Week 2: Grammar - Family Members

Week 2: Grammar - Family Members

Second week of Teaching Practicum I was my turn to perform a grammar class. Honestly, I felt very nervous at the beginning you know it was my first time teaching to children. My group work and I prepared all the activities that we considered could be useful for children. In addition, we as a group thought a plan b just in case children couldn't be capable to understand the activities. 

In the last classes that my classmates perfomed I had the opportunity to listen feedback provided by the professor; so it was a little bit challenging to avoid all those details. At the beginning, I felt worried because while my group work and I were pasting on the board the visual aid, some children arrived; therefore, we tried to do things quickly.

However, as everything in life, there were good aspects and things to improve from the class:

1. Warm-up: I consider that most of the activities were developed great with the students. When we, as a group, decided to use the well-known game "the floor is lava" as a warm up activity, we didn't know how to transform and relate the game to the topic because it was about family memebers; however, we came up with the idea to use the face of some family members and paste them on the floor, so that when the teacher said "mom", students had to run to the picture and stand on that picture.

Good things:

• Despite of the space, I think that children performed well the activity. I guess they had fun while they were learning. We as teachers know that we need to energize our students at the beginning of the class; that's why we as a group thought that this would be a nice way to review the last class while children have fun.

Things to improve:

• We didn't have enough space for the activity. Sometimes the limits that we as teachers may have are the resources. My group work and I didn't use the whole vocabulary that children learnt in the previous class due to the reason mentioned above. It would have been better if we as a group used all the family members and make the picture bigger so that all students could stand on the image.

    2. Presentation: My group and I struggled a lot in this stage because we      wanted to make it attractive and creative in a way that children could remember and internalize easily; that's why we decided to use a family tree and a song as well.

Good things:

• Children showed interest in the topic because they repeated everytime they saw a new picture; they do it automatically.
• Through a chart that was pasted on the board, children could answer by using she is, he is, they are  questions with the verb to be.
• Children understood the song. They even sang it alone.

Things to improve:

• I thought that using an inductive approach whenever we teach grammar to children would work a lot; nevertheless, I made a mistake because I didn't explain to children how to use he, she or they; it was visible in the productions stage. So, next time I will consider a lot this error in order to avoid confusion from children in the production stage.
• I would rather use a background sound in the second activity. I think that it would help a lot to memorize the lyrics in an easy way.

    3. Practice: During this stage children did two activities. One was about matching, and he second one was about tangled sentences.

Good things:

• They showed interest in both activities.
• The tangled sentence activity was a little bit challenging for them because they have to do a jigzaw puzzle.
• They practiced the structure of the verb to be.
• The worked as a whole group.

Things to improve:

• Perhaps in the second activity about tangled sentences, the teacher had had to say the sentence, and then each group had to order it based on what the teacher said.
• Not to mention that one group won because according to some texts a child could feel discouraged if they don't win a game. Maybe using another word or action would be useful in these cases.

    4. Production: students have to use a family tree, and they had to paste the family member they live with. While they were pasting each family member, they remembered the vocabulary that they already knew. Nonetheless, as I mentioned before, some of them showed difficulty when they presented in front of the class because some of them didn't understand the difference between he and she.

    5. Wrap-up: it was a nice activity to close the class and review the topic, but due to the time we didn't develop correctly the activity. We did it once and the rest of the students were expecting more time to participate in the activity. As the professor advised us, it would have been better not to perform the activity if we didn't have enough time to do it.

What I knew.

Working with children is not an easy job. It requires a lot of effort, patience, creativity and many things more. Sometimes, we as teachers may feel disappointed because some kids behave badly, and we don't know how to deal with that kind of children. I know that there are different types of punishments. Some psychologist say that  you have to talk to them kindly and show them what they made was wrong, but if we applied those pieces of advice, some children don't care about that. This class was my first time to deal with this kind of children. There was a child who didn't want to copy on his notebook something related to the topic. Besides, other children were hitting the wall during the class. Something good about this type of behaviors is to be prepared for next classes with new alternatives to avoid those actions from the students.

What I learned from the experience.

Grammar is totally different from vocabulary. Many people may claim that teaching grammar is easier than listening or reading, but let me tell you that for the first time it feels a lot of pressure because you as a teacher expect that the topic will be understanded by the students. I believed that whenever we teach grammar to children, we have to use the inductive approach because at an early age children are not capable to understand complex definitions such as, third person, verb to be, etc. However, in feedback time the professor told me that I had to explain that part to the students; not by saying "he and she are third person", but at least to show different flashcards related to a boy and a girl. So, for the next time I will take into consideration the explanation of the pronouns.

What I would like to know.

• How to deal with bad behavior in the classroom.
• How to teach grammar to children in an effective way.
• How to manage time in each activity.