Week 6: vocabulary - professions

There is no doubt that time flies. We have already finished week number six, and we continue learning from this great experience. I am sure that each of us have learned a lot during all these weeks because I have seen we have improved a lot in our classes. The following performance is a clear proof of I wrote above. Let’s discuss a little bit about Daniel, Astrid and Xenia’s class.

What I loved:

·         I liked the confidence that Xenia projected in the presentation stage. I recall Xenia’s first class. She had a mixed of feelings due to many reasons that were out of hands. In that class, she seemed worried, angry, nervous, but during the class I saw a different Xenia in front of the students. She totally knew what she had to do.

·         The warm-up activity was a nice kinesthetic activity to use with children. As we may know, our students are in the stage that all they want to do is to play. They love to run, jump, sing and do other type of activities that require movement. We cannot have a child just listening what the teacher says because children’s attention span is really short. I was reading a website about the relationship between kinesthetic learning and the development of the brain, and it says that whenever we use as many kinesthetic activities as possible, we contribute in the development of a healthy brain. Imagine the impact that these type of activities have in children’s cognitive development. Here, I will share the link of the site. I hope it will help you in your upcoming classes. https://www.sheknows.com/parenting/articles/964579/building-brains-with-building-blocks-the-importance-of-kinesthetic-play

·         I did love the match activity that Daniel developed in the class. In my opinion, it was an awesome practice activity in the way that you used the visual aid that the other teacher used before. That means that you didn’t spend money on photocopies or extra images because sometimes these type of activities requires extra material which means extra money that is out of our budget. I think that we as teachers have to think on that; we need to look for the ways to reuse or recycle the materials. This was a clear example that we don’t necessarily need to spend money in a class to make the topic clear and understandable. Besides, another thing that I found good is that this match activity encouraged students to participate. It was incredible how they raised their hand in order to complete the exercise.

·         I consider good how Astrid called students attention. As we know, we almost finish this teaching practicum I, and we can notice that in the behavior children are showing. Now, most of them are friends and what they do is talk, talk and talk. If we don’t put an end, they will do whatever they want. Nevertheless, when Astrid insisted on calling students attention, she showed authority. By doing that, children will know that there is someone in front of them and they have to pay attention on what the teacher says. Of course, it is not easy to do that because they are children, but I think that if from the very beginning we try to overcome that behavior, they will know how to act properly based on the situation they are.

·         It was impressive the monitoring that Astrid did in the production stage. When we take time to monitor each student, they will understand in a better way the instruction or clarify ideas. I could see that Astrid force each student to practice the speaking activity.

·         A nice way to correct mistakes is doing the correction at the end and that was Astrid did. She knew that most of the students got confused in the usage of the verb “be” in the plural form, so what Astrid did was, after the performance of the students, make emphasis on the mistakes. It was very clever.

·          The second activity (if I am not mistaken) was a nice and challenging letter soup. To be honest, I thought that children would not be able to do the activity because there were too many letters for them. But to my surprise, they completed it. They focused their attention on the activity despite of the size of the letter soup. I keep what I have said before: our students are smart.

What I didn’t like

·         I consider Daniel needed to model the activities. I guess this is the first time that children are exposed to a foreign language, so it is no wonder that they do not understand instructions easily; what we as teachers need to do is to model the activities. By modeling the activities doubts become clear; I could realize that in my first class.

·         There was a time in the class that the teacher just looked at one side of the class. We have to be careful on that because students can feel ignored, we cannot verify what they are doing or if they have comprehended the topic.

·         The size of the pictures was too small. We should design realia that will be easily understandable. There was a time that children couldn’t see what was on each picture. So for the next time try to make them a little bit bigger.

·         That was excellent that students produced at the end of the class; however, at the time that they were performing in front of the class how they had to ask and answer. It would have been better if you make a chart on which the question and answer appear like a reminder for them just in case they forget how to ask and answer.

What I would have done different

·         To consider the size of the pictures

·         To model the activities no matter the time it would have taken

·         To have a chart in which students remember what they need to use in the production stage.

·         In the production stage, instead of having children sitting on their desks, I would have made two lines looking face to face asking and answering one another. I would have given them time for example, 2 minutes; after those two minutes they had to move one space and then ask and answer with the new classmate. I think that by doing this activity we make them develop their social skills, and they do not get used to work just with the same person.