Raúl and Juan’s second class

Teachers: Raul, Juan José

Topic: Actions

Vocabulary: Swim, run, jump, fly, climb, eat, drink, drive.

Grammar: I can/can’t, she can/can’t, he can /can’t, it can/can’t

Review: Animals, family members, alphabet.

 

Raúl and Juan were the ones who carried out the third class of the third and last period of this semester.

Raul started the class by singing the “how are you” song which children have already internalized it, so they were able to sing it by themselves since the first time. I liked the way of how he add some movements to it because I could notice that they enjoyed it a lot as it required to spend their energy when doing those nice movements.

 

Then Raúl made the warm up activity. In this activity, he used the name tags

technique by putting children’s name on some pages that were pasted on the board. Behind every name there was a picture which all children had to recognize and say what every name tag had in it. It was a nice warm up because children not only enjoyed the activity but also they review some vocabulary. In addition, something that in a way failed was students’ arrangement because they were too closed and even when Raúl tried to control it; it was hard because students got the

same again. I think that he could have made a line or lines in order to have avoided this problem. On the other hand, talking about Darlyn, my case of study, I could see that when she participated in this activity, she answered correctly even when she had not come at the class in which children studied about family vocabulary because I remember that what she had in her name tag was a family member, so it shows that her learning about the language is not just in this class but somewhere else. I was surprised of her because even when she is one of the youngest in the class, she is able to do a very good job in her learning.

 

Next, Raúl presented the topic by showing some pictures in a portfolio. I liked the way of how he presented the topic because since the vocabulary was about verbs, children needed to see the action of each verb in order to have a better understanding of the meaning, so that is what exactly he did it. He showed the picture, said the verb and modeled the action, and then students made the action too, so through doing all these children had the opportunity of encountering and clarifying the new vocabulary. Also, something that I could realize and that was really helpful for having children well behaved was that in most of the activities he changed students position, so children had less chance of being distracted by their partners.     

 

Practice:

One very nice and interesting activity that Raúl did was the one in which children made two lines of students, and the two students at the top of each line had to take a hoop, run and look for the right action that the teacher had said; the student who put first the hoop in the right verb won a piece of ribbon, so it made them to be more alerted because all of them wanted to win pieces of ribbon. I could

see some of them that were comparing the pieces of ribbon, and I could see that they felt proud when they had more than their partners. Also, with this kind of activities, he could realize who have already learned the words and who did not. Although it was a very good activity, I consider that if students had had the verbs in front of them, both groups would have done a better job. Since they had them in a side, one of the groups was in disadvantage because they could not help their partners as the other group, and also because at the time of running they had to wait that the child of the group nearer to the verbs ran; on the contrary, an accident could happen. So that is the only thing that I think that could be improved in that activity.

 

Another activity that I liked was carried out by Juan. It was about using a variation of the spinning wheel technique. The spinning wheel was rotated, and the student who was pointed for it had to choose a paper, look at the picture at

its back, go to the front of their partners, say what it was, and finally paste it on the wall. I could see that everybody was able to perform the activity because if they did not know Juan helped them. It happened with Darlyn because as she is not still in the same developmental level of most of her classmates, she still needs to take more time for internalizing new things.    

 

Moreover, the activity that I liked the most during this class was the one in

which students had to use a hat. All of them had to put the hat on their heads do an action that Juan told them, and pass the hat. They passed it while they listened to music. When the music stopped, they had to choose a word, say the name of the action, the letters of the word, and the colors of the paper in which the word was written. It was so interesting and all students got excited in it because of the great songs and movements that they had to listen to and do. Also, even though when some of them felt ashamed of doing some movements, I realized that all children enjoyed this activity a lot.

 

Definitely, Raul and Juand did a better job because it was a great class which children not only enjoyed but also increased their knowledge just as children have an effective learning.

 

References:

Papalia, D., et al. A child's world. pp. 239-290. Mc Graw Hill. USA, 2006