Week 3: Reading - Family Members.

Reading - Family Members

Teaching listening and reading skills for ESL students is not easy, especially if they are children that are not used to do this type of activities. For many of them, this is the first time that they read a text in a foreign language or to demonstrate reading comprehension by answering true/false sentences; that's why I consider a big challenge to teach a reading class for children. In this time, I will write a little bit about Astrid, Daniel and Xenia's class. 

As I have written in my previous entries, each class has its good things and details to improve in order to avoid, for the upcoming classes, all the mistakes that we as teaching students could make while we perform.

At the beginning of the class, it was nice that Astrid tried to greet all of the students. In my opinion, I think that by doing this, children could feel comfortablein the classroom because the teacher creates an atmosphere where students can feel relax and interact with the teacher. However, I would recommend  to use another type of kinesthetic activity to break the ice at the very beginning of the class.

In the pre-reading stage, I found good that the group introduced the new words that children would face in the during stage. I liked when Astrid made emphasis on the pronunciation of each word. Besides, giving children time to copy what was on the board was very clever because sometimes they use what they have written on their notebooks depending on the activities that they will do ahead of the class. Even though you introduced the new words to them, I would suggest to use pictures related to the words whenever you present vocabulary. Even for us, it is easier to remember the meaning of a new word by associating the word with a picture or in a real-life situation; that's why I would advise you to use at least some flashcards that can make a little bit easy for them to remember the new words they learnt.

In all the during stage I liked the activities that Daniel did with all the students. It was very creative when he asked them to look for a piece of paper that was under their desk. However, I saw that when he asked to the whole class the meaning of the word (just to asses if they remember the previous words) most of them didn't pay attention, others where talking. What I would suggest is maybe to ask one at a time to involve them in the class, but despite of that it was good.

I would like to highlight something about this stage. 

What I could see from the passage that Daniel gave to the children is that it was long and the size of the letter was too small. Besides, I saw that in the script of the story there was just one picture which I consider is not enough for children to imagine or assume what the story is about.

I was reading a book which is called "Teaching English to Children", and in this book it talks a little bit about how to teach this skill (reading) when it is the first time that students (children) are exposed to this skill; it says that when you, as a teacher, present a story without drawings, it becomes difficult for kids to know how the characters felt along the story. The authors of this book conclude that "illustrations in a book for young children matter almost as much as the words themselves." It is something that caught my attention because you know I will have a reading class next month, so I am trying to look for some tips that will be useful for me, and I would like to share it wih you.

Overall, I liked when Daniel monitored children while they were completing the activities. He went to each student's desk in order to explain in a clear way the instructions of the activities which is something good.

As someone said in the classroom "time plays an important role", and if we do not manage it, time can be our big enemy in the class. This was the case of Xenia. Unfortunately, she didn't have enough time to perform in the class, but I am for sure that, based on the short time that she had to present, she could do it perfectly.

I know that she was aware that the time was over, so what she made was to force students to do activities quickly; she was very determined at that time. What I saw was that she gave all the answers to the children. They didn't share with her the responses that they had. I understand this because she knew that she didn't have time to compare the answers, and doing this was a quickly way to share the responses.

In conclusion, despite that a reading class is considered the most difficult skill to teach for children, it was good to see that the group performed it pretty well with children.