume of the voices of both teachers was low, but it increased during the class. The volume of the voice of the teachers need to be high so that all the students in the classroom can hear.

The first teacher forgot to present the spelling of the vocabulary. When presenting vocabulary we MUST present the spelling; otherwise, the class will not be useful for the kids.

Finally, both had trouble with the time. The class started at 3:34 PM and finished at 4:20 PM. The first teacher presented just for 20 minutes. The class was supposed to last one hour.

First time teaching

My first time teaching. I have to say that even if it was my first time talking to a child, even if I felt overwhelmed by the situation, it was a good experience, thereby, I know what are my mistakes and now I just have to fix them.

My partner was the first teacher that was going to present. When he was pasting the numbers, the kids were saying the names of the numbers and in that moment I thought "This is going to be a long afternoon". The kids already knew the number from 1 to 10. If they already knew that, the activities that we prepared were going to be over in less than 5 minutes. My partner overexplained the numbers, he could have gone right to the practice. Also, I think he was speaking too much, with children is not recommended to speak too much. Finally,  he said: "What's up man?" to a kid. We are not supposed to say something like that in front of the kids. However, not all was bad, my partner had a good opening, and he went good with the time too, even though he had to cut the very last part of an activity. Now he just needs to take all those mistakes into account for our next class so that he can get a good grade in the evaluation.

The second and last teacher who was going to present was me. Firstly, I had a bad opening saying things like pay attention or be quiet. Secondly, the volume of my was not high enough and I lacked of a good attitude. The worst part was during the production, the children were running around playing and yelling and I did not know what to do. I must to improve on those aspects because I want to be a good teacher.

About the materials and the Lesson Plan. The flashcards were good, but my second practice was very simple. It consisted in drawing on the board an amount of different things and ask them to count, that part was easy for the kids, they made it so fast that it did not take the predicted time. Also, I needed more activities, at the end there were 5 minutes left and all my activities were already over. It is recommended to plan more activities or to plan challenging activities for the kids.

About the kids. During the first class, the one that I went to observe, the kids were very calmed and quiet, but now they were behaving very hyperactive. Also, there is just one girl in the classroom and the boys do not seem to notice her. Thus, we must make her feel comfortable. Finally, it is recommended to learn how to keep the class under control and to keep the kids focused, otherwise, we will have a very hard time trying to teach.

First Class Obesrvation

We went to osberve the class that our classmates taught on monday 29th. Firstly, the interaction between students and teachers was very good. It seemed that the students were understanding some of the things that the teachers were saying. Secondly, both teachers teachers used the space in the classroom, they walked around the classroom while explaining or interacting with the students. Thirdly, both teachers seemed pretty self-confident, sure about what they were saying. Also, when students had trouble with something or questions, the teachers explained generally they explained to the whole classroom instead of explaining just to one student), in that way any teacher can avoid explaining the same thing to each student. Finally, the volume of their voices was the appropiate, not too but not too low. 

Things to improve. Firstly, pronunciation. Children learn the pronunciation that the teacher has. Pronunciation has to be improved. Secondly, the flashcards have to be bigger. As big as a page is good enough so that the students can see them clearly even from the back of the classroom.


The students. The students have an extremely basic knowledge about English so we have to be very patient with them. It is recommended to attend each class that our classmates teach to check the progress of our students so that we can make our lesson plans adapted to what they know. For example, 20 numbers were going to be taught, but the knowledge of our studets is way too basic so teaching 10 numbers is enough.

Second Part of the Workshop

The first thing we did in the first part of the workshop was to protect a balloon as if it was our lives. Eventualy, Giovanni started to pop out balloons and the ones whose balloons were already poped started to find other people's balloons to pop them too. Then all of us presented a story and a tongue twister. My story was about a bunny that helped a lady in order to get an award, but he did not get an award; so, if you are going to help someone, do it, but do it because you want to, not because you want to be awarded.
The second part of the workshop was useful for us because we realized that we did not make the mistakes we made in the first workshop, which was good. However, some of us still have problems while presenting, but at least we know our mistakes and we just have to work on them to get better.

Fisrt Part of the Workshop

The first thing we had to do was to present ourselves. Then, after that we had to think of something that represented us. I said I was relaxed and calm as the color blue. Then we worked in pairs and my partner had to control me by touching certain parts of my body (Back of the head, shoulders and back); then I had to control him. After that, we made different pairs and this time one of each pair had to make a sound with his or her mouth so that his or her partner could get to him by following the sound; then the other partner had to do the same. I got lost several times because I did not where the sound was coming from. Finally, we made different pairs again and we had to make signs in order to communicate with our respective partners; then we had to speak, but we had to get far from each other and by doing we had to raise our voices so that our partner could listen to us.
 The first part of the workshop was a good expirience for all of us, because we could realize all the mistakes we use to make when we  present or when we talk to a certain public. When you work with children you have to be very careful about how you speak to them, about the volume of your voice, the gestures you make, etc.

Myself

Hello there, my name is Kevin Stewart. I am 20 years old. I am studying languages at Don Bosco University. I like to play videogames, watch movies and listen to music. I also like to read, but I do not do it often. I really like English, and I would like to learn several languages besides English. When I was a kid I used to play videogames all the time, I think that is how I learned English. I decided to study teaching because I like languages, and I also would like to be an English teacher. Currently, I am taking the Teaching Practicum I course, I think that, for me, it might be the hardest subject of the major, besides Syntax, because I have never taught a class before, this is going to be the fisrt that I am going to be in a classroom as a teacher.