October 20th, 2017

In this Friday, we had the pleasure of having the visit of Kati Castro of the EFL program (English Language Fellow), who shared with us important tips for teachers of a foreign language. Some of her tips are the followings:  

1. Be (or get) excited about the class content.
Excitement is contagious!, so we should look interesting in the topic that we are going to develop during the class; although, we are not, but we have to cover our bored face for a happy and excited one; otherwise, we will transmit our feelings to students. So, at the end we could not achieve our aim because the class was not what we had expected.

2. Created a lesson structure that works for you and follow it consistently.
Each teacher has her/ his own style to teach, so they have to plan a lesson which works for them. Besides, their lessons plans can have warm up and cool down activities, which we can use to introduce a new topic, review the previous one, or for students to have fun. Also, she mentioned that there is not problem if we create an agenda, but it has to had an objective for the class, in order the class would be effective. Moreover, she gave us an useful structure for us to follow that '' I DO- WE DO- YOU DO'' which means ''I DO'' The teacher do it first, in order to show to students; ''WE DO'' we all do it together; ''YOU DO'' finally, you do it by yourself. Furthermore, the lessons should be focus a skill (speaking, reading, listening or writing). 

3. Command respect from your students.

• Teach students how to treat you and others. To have a respectful environment teachers have to set boundaries in order to demonstrates students who is the authority in the classroom.
• Create a code of conduct with your students. We can ask them to set some rules that they consider will help to improve the conduct inside the classroom. 

4. Give students leadership opportunities and others responsibilities. 

To students build trust on themselves we can let them leader activities, discussion leaders, or group roles.

• Leader activities: while developing an activity we can ask them to choose a leader per each group or depending the activity the will perform
• Discussion leaders: we can ask some questions just to the leaders as they are representing their groups.
• Group roles: let them choose the order they are going to present something that have been assigned them , like who want to be the first one, second one..

Moreover, We should assign them some responsibilities like, pick up the trash that is on the floor, put the desks in order, etc.

5. Incorporate VAK- visual, auditory, kinesthetic in every lesson.

As we know, each student is different and special; and they have they own learning style. Some of them can learn through visual, like seeing pictures, maps, watching videos, etc. Others through auditory, such as talk to someone, listening to music, read a loud, etc. An some others learn through kinesthetic like dancing, working stand up, doing mimics, etc.

 6. Plan questions based on knowledge goals.

Most of the time we just ask simple questions using Wh- words like ''how, who, where, when, etc.'' we do not let students to think more, to demonstrate us that they are able to have comprehension.

Here is a useful list of several questions that we can use with our students and we will help them to have reading or listening comprehension.  

7. Evaluate using rubrics.

 We can create our own rating system. so that, we are aware of what are the points that we are going to evaluate and the percentage of them. Also we should share the rubrics with students before (because we are letting them to know what we are going to take into account, so they will aware of what they have to do to get a good grade); During (because we should remind them what the rubrics say, so they can not claim us); after (because we have to explain them what the rubric says and what they had done).

                              

8. Collect and use data.

We can give them pre-tests or surveys to determinate prior knowledge before starting to develop the class because it is important for us to know how much students manage the topic, so depending on that, we will know how much emphasis we will make. Besides, we have to check for students understanding during each stage of the lesson because we can not move from one stage to another until students have understood.

9. Take time to reflect and adjust.

After each class we can make us those questions bellow to ourselves to reflect is the class was how we were expecting or not, so if we were wrong we can teach that again in the next class.

10. Encourage a mindset .

There are two kind of mindset growth and fixed mindset.

• Growth mindset is about achieving mastery and competence. The person believes that superb personal qualities can be learned, developed or cultivated.
• Fixed mindset which implies that we believe our attributes and abilities are inherently fixed and unchanging.

We as teachers should help them to trust in themselves and show them that they can change their mindset because they are able to improve and develop their abilities. they do not have to be narrow mind because everyone is good at something.

It was all the points that she shared with us in the conference. Also she share her experiences with us. We learned a lot from her, and It was a pleasure having her with us.

After the conference finished we returned to our classroom to start planning the closing ceremony that is going to be on November 3rd.  We were discussing in groups, and assigning what each of us will do. 

 

October 13th,2017.

This Friday was the last day of our teaching practicum. This day was turned of Alex' group, which is composed by Alexander, Olga and Eliseo. They were in charge of teaching ''My past vacation'' and their skill was ''Reading''.

Alex started the class with a great ''puzzle'' activity as a warm up stage. He divided students in two groups, and provided a puzzle per each group. They had to form them and the group who finished the puzzle first was the winner. The puzzles were about vacations activities, so students could linked what would be the class about.

Then, Eliseo present a poster with a short part of the reading which had the vocabulary they would presented. He asked students to stand up and made a circle. Next, he gave to them a luminous ball in order to play the hot potato, every time he hit the ball, the lights went on, so students had to pass it between them; and when it turned off, the child who kept it on their hands had to pass to the board and matched the vocabulary with a picture. They matched it well. It was good because they checked if students knew the vocabulary.

After that, Olga asked students to sit down on the floor. She presented the reading with a big book, she started to reading it while the students were paying attention to her. When she finished to read it, she asked them some specific questions about the reading like ''Who was____?, ''____ was a woman or an animal?'', ''____ climbed the mountain by car or horse'', etc. They answered them correctly so that means they understood it. Then, she asked ''What is the story about'' and gave some options. Besides, she presented some possibles titles for the reading so students had to choose one.

 

Next, she read the reading again and provided them a worksheet of ''True or False sentences''. Everybody was working on it and as soon they completed it they compared with the classmate who was next to. Then, Olga started checking it and asking them ''Why is it false?'' and they answered it.

Later on, as post-reading, Alex gave them a page, so children drew about what they did in their past vacation. Some of them drew themselves in the beach, climbed a mountain, rode on a roller coaster, etc. Then, they pasted them on a poster that was on the wall.

Finally, as wrap up, Eliseo asked them to stand up and made a circle. He gave a big dice, which had a picture in each side of it; and the light ball again. When it turned off the one who kept it had to throw the big dice, and said a sentences using the phrase that was presenting the picture.

After the break, all the groups were in charge of develop the second class. what we did was we divide all the stage between each group.  It was about the same topic ''My past vacation'', but with the listening skill.

Rocio, Katy and Beatriz started with the warm up and the pre- listening.

The warm up activity was nice. It was about ''Eggs Hunt''. Students were looking for the 8 eggs that the teachers in charge had hidden. Those eggs contained a paper with a number in side. When students found all of them, they could open them to see what number they were. Then, Beatriz gave them a picture about vacations activities, so according to the numbers students were asked to say what they did in their past vacation using the phrase that the picture represent.

In the pre-listening Rocio presented the vocabulary that appear in the listening. She was showing the picture and asking "What is that'' and the kids were answering her. She pasted the pictures and labels on the board and practiced the pronunciation with the children. Next, she removed the labels and kept them in the classroom platform. She gave to each of them a piece of paper of different color. Then, she was taking out a paper from a box  and asking ''who has the yellow/pink/green... paper'' and the student who had that color had to do a mimic of the phrase Rocio had shown before; and the others students had to guess. This dynamic was amazing because the kids were so dramatic when performing that.

Fatima, Diego and I were in charge of the rest.

Diego played the audio for the first time; after that, he asked them ''How many characters were talking in the listening?'' And they said ''two''. Also, he asked them ''What are the names of the characters?'' and they answered. Next, he pasted on a poster the names of the characters.

Later on, Fatima gave them some papers of the vacations activities that were in the conversation in order they could classify what each one did. Then, she played the audio for the second time. When it finished, each students stood up and pasted on the poster the activity that each character did in their vacations. Students classified it well, so that means they had listening comprehension.

After that, I provided them a worksheet of ''filling in the blanks''. I reproduced the audio for the last time, and checked with them if they answered correct. The inconvenient  I can say I had was that the children did not write fast so I had to stop the audio to give them time to write.

Reading and listening are difficult to teach to children as they are so hyperactive and difficulty pay attention to them. but there are many activities that we as teachers can apply in our classes to make more dynamic and meaningful classes.

October 6th, 2017.

On this Friday my group was the first who taught vocabulary. It was about "My past vacation''. Before we started with the class, we began to inflate the balloons which had pictures and labels of the vocabulary inside and we hang them with wool on the ceiling. Then Fatima asked to each student to explode two balloons and matched the pictures with the labels, so then, pasted them on the board. Students really like this activity because it called their attention, maybe they have not seen activities like that in their normal classes.

Then, Fatima checked if they matched correctly and actually they did it well. So, she started with the presentation of the vocabulary (went to the beach, went camping, climbed a mountain, rode on a roller coaster, visited my grandpas, etc.) and practiced the pronunciation with the kids.

After that, Diego divided them in two groups and made two obstacle tracks using cones to each group. Also he gave some sheets with words so they have to followed the obstacle tracks in order to pasted those words in a poster of missing words that was on the board. Students were making a competition to see which group finished first. The enjoyed while doing that and practiced the verbs and the complement of each phrase.

Then, I formed three groups by providing them a paper with random number.

I provided to each group a container which had bags with scramble phrases inside, and I put them in the classroom platform, so students had to stand up and took a bag and returned to their desks to put the sentences in order. After that, they had to run to a poster that were pasted on the walls, which had been assigned before to write the phrase they had formed. This activity was very  kinesthetic for them and they were practicing how to write the vocabulary phrases.

Next, Diego gave to them some pages, so  students wrote some sentences about what they did their past vacation. Then, Diego asked them to stand up and formed two circles in order to make a carousel activity, which consists that one circle is inside the other; so the teacher asked them to roll and until he said ''stop'', the students shared what they did their past vacation with the person who was in front of he/she.

Sorry, But I had not taken photos.

Unfortunately, the time was not enough, so we could not do the wrap-up, which was about a ''Bingo activity'', but I am sure that the kids understood the topic very well and had fun too. Our inconvenient was that the practice activities were too long, so we could not cover everything we had prepared, but we reached our goal.

The second was Rocio' group who taught about ''My past vacation'' and their skill was ''Grammar''. This group is composed by Rocio, Katy and Beatriz. 

Rocio started the class with a nice activity. She divided them in two groups and  showed a page with some pictures like cloud, sun, tree, bird, flower, etc. And put a page on a desks, which had the same pictures with more quantity, for example, three birds, one tree, four flowers, etc. So, she asked them ''What

color is the ____?'' or ''How many _____ are on the page?'', so one student per each group had to run until the desk and looked for the picture they were asked and wrote on the board the answer. The one who answered first got a point.

Then she started with the presentation. She divided the board; on the right side she put the regulars verbs with their base form and on the left side the irregulars verbs with their base form. Then, she showed the pictures to the students and asked them '' What is she/he doing'', and the students answered her. Besides, she practiced the pronunciation with the children. After that, to presented the verbs in past. She asked them ''How can we say ____ in past?'' and showed the labels with the verbs in past and put them next to the verbs in base form and practiced the pronunciation again. Also, she provided them examples of sentences.  

In the first practice, Beatriz provided them a worksheet of scrambles sentences, where they had to put in order the sentences. Students did it well.

Then in the second practice, She divided them in two groups and gave a marker to each group. She was showing to them the verbs in base form, so one per each group had to write the verb in past. The group who did it well got a point. Some of them did not remember very well the spelling of the verbs, but they had an idea.

 Then, In the production stage, Katy formed two groups and gave to each group a table game similar to of candy' crush game, some pictures and a dice. Each student put something that represented them, like a coin. Each time they rolled the dice they had to move to the corresponding space and went they landed in the ''stop'' square, they had to take a picture and answered ''What did you do in your past vacation?''.

Finally, they did a mingle activity. Katy provided them some pictures, so they asked the question ''What did you do in your past vacation?''to three different classmates, and they were answering according to what the picture represented.

Since I saw that they were presenting regulars and irregular verbs an their base form too, I thought the kids would not understand, instead of that, the teachers in charge would confused them, but they really understand the differences between the two kind of verbs.