Presentation of students

In this post, I will talk about all the presentations we did in class about the chapters of the book “English for primary teachers”. We will divide each group in two parts: what I have learned in the presentation and one activity that I consider interesting. 

1.      Teaching young learners (2-11-17)

What I have learned in this presentation I show to teach a second language to young children. The best way to do it is to teach them like in their mother tongue: enjoyable activities, repetitions, routines, pictures, puppets, positivism…

In this chapter, the thing I considered interesting was the app “class Dojo” that our classmates show in which you have the list of your students and you can do individualize assessments or comments of each students. I think that this could be useful in our future as teachers.

2.      Listen and do (2-11-17)

What I have learned in this presentation is how to teach children to listen in English. It is necessary to know that children do not need to understand everything you tell in English. You can use gestures to help them and the most important thing is to make feel tem comfortable to speak and create a good atmosphere.

The most interesting activity in this presentation, in my opinion, was the mimic game. Total physical response is a method in which children have to repeat the movements of the teacher. Mimic games is a game to practice this method and it is important because they have to copy a leader and they learn in a funny way.

3.      Listen and make (8-11-17)

What I learned in this presentation is different tips and games to practice listening with children in English. The most important thing is to prepare the activities before the lessons, think about the gestures and actions that will help them and of course, speak all the time in English while you are giving them instructions.

Our classmates did one activity in their presentations. Consists on painting and cutting different clothes of different colors and dies. While we are painting, we are receiving instructions of the teacher. These clothes will use it to make activities about vocabulary of clothes and body parts.

4.      Speaking with support (8-11-17)

What I have learned in this presentation is how to teach children to talk in English with the support of the teacher. The most important thing to teach to speak in English to young children is that we have to do it more often because they have to learn how to express in another language different for their mother tongue. In addition, teachers have to encourage all the efforts that children make when they speak in English, listening carefully and without interrupting to correct their small mistakes. It is important to have a corner in which children can see the sentence they common used like “Can I go to the toilet?” to automatize their use.

In my opinion, the most interesting activity in this presentation was “Who I am?” because they can play in a funny way at the same time, they speak freely in a topic they like and learn new vocabulary. With the use of flash cards, in pairs, they have to guess what their classmates have asking them questions. To play this game with support, the teacher should give those sentences or questions that are necessary to play. For example:

-        Are you…?

-        Is it…?

-        Vocabulary (clothes, food, animals, people…)

-        How many legs have it got?

5.      Speaking more freely (16-11-17)

What I have learned in this presentation is how important is to give children the opportunity to speak in a familiar environment in order to speak more freely and comfortable. In this way, it is important to make children feel successful when they speak in English, to enjoy their efforts speaking in English, etc. It is useful to have a typical classroom interaction pattern.

In addition, it is important to organize activities in groups because they feel more confidence speaking in a private way with some classmates rather than in front of a whole class.

In my opinion, the most interesting game in this presentation was “Find the difference”. Two classmates goes to the blackboard without seeing what there is in the blackboard. The teacher put in the blackboard two images. Each of them has one and they have to try to find the differences between them asking to the other questions or describing their photo to find what is different.   

6.      Reading in English (16-11-17)

This was my group presentation. It was about how we have to teach to read in English to children. The most important part when teaching to read is that it is not necessary that children understand everything. It is only necessary to have a general understanding. To make this possible you have to use clues in flashcards, images, etc.

You should not to teach reading in the same way you teach the mother tongue because in English the sounds are different.

In my opinion, the most useful activity was the phonic one. In this activity there are lots of card with words in English. We did a poster of the sound vowels and children have to classify the words with the proper sound. It is a good way of practicing reading and pronunciation.

7.      Writing in English (23-11-17)

This presentation consists on how to teach writing to children. What they have learned in this presentation is that there are two ways of writing: handwriting and using a computer. Nowadays, the use of a computer is the most common thing but we should teach also how to write in a paper. It is important that we respect all the efforts because we have to accept that pupils will make handwriting mistakes. This presentations show us different ways of teach writing from pre-primary children to old ones.

In my opinion, the most interesting activity in this presentation was “Jenga” one. We can personalize a normal game in our class. This game in particular, have wood blocks and in each one they have put subjects in orange, verbs in blue and complements of the sentence in purple. Children have to play normally and when they have a sentence, they have to write it on the paper and continue playing as normal.

8.      Reading and telling stories (23-11-17)

This presentation was about storytelling in a primary class. Young learners acquire language unconsciously and stories are the most valuable resource that you can use. What we have to take into account when we tell a story in a classroom is: working the vocabulary you are going to use previously and introduce new one, use gesture, pictures, soundeffects, etc. 

In my opinion, the most interesting activity in this presentation was the retelling story of little red riding hood because I think, my classmates use a lot of gestures and actions that caught our attention and that is a good point when we tell a story.

9.      Story activities (30-11-17)

This presentation was about different story activities we can use in our teaching future. Stories are important because it encourage children to be creative and to use their imagination. It is a perfect activity when you want to revise vocabulary, for example.

The activity I found more interesting was the fable of the hare and the tortoise. This is a familiar fable to children so we can tell them but making questions about what is going to happen next to maintain the attention of the class.

10.   Planning for effective use of English in the classroom (30-11-17)

In this presentation, we have learned about the planning of an English lesson. This was like a brief summary of every chapters of the book. The most important points are:

-        We can help students to learn with gestures, eye contact, our pronunciation, familiar vocabulary, etc.

-        Recasting: repeating what your student said in their mother tongue in English.

-        Rephrasing: change what the pupil said wrong in a correct form without negative comments.

-        Planning your lesson before the course start.

One of the activities my classmates did was a kahoot. An interesting app in which you can assess your pupils or may be only play to revise. It is useful to use it as a revision of the topic you have already done or maybe only as a funny resource.