My Experience in Teaching Practicum I

Class 4

Date: 28th of September

Group Members: Jouse,  Heinar, Andrés and Ronald.

Topic: Toys

Part 1  Josue, Heinar,

Grammar: I have / I don’t have

Vocabulary to present: Bike, teddy bear, plane, car, doll.

During the first part of the class, what we like the most was all the activities that josue did such as, playing with the die, throwing the ball and  hot potatoe. Children really loved the activities and even Briseida was participating, and josue didn´t let her to get distracted, because all the activities promoted interaction and since the topic for the lesson were toys/games they really liked that topic and they learned the pronunciation of , Bike, teddy bear, plane, car and doll, quickly. Also, what we liked is that they learned while playing, and all the activities required Ss to talk and to do something, which was something great. We also liked how Heynar broke the ice at the beginning of the lesson, by having them working on a puzzle. We thought that It wasn´t going to work, but actually it worked very well. Finally, all your activities were really appealing to children, especially the one with the “arrow” that was so funny and in that way all Ss could participate.

Part 2 Andrés and Ronald.

Grammar: Question. Do you have?   Answer: Yes, I do.  No, I don’t. 

Vocabulary to present: ball, kite, train and robot

What we liked about the second part of the lesson is that it didn´t lose the track of the first part. It means that it promoted interaction as well, and the activity we liked the most is that one in which children had to run in order to touch  the toys that were pasted on the wall. We all know that children really love running and it was nice that teachers took into account that. Another, activity that we liked the most is the one in which Ss had to throw the ball into the hoop. We had never seen that activity during a class and it worked really well. I was willing to participate too. Finally, all the activities were very nice and promoted interaction. The only thing you could have improved is that in some parts of the lesson (especially the second part) instructions were too long and that´s why at the beginning of the activities students seemed not to understand, but at the end with some practice they could make it.

Good job guys!

The Body Lesson, Group 3

First part: Marleny Campos and Isaac Rodriguez

It is important to mention that despite of the fact that in the first lesson most of the activities were kinesthetic the mood of the students was so dawn that children did not want to participate in none of the activities. Besides, the nervousness of the teachers in charge was evident, however; when they saw that some activities did not go well, they changed them which was something good. Maybe the way in how the class started determined the flow of it. Finally, it was evident that the students have really understood because in the production part when children were making a body with the modeling clay, they pointed at the part of the body that teacher told them to point or touch.

Second part: Konny Martinez and Orlando Gomez

Regarding the second class, the songs worked very well because children try to assimilate the movement that teachers were doing and the fact of moving their bodies awake them a little bit. The rhythm of the songs were very catching that even the classmates, who were in charge of watching the class, were singing it. The idea of telling them a story was good because children had been too much time standing up and they were already tired and that was a moment in which they could sit down. In conclusion both classes had their strengths and weaknesses; however, at the end of both classes children showed their understanding of the body parts which was something great. 

Marleny´s own experience

Regarding my experience in the lesson I was part of, I can say that this time I had more time to teach than the last time, which was something good; however, many parts of my lesson did not accomplish the objective. While my time teaching I could not control my nerves, which is a shame, however I am still learning how to control myself when I am in front of people, and probably that was one of the reasons why some parts of the lesson did not go well. Apart from that, I felt frustrated when I was trying children to do something I demanded and they did not even move from their position. Besides, I felt happy in the production part when I saw that children were more active and they were performing the tasks we assigned to them. The part I enjoy the most was the moment in which they were creating a body with modeling clay because in that moment I could really notice that, despite of the fact that some of the activities seemed to be a failure, children learned something; and that was the  moment in which they let it show. I cannot describe the happiness I felt because when I was asking them to point to a specific part of the body, they pointed it correctly. In conclusion, both classes have represented a challenge for me, because I am not used to teach, but I am willing to keep on trying because I know that by practicing and learning of my past mistakes I will learn how to do it well.

Konny´s own experience

This was the second time that I taught to children. I was really excited to see if the songs I had prepared for the class were going to work and in fact, they did work very well. I know that I could have sung a little bit more and have students singing too, but I decided not to do it because I saw that one of the children was getting a little bored , so it was in that moment when I decided to stop singing.  I felt really nervous because I knew that I finished the warm up  before time and I was running out of ideas too. However, I was glad to see that for the first time, songs really worked and most of the children really liked it and they were following me. I have to say that I really enjoy working with children, but in this class children weren´t that active so it was really difficult for me to make them participate.

Moreover, during the second song they really enjoyed it too, but they got a little bit confused because they hadn´t understood the parts of the body very well. I can´t deny that some of them had learned the parts of the body already, but some others didn´t , so It was difficult for me to make them participate all, but at the end of my class most of them had understood and I was happy to see that they were not as bored as they were at the beginning of the first part of our lesson. I´m really happy because I´m becoming a more experienced teacher. Every time I have the opportunity to teach I get some new ideas, and I get to know what things Ss like and what things they don´t like at all.  

Family & Friends´ Class Group 2

The family

Part 1 (fatima, lyli tobar)

To start with we want to congratulate you because of your participation, it was noticed that you put a lot of interest in the materials you prepared for the class and the activities were completely different to the ones we have being using. The idea of giving students a start for their participation was very helpful in the way of motivating them; we believe that no matter how difficult a task is, but if students are motivated for doing it, they will try their best in performing it and that is exactly what happened with Maylin who is hardly always serious; however, for this lesson she was participating very happy and active. Something else which is important to mention is the fact that; although, the class was very calm in the way that there was not too much physical movement as in other times in which children are to run from one place to another, they keep on performing every task and doing it very well.

Besides, we would like to mention that more repetitions of the vocabulary presented should have been included in order for the students to internalize it.

Part 2 (pilar magaña, karla)

Despite of the fact that children were tired because this was their second class, Pilar managed it very well by making all students participate in the questions she was making, such as; what animal is this?, is this a dog?, etc.  after pilar’s participation, karla gave each student a sheet of paper with the drawing of an animal and students were to paste little pieces of paper inside of the drawing; after that, karla asked them what animal is that? During this part of the lesson some students were out of control because they were not obeying karla’s instructions, but that was because they were really bored and they needed an activity that made them move or at least do something different. Something to learn from this situation was that we were able to see how the students’ mood changed from being tired and bored to be very energetic and happy when the activity changed.

Generally, both lessons were interesting; it was evident that we have improved a lot since the first class. One more time, congratulations for all you guys!!!

Teaching Practicum Period 3- Group 1

Class 1

Date: September 7th, 2012

Group Members: Carlos, Magaly, Iris, Mauricio

Topic:  School

Part  1

Grammar:  Question:  What’s this? (What’s) Answer:  This is (It’s)

Vocabulary to present - School items: bag, pencil, book, ruler, pen.

 Part 2

Grammar:  Question: What’s that? Answer:  It’s a/an

Vocabulary to present:  desk, chair, computer, eraser, window.

We know that being the first group is not always easy, because you have less time than the other groups, and you have to like “brake the ice” in terms of teaching, but despite all that, you as a group did a very nice job.  The classroom was very well decorated,  and activities like the hot potato were really appealing for children .  Also, during the first part of the lesson, the first thing we liked was that students did and activity about drawing school items on the board. We liked that activity because it was the first time that students did it in class, and at the beginning we thought that it wasn´t going to work, but actually Ss did a very good job. Also, we liked the activity with the roulette , children really liked it , and we could confirm that Ss like everything that implies movements or activeness. Moreover, you had Ss running a little bit and working in groups , and we really loved the way you group them by counting from 1 to 2. At the beginning they seemed not to understand, but at the end they got it and everything was fine.  Finally,  for the first part of the lesson everything went very well, except for some little details like, some pronunciation problems with the word “pencil” and instructions were not that clear. We think that with clearer and shorter instructions your activities could have worked even better.

Talking about the second part of the lesson, we really liked how Magaly improvised an activity that you, as a group, hadn´t prepared. What we learned from that, is that if an activity doesn´t seem to work we, as teachers, can change the activity at the moment, and it´s not bad at all, but it does require to have a second plan with you all the time. Moreover, we were really happy to see the improvements in the way  you teach. Now you have more experience, and the most important thing is that you used all the things we have learned in class and all of you have improved a lot , and are becoming more experienced teachers.

VERY NICE JOB GUYS! CONGRATULATIONS!

Introduction

This blog pretends to point out the activities that called our attention during the classes giving to children ( ages between four and eight years old), as well as the effect that those activities had on their learning development. During those classes, we  observed all students in the classroom, but in this opportunity, our attention will be focused in the youngest student mostly, who is a four- year- old child named Hector Daniel Portillo, and we will talk about his behavior during some of the activities performed in all the classes, which are considered  the most interesting ones for us, as a group. At the end of this blog, there is an analysis about the experiences we got  while teaching our own  class which was ‘’The animals’’ and there is a closing paragraph about students learning progress.

Lesson one

Date:  Friday, July 13^th

Teachers: Magaly Pacheco, Charlie Melara, Mauricio López

Topic: The numbers from 0 to 10

During this class, teachers played with  some little pieces of paper with numbers that had the name of students  behind. Also, they had students watching a video about the numbers and they sang a song. By the time teachers were trying to sing a song with students, we were really exited to see if songs were effective for a 40 minutes class, that students attend once a week, only. And, what  we could notice is that for this lesson the song didn´t work that much , probably because of the time. We have thought about including a song in our own lesson, but after seeing to this group,  we changed our minds and that is something  we learned from this class, that songs need more than 40 mins to be practiced with students and the same case for the videos, they need to be played more than once. Besides the song and the video and other activities like the one in which students played with a hat, the one that called our attention during this class was the activity about “throwing a dice”, because we  learned that children really love activities about throwing things and they also love being standing up. In this lesson, students weren´t that participative because they didn´t know each other, but some activities such as, throwing the dice made them participate and interact more. Finally, we were paying attention to every student behavior in the classroom, and most of them seemed to obey what the teacher said, but there was one four-year-old student named Hector Daniel Portillo, who seemed not to fit in the classroom. He was the youngest among the students , so we decided to focus our attention on his learning development.

Lesson two

Date:  Date: Friday, July 20th

Teachers: Juan Campos, Gabriel Cubias, Iris Erroa

Topic: The colors ( red, yellow, green, orange , purple, black, white)

During this class, students knew the numbers already and they were participating a little bit more. What we could confirm  is that students really like the activities about throwing things and raising some little hands with colors, too. Moreover, They really enjoyed activities about  painting , and that was something we didn´t know about the kind of children we were working with.

At this point, since it was the second class we had seen, we were still learning and getting some ideas about what students liked and what they didn´t like. And, we found that the activity about rising some little hands with colors  was really effective, because this was the first time when Hector Daniel participated in class. It seemed that activities like throwing the balls and raising things called his attention during this class, so we took those details into account for our future classes, because not any activity call Daniel´s attention . 

lesson three

Date:   Friday, July 20th

Teachers: Fatima Gonzalez, Pilar Magaña, lilian , Karla Martínez

Topic: The fruits (banana, lemon, apple, grapes, strawberry, watermelon, pineapple.)

In this class, a lot of decoration was used. The classroom looked very nice. Teachers put a lot of effort on things such as: rings with the fruits, some fruits made of foami and so many other ornaments that students liked.

In this class, teachers were helping each other with the activities and students were comfortable with each other. Talking about the activities, this was the  second time that a song was used in the classroom and it didn´t work very well either, as in the first class, so once again, we could confirm  that songs can be helpful for classes that last more that 40 mins so that students can have more time to learn the song and  practice.  This was also the second time that an activity was done outside the classroom but a lot of distractions were calling the attention of students like, people passing by and so on. Moreover, the outdoor activity was not that clear for students at the beginning but after some  “MODELING” from the teacher and “PRACTICE”,  students were able to do the task successfully, so lot of pacient is needed and when the things seems not to work we have to wait because they will work soon. From this lesson we learned that “ MODELING”   before having students peform a task, is extremely important , and they need a lot of practice as well.

Lesson four

Date: August 11th, 2012

Members: Konny Martinez, Marleny Campos, Orlando Alas, Isaac Rodriguez

Topic: The animals (horse, dog, chicken, cat, parrot, fish, turtle, rabbit.)

In this lesson about the animals, we want to mention one technique and one activity that called our attention during the class. First of all, the technique about  wearing a costume while teaching, helped students in the sense that  they  got more interested to the class; and that was something good, because we could see that students were paying attention to what the teacher (wearing the custom) was doing and they performed the tasks they were asked to do, very well. 

Moreover, during the activity about matching the fruits with the correct number, Hector did it  very good as well as the rest of the students. What we could notice and really made us happy was that Hector was being part of the activity which was our objective when creating it, to include all students, because in the activities performed during some of the previous classes Hector was hardly always distracted. 

It is, also, important to mention that by paying attention to Hector performance, we realized that children did not feel comfortable sitting in the desks and that is the reason why our group decided to sit the Ss on the floor, which we think was a success because not only Hector, but all children were more relaxed, therefore; more willing to participate in class. Finally, and  probably one of the big success we have had in all classes, is the fact that Hector had learned something.  We could notice that, by the time Konny was asking for the color of an animal , he said the correct answer and was willing to participate in all the activities, so we realized that , unconsciously, Hector was learing a lot.

lesson five

Date: August 18th, 2012

Members: Heinar Pineda, Josue Roque, Andres, Ronald

Topic: Clothes and accessories  (, socks, dress, pants, blouse, shorts, sweater, sunglasses, hat, cap, bracelet, necklace, tie)

The activities we liked the most and we think were the most efficient ones, were the one performed by Heinar called “Bingo” and the one by Andres which was about Ss taking the appropriate article of clothing  or accessory out of the basket in order to dress the teachers up. This activity really called the attention of students and made them laugh a lot, and we think that in that way it was more probable that students could internalize the article of clothing in English , because  they were not only in touch with real items of clothes and accessories, but also because they were able to see where we use that specific item in our bodies; we believe that by practicing with real items in real contexts Ss have the chance to learn more that only by showing them a picture or a drawing. 

Moreover,  The reason why the “Bingo” activity called our attention is , because during this activity Ss were crossing out the correct items in the bingo chart and that was a proof that the previous activities had really being efficient, because they could recognize the items in English. Finally,  It is very important to mention the fact that during  the activity about the “bingo” the teacher was not showing a drawing or something that represented the item he was saying, and even in that way,  Students  were able to perform it successfully, including Hector who mistook only  one item, and what we could learn from this lesson is that children can work in groups very well, they help each other and they enjoy it a lot.

Lesson six

Date: August 18th, 2012

Members: Juan Campos

Topic: The family

We consider Juan’s lesson was very interesting since he was the first one who  taught  alone, and he was teaching chunks, which is something very difficult for the reason that children are not used to form sentences in English, although they were very simple sentences, they represented a big challenge for the Ss. Also, What we could notice during the class was that  Ss got confused with some of the activities, they simply did not know what to do, and  that was probably, because at that time they were not studying words in isolation, but chunks, and also because there was not enough time for the teacher to practice more with the students. However; teacher tried his best in order to make students participate in class, and they participated very well, actually. As in the case of Hector, he was repeating what the teacher asked them to repeat. We now believed that with more time to  practice and with activities that call their attention,  Ss will be able to say some chunks such as, ’my name is…’’.

Conclusion

Teaching English to children didn´t sound that appealing for us at the beginning of the course, we thought that it was going to be impossible to teach children to talk in English. we thought that they wouldn´t be able to learn anything, but after  5 weeks of teaching, are opinions about teaching children have totally changed, because of many reasons. 

First,  during the first class about numbers, students were really shy and they seemed not to understand any English, that was why most of that class was teaching in Spanish, so that students could be able to understand, but even in Spanish they were still having some problems with the pronunciation of numbers and so on. 

Secondly, during the second class about the colors, children seemed to be more willing to participate in class, and even Hector participated for the first time. Also, students knew the numbrs from 0 to 10 already. Thirdly, during the third class Ss very even more exited to participate during class and they after the class they were able to recognize the fruits in English. Then, during the class about animals, Ss knew each other already so they participated in all the activities very well. They remembered the numbers and the some of the colors in English, even Hector knew the colors in English, but it was necessary for them to have a review about the fruits, because not all of them remembered the fruits in English.

 Finally, during the fifth and sixth class, students were more than comfortable, especially with the new technique about having them sitting on the floor. They really loved that. And, talking about the class about "the family", in which some chunks were taught, they were participating very well and they could repeat the chunks with some help from the teacher, even though more time for practicing this, is needed. To conclude, Ss learning progress started to be obvious as the classes went by.  They got used to the classroom, the teachers and their classmates and that was something that really helped them. Also, the activities that teachers chose seemed to be really effective, and we could confirm that during the last class about articles of clothing , in which Ss were able to count and recognize the colors in English. what seemed to be impossible, was accomplished successfully. Students did learn a lot even though the classes were just once a week, so what if they could attend to classes every day? They would learn even more.

Analysis of our own lesson

As everything in life, our lesson also had some strengths as well as some weaknesses, and that is going to be the subject of this analysis. Things that went good and bad during our lesson.

To start with, it is important to mention that what we could notice at the very beginning of the class, was that the costume of a parrot called the students’ attention, which was our goal when deciding to wear a costume; however, the teacher wearing the costume overused the parrot’s voice which at the end of the first activity became a boring routine.

Talking about things that went good, we can mention that  our group worked as a team all the time, with the aim of integrate all Ss to work in the activities, because as noticed in previous lessons Hector did not participate in some activities. And, during this class, as it was evident, hector’s performance  got better with the time, and in our particular lesson he said the color yellow by himself when Konny asked him to say the color of a cat pasted on the board. Moreover, in the modeling clay activity, although some Ss did better than others, our aim (to have every student working) was accomplished.

Finally, it is also important to point out the fact that the order of the activities changed by mistake, and the activity that was supposed to be the production became the practice and vice versa. Although, this was an unexpectedly change, we consider that we managed it in a very smart way. In conclusion, many things went bad and many others good; however Hector’s performance during our class gave us a big reward no matter what happened.