What I have learnt from the microteachings and farewell

After having seen different microteachings in class and having performed mine, I would like to reflect on what I have learned  throughout these sessions. For this reason, to begin with, I will talk about different topics that my classmates and I have seen from the microteachings and then, I will explain which strategies and resources I have discovered and learned from the carrying out of these lessons.

First of all, regarding the topics of  the projects, I believe that, on the whole, all my classmates have been very creative and imaginative. For instance, a group has done its microteaching related to geography and they have included an  original trip around the world in which children can learn different flags and vocabulary about typical food from various countries. Furthermore, another group has worked on the topic of fruit and I really enjoyed the fact that we were able to learn and practice mathematical fractions, while we made fruit skewers  (3/4 parts of banana plus 2/8 of apple and three grapes).  We cut the fruit into pieces and prepared the skewers which was very funny, but at the same time it was meaningful for children, since they taught Maths with realia (real material in class). Finally, another group explained the signs and indications that we can find in a city using visual materials as flashcards and, after teaching the basic vocabulary about places around the city/town, they prepared a treasure hunt and it was extremely funny because, in groups of four, we had to follow clues to find the treasure chest!!

Below, I attach some visual resources that summarize the main ideas of some microteachings and I would like to share them with all of you.

Thanks to the microteaching sessions, I have realized that we can work on almost any topic in a meaningful way, as long as the activities have a specific objective and be related, so children can learn from less to more difficulty. Nevertheless, I have also discovered many things related to the methodology and skills that teachers of English should use in class and strategies about classroom management.

For example, related to  methodology, after these lessons, I am further aware that it is very important to do activities that connect with children’s interests and also the importance of giving feedback to pupils. In addition, I have also learned the significance of doing dynamic activities, such as songs, stories or games that allow children to discover, learn and have fun at the same time. I believe it can be powerful if children retain information by doing because if they just memorize the contents by repetition, it is not meaningful and, hence, they will forget them quickly. Finally, I have also become more aware of the importance of taking into account multiple intelligences because each child in the class is different and, therefore, they do not learn in the same way. So as future teachers, if we manage to include different kinds of exercises within our sessions (visual-spatial, verbal-linguistic or bodily-kinesthetic, among others), we will reach all the students.

On the other hand, with regard to classroom management, in the microteachings we have had the opportunity to practice different strategies to make groups. For instance, in one of the presentations my classmates distributed one flashcard to each one of us and those who had the same picture in the card we joined together. In my group, we decided to make the teams with pieces of puzzles about animals, since our topic was the jungle. As far as I’m concerned, I think our classmates enjoyed with our performance. In addition, during the presentation I was able to practice my tone of voice and intonation when explaining the activities and I tried to establish eye contact and use a sweet voice to grab students’ attention.

Finally, regarding the skills that an English teacher should have, I reckon that throughout these sessions, we have been able to practice how to model tasks and explanations for children, using mime and clarifying difficult words. For this reason, now I feel more prepared and I am pretty sure that many of the strategies I have learned during these days I will keep them in my folder for future teacher. What’s more, I am also aware that I must continue practicing the different techniques I have learned, because the better you assimilate one thing is by practicing it. On the other hand, with reference to my weak points,  I recognize I have to continue working on the intonation and the tone of my voice because sometimes it can sound slightly low.

To sump up, I would like to end by saying that I have really enjoyed this subject and I want to thank my teacher for all the resources and advices she has been given to us during these months. Fortunately, whenever I want I will be able to read them on this blog due to it will be open so I will be able to take it back and continue writing. What I would like to do now is say goodbye, wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a happy new year 2017.

See you soon!

Andrea Lluch

                                                                                                                   

Mathematics lessons

The other day in class we had a lot of fun because we learned how to teach Maths in English, but we played the role of children. First of all, the teacher showed us a song with numbers which is about a fish and we can use it, if we lose the control of our class. You can see the song in the link below and I’m sure you will want to practice it with your students because it is very easy to learn and we can use gestures to teach it.

Then, our teacher told us about a very useful resource that we can employ in our classes in mathematics. This material is known as ten frames and it consists on a two-by-five rectangular frames into which counters are placed to illustrate numbers less, than or equal to ten. From my point of view, I believe it can be very useful to prompt different mental images of numbers and mental strategies for manipulating these numbers, all in association with the numbers’ relationship to ten. For instance, with the little ones, we can start sticking some apples or points and children can count them and we can take one out or add, so they can practice addition and subtraction. We can also make a dictation and our pupils in pairs can stick some stickers in the squares or do it all together like in the image on the left. I firmly believe children may like this methodology because it is very dynamic and they will see it as a game.

But we also have other possibilities to work on Maths mentally and I will try to summarize some of them in the following list:

–  Children count to 15 but every 5 numbers instead of saying the name of the number, they have to say “banana” and the one who fails, He/she has to stand up. They can count on twos, fives, tens and so on.
– Saying the number backwards.
– Asking the highest / smallest number in different sets (we can write the sets on the blackboard and delete them fast).
– We can say a number and ask children, which comes before or after.
– We can also say two numbers and let them say the one in the middle.
– Rounding the number to the nearest ten or hundred.
– Saying additions, subtractions, multiplications or divisions and  they have to write the result in a grid (depending on the age of our students, the level of difficulty will increase).
– Saying short problems that can be calculated mentally and children have to write down the result (the number and the name, for example, eleven days, three apples, etc.) In Catalan this is also known as “Quinzet”.

As far as I’m concerned, I believe  these activities can be very useful for children, not only to learn the numbers, but also to gain mental agility when having to do operations. Moreover, we can play it as a game, asking each student in a round. However, we must bear in mind that each child has his own learning pace and, therefore, there will be kids who will find it easier and others who will show more difficulties. In addition, we need to take into account the diversity, so in case we have dyslexic children what we can do is leave a copy with the results on their table so they can follow the operations and not get lost.

However, I think that for carrying out the activities we must know basic vocabulary expressions related to mental calculation. For that reason, to make it easier I decided to create a list with some of the ones we can use. Keep it as a treasure!

• Take  out, take away, minus= treure.
• Plus= afegir.
•  Multiplied by, times= multiplicat per.
• Divided by= dividit entre.
• An addition=  una suma.
• A substraction=  una resta.
• A multiplication= una multiplicació.
• A division= una divisió.
• Which turn is it? = a qui li toca?
• I’m going to repeat it three times= Ho repetiré tres cops.
• If you got right, put a tick= si ho has fet bé posa’t un tick
• If you got wrong, put a cross and copy below it= si ho has fet malament posa’t una creu i copia-ho a sota.
• You have to count your ticks= Heu de contar els vostres ticks.
• I got ten out of ten (10/10)= Jo he fet bé 10 de 10.
• I made a mistake= vaig fer un error.
• I didn’t listen properly= no vaig escoltar correctament.
• How do you write/spell it in English? = com ho escrius o ho lletreges en anglès?

I hope you have learned a lot from this post, as much as I have, and I encourage you to practice mental Maths skills, to have an agile and strong brain!!

Practicing skills with monster activities

In the previous post I talked about the four types of skills which are: listening, reading, writing and speaking. For that reason, today I would like to show different tasks related to the topic of monsters that will allow us to work on different abilities. Let’s start!

If we use our imagination, we can create a lot of fun activities related to the same theme. For instance, if we want to teach children description and parts of the body or face, we can ask them to draw a monster. But pay attention at this point as it is better if  we do not give them a model because we need them to be creative so each monster can be different. Once all the monsters are finished, we can hook them on the board in order to everyone can see them. I am sure  our pupils will love the idea very much because they will be proud of their creations.

I reckon children have a lot of imagination, for that reason after working the description we could ask children to go to the board to describe their monsters. Through this way we will work on listening and also speaking due to the fact that pupils will have to produce the description of their own monsters and also understand the questions from the teacher related to the topic. For example, one student can say: my monster has got three eyes, it has got four legs and one big mouth,… and so on. In addition, it can be the teacher who asks questions like: How many monsters have two heads? Or who’s picture has one ear? and children have a look for it. For me the key is that students can use the same vocabulary in different activities because they will learn it, but with a dynamic method and almost without realizing it.

There is a great diversity of activities!! For example, another one we can do is to ask children in pairs to draw the body shape of each other and then, they can draw and paint inside of the shape. I’m pretty confident kids will like it because they can not only learn the names of different parts, but also measure their shapes with their hands or feet. For instance: I am ten hands tall or I am seven feet tall and they can compare measures. Through this activity we will be working  listening and speaking skills because the teacher will go around asking what are they drawing. Therefore, they will have to be able to express the parts of the body they are drawing or painting. In addition, we will be practicing Maths too. I would like to do this activity with my future students when I start working in a school as I believe it is a fulfilling activity.

I remember when I was in third grade I learned the parts of the body with a song. I learned them at the age of 8 for the reason that in my school, we started English at six, but now that children begin English at P-3 we can do these activities and the song in first grade. Through the melody  they will practice listening.

As you have seen, we can use many resources from a single topic, if we have in mind what we want students to learn. In this post, I have shown you some ideas, but  we could use a lot of other materials as for example a puzzle with the parts of the body, a story, a poem, among others. Furthermore, as children grow, the difficulty of activities need to be increased. For example, if in second or third grade they already know the parts of the body we can play the following game with all the class to practice actions associated with body areas. To join it children have to form groups of 4 or 5 students and by turns they will roll the die and depending on the color that comes out, teacher will read a card with an action and they should imitate it. If they do well they have a point and so on until the teacher finishes the game. Next, the points are counted and the team with more points will be the winner.

I hope you like it and see you in the next post!!

Skills

The other day in class we talked about the well-known listening, writing, reading and speaking skills. In this post, first of all, I would like to explain how we can classify them into two different groups and afterwards, I will express my opinion about which ability children  learn first.

To begin with, a classification we can make it is according to the direction and in this category we can find receptive skills and productive skills.
– Receptive skills: in this group we have the listening and reading, because learners do not need to produce language, they receive and understand it (input). These skills are known as passive skills.
–Productive skills:  speaking and writing, because learners doing these need to produce language (output). They are also known as active skills.

Secondly, the other category involves oral and written skills, depending on the way we communicate.
–Oral skills: here we can find listening and speaking  as oral communication is the ability to talk with others, giving and exchanging information and ideas, so we need to listen properly if we want to be able to reply.
– Written skills: these are reading and writing, which involve the ability to understand a written text and also the writing, which seems to be the hardest of the skills, even for native speakers of a language, since it involves the development and presentation of thoughts in a structured way.

As far as I’m concerned, I believe all of them are related, as we require them to communicate in different ways. Therefore, we need to think and create different motivating activities to encourage children to use it (in English) and ensure that they can practice them in context. However,  children do not acquire all at once. The first one they come to know is the listening because since they are little, as happens with the first language, they listen to their parents  and this is how they learn it. With English it is the same, due to the fact that at the beginning, it seems that children do not know how to speak English, but they listen to us and understand and one day they dare to start producing oral messages. For that reason, speaking is the second skill they assimilate.

Then, they learn to read and write almost at the same time, although it must be recognized that they find it much more difficult to write, as I explained before.  From my point of view, I hold there is a skill  related to writing and this is the speaking ability. For that reason, in English classes, if we want children to write a sentence is much better if they comment in groups or all together before, as it would be easier for them to order their thoughts and to note them down. Furthermore, I am also convinced that there is a connection between reading and writing, in view of students learn both simultaneously, despite the fact that  written activities are recommended to be the last step.

Finally, I would like to mention a concept that I have discovered and it has caught my attention positively,  the silent way. This is a period where children do not speak in one language but they are able to understand our oral messages, when we address to them, and they can answer us nodding or by miming. Suddenly, without warning, one day they feel prepared and start producing verbal words and sentences in that language. The reason why I like it is because I agree we cannot push them to speak, if they are not at the point of doing it yet. It happens the same when children start walking, we can give them a hand to help them, but if they are not ready, we cannot force them  because they can fall. So we have to respect that each child has their own learning pace.

Working by Projects II

The other day in class we learnt another way to start a project related to animals for third grade and in this entry I would like to talk about it as I believe it can be an enriching example about how we can start teaching a new topic.

This way to begin the project consists of stick different images about animals on the board and ask children if they can remember their names. Once they  start recognizing some of the animals, they can also stick the name of them next to the pictures. Then, in groups pupils can think about how they can classify animals by their own criteria. As far as I’m concerned, I believe it can be very positive  do it through this system due to the fact that we can not only realize which animals children know but also their thoughts when classifying them. In addition, they have to consider different criteria and reach an agreement with the group. At this point, I would like to give you as advice that if children have to write on a sheet of paper the clasification and they don’t remember properly some words, the teacher can help them writing these in a draft.

Afterwards, once they have done this activity, educators can ask questions to the groups about what they have done and share the different organizations of animals with all the class. In another of the tasks we can request children to clasificate again the animals, but this time thinking in vertebrates and finally they could also do a last grouping involving  farm animals, pets and wild animals. I am in favor of this procedure due to the fact that it allows us to teach science content but through language (CLIL). However, it is relevant go slowly and step by step because if we ask children to do  three classifications the same day or even at the same time, they can feel overwhelmed. 

Once they had already done the previous activities, they can start writing and, therefore, we can introduce some questions such as: Which animal would you like to be? and they can write short sentences, as for instance: I would like to be a Kangaroo because they can jump  very well. I think here it is better if  teachers go around and help pupils with the writing if they have problems. What’s more, another of the questions we can ask them is if they have a pet at home and what kind of pet do they have. Then, after commenting the results kids can prepare a survey and go to other classes to implement it. From my point of view, I consider this activity fulfilling as kids can work on maths analyzing the results and doing graphics to represent the results. In addition, at that point, they can reflect on: why people have pets? and talk about the advantages and disadvantages of having a pet at home and draw conclusions.

As far as I am concerned, I think projects like these can be very enriching for children because we can get them to learn the names of animals, grammar structures and vocabulary related to this subject but in a meaningful way and in context. They will notice that they need expressions to communicate and they will learn a lot of vocabulary without even realizing it. Also, I recognise it is a dynamic way to teach and if they do the survey, they can have the opportunity to know more about their classmates, so we can get the relationship between the class group improve.

Finally,  I would like to say that I wish I had learned animals through projects so motivating like this!!  and I want to share with us some resources I have found online that could be useful to catch ideas about how we can approach our project related to animals. I hope you like the post and see you next time!

Different types of assessment

The other day in class we were working on different types of evaluation. In this post, first of all, I will explain some of them and then, I will give my opinion about which I believe are the best when we assess children. Are you ready?

To begin with, one of them is the ongoing assessment which refers to the fact that we need to take into account the learning process of students and provide them with continuous feedback. One very similar to this method could be the formative assessment, since it also takes into account the process. Another way of estimating children’s learning  is the  backwards assessment which consists on teachers, at the beginning of each class, ask children what they have learned in the previous lessons and notes what they remember.However, there is another way to appraise, opposite to those we have seen before, which is the summative assessment as the objective of it is to evaluate students’ learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing the results against some standard requirements. In this case, teachers usually have rubrics, which are grids with some items to take into account, although these can be applied in other types of assessment.

Finally, it is also important mention that educators can let children do the evaluation of themselves in some activities (self-assessment) or in pairs (peer-assessment). Speaking for myself, the ones I would like to use in class as a teacher in the future would be the ongoing assessment or formative assessment, due to the fact that I believe that through this model, we can be aware of the progress our students are doing and the process being followed. We can also be conscious of the difficulties they need to overcome and see all the efforts they are making. To my mind, I don’t agree with the model that just focus on the last results because if we only take into account the final marks it might not be fair for these students who always make an effort but the day of the final test they do an insufficient exam.

In addition, I am also very keen on diagnostic assessment which is the one where teachers ask students what they already know (previous knowledge) of a specific subject, so they can organize lessons competently. Finally, I appreciate the peer-assessment because through this way I am convinced that peers can help one another and as they are at the same level they can understand each other better. However, I contemplate that for a useful and meaningful assessment, we need a key element and this is called FEEDBACK. Thanks to it, we can get students to know  what they have done well and which aspects they can improve, and we can also motivate them to get it, promoting its strengths. For me there is a clear difference which is that, on the one hand, the purpose of assessment with feedback is to increase quality. However, on the other hand, the objective of summative assessment is to judge quality, so as a teacher definitely I prefer the first option. 

At the final point, before finishing, I would like to mention a video related to what I said above the assessment between partners. This video, titled Austin’s Butterfly, clearly shows that children can appraise themselves or in peers, even if they are in first or second grade, in primary school, because they can analyze the results. Of course, teachers previously have to guide pupils and give guidelines about how to do it meaningfully and  always with respect. I encourage you to watch the video because it is so worth!

Greetings and see you in the next post of tips for future English teachers!

Jobs

In the previous post I started talking about  CLIL methodology. Today we will see how we can work CLILwith a topic so familiar to children such as jobs. Let’s begin!

How can we start?
If we do a project about jobs one of the first things we have to do is ask children for their previous knowledge. We can ask them about the profession of their parents, the place where they work or if they have to wear uniforms and so on. Here we can begin to introduce some language structures such as: What do you want to be when you grow up?, What color is the uniform of …? and What’s your dad’s/mum’s job?

However, in my opinion, I think if we ask children for their parents’ professions we need to be careful. I say this due to the fact that there can be children without a parent and we do not want them to feel sad or uncomfortable with questions. In addition, as far as I’m concerned, it is important to teach children that all jobs are relevant because it is likely that not all parents of our students have studied careers and that doesn’t mean they are less intelligent. Therefore,  we need to teach children to respect and value the different jobs.

What can we study about jobs?

We can work on many issues associated with professions. For example, which are the highest paid, if on this job we can work  individually or in groups or what are the most popular, among others. In Addition, as we will be working on CLIL, we can relate the topic to the subject of Social Science and introduce primary, secondary and tertiary activities. One of the ideas we can use is to let children choose a product from the supermarket and we can study the life-cycle of this product. I mean we can follow the production process, but starting at the end because it is how kids can see the product. And then, we can classify the different activities we have seen in the procedure in primary, secondary or tertiary.

What kind of activities can we do?

We can plan a lot of tasks to work different learning styles and topics from different subjects. For example, an oral activity by asking each child: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  and they have to complete a grid. In this way, then we can analyze and ranking the results and think which of the jobs are the most popular in the class. In this way, we will be working Maths when analyzing the results and we can also classify the jobs they have said  in primary, secondary and tertiary activities.

In addition, students can also prepare an interview about a particular job and they would be working Language. For example, they could prepare it for a potter and we could even organize a small pottery class where children could make their own creations with clay and then write the steps followed. In this way, we would be working both, Language and Art&Crafts. In my opinion, I would have loved to do an activity like this when I was a child to learn professions as I believe it can be very dynamic and fun at the same time. However, the way I learned was through repetition. I remember my English teacher had some big cards and she used to start saying the names of every card and we had to repeat the name. It was extremely boring and at the end It is true that I learnt it, but  of course I would have preferred not to do it through that method.

What have we learnt in this project? and self-assessment.

Last but not least, it is highly recommended that children can reflect on what they have learned because this way we will make learning more meaningful. Also, my advice is to think of some approach that children can also assess how they have worked, for example through a grid because nobody knows how one has worked better than oneself. In conclusion, as you have seen, talking about jobs go further than teaching structures. And related to CLIL, it is not so difficult, we just need to feel confident and comfortable in what we are doing because the fact that kids  will learn meaningful it is guaranteed.

I encourage you to do it! See you in my next post!