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.