Didàctica de la Llengua Anglesa

viernes, 23 de noviembre de 2012


WEEK 8         
                                                                                                           
DATE 19/11/2012    
                                                                                                                                   
The structure of a lesson


The microteaching presentation was interesting for me because the activities are focused in Miró. Our CLIL project is about the room painting of Van Gogh as well, so we could see how to work with the art topic with children in Primary level. However, most of the activities can’t work with children in Preschool. However, the microteaching was similar as ours. The activities were original and manipulative, which I found appropriate for the age they have chose.


I found this class very productive and interesting for me, because we talk about one of the aspects I'm worried about. This is how to prepare and organize the structure of a class lesson.

After the microteaching presentation, we discussed the ways of planning well-structured lessons for effective language learning to take place. As I’m doing my internship now, I have to prepare a complete unit project focused in a topic the children are working now in the school. My challenge is that my group of P5 never did English before, and I have to start with very basic concepts as introduction.

Some aspects we talked in that class and I think are useful in my program can be:

-Hello and Goodbye songs.
-Basic activities.
-Repetition.
-Reminding what we did in other sessions.
-Summing up the concept at the end of the class.

Moreover, we saw the structure the classes have to follow. First of all, we start with a routine, which include a general overview about what we are going to talk in the class; sharing aims; and warm up. Secondly, we will do in practice the main part of the lesson we prepared. Finally, we have the end of the lesson summing up the concepts.

After that, we saw different examples about exercises we can do with our students in the different moments of these three parts of the lesson.

DATE 23/11/2012           
                                                                                                                            
Preschool and Primary activities

The microteaching presentation of this session was about the states of the water: solid, liquid and gas. Analysing the presentation, I have to say that it was clear, makes the students participate with the activities which were entertaining and appropriate.

One of the positive aspects is that they checked the pronunciation of the words and they introduce new vocabulary related with the topic. However, some of the points should be corrected or improved are in the explanation of the activities, which some were not very clear to understand the aims or what is supposed to do. Moreover, it’s necessary to give some examples to show what they want in the activity.

The second part of the class consisted to analyse different textbook activities, both for preschool and primary education. We had to take into account the concepts and skulls every activity develops, as well as the methodology. At the end we have to summarize the assets and drawbacks we found, and wrote them down. 


viernes, 16 de noviembre de 2012


WEEK 7 
                                                                                                                       
DATE 12/11/2012   
                                                                                                                                    
Organization

The first session of this week was divided in two parts. During the first part, the second group class did their presentation of the Microteaching: Ancient Egypt. The topic was interesting and they did a good job looking for so much resources, images and explanations for children. Moreover, they provide the activities with examples and models.

On the other hand, some parts were repetitive and not really catchy for us. I think that they focused the microteaching with too much theory parts. Moreover, the coordination of the group wasn’t that good as the other day, and the presentation was a little bit long.
The other part of the class the teacher organized the tasks we still have to do, individually or as a group, and the deadlines we have. She reminded us the days of expositions, recommending to everyone how to improve the Personal Learning Environment.

For this reason, I’ve been completing my PLE with more useful links, and adding my Google Drive documents we have as a task: Present yourself as a future teacher and Poems, rhymes, songs and riddles.  One of the links I added, for example, is the BBC CBeebies* website. We worked on it in class with the video Winnie the Witch. I was looking around the website and I found it useful because I found some resources like songs, stories and videos for children.


This is how my Personal Learning Environment looks now:



DATE 16/11/2012         
                                                                                                                              
Reading comprehension

On Friday, the group who exposed the Microteachings talked about The Solar System in a very original way. They used lots of resources and performance we can do as a teachers in class to exemplify how the solar system works. Moreover, they prepared appropriate activities for it.

The second part of the class was centered to talk about reading comprehension. We said that to develop comprehension children need to develop other aspects as background knowledge, discover how English language works, have various proposes for readings or strategies for construing meaning.

It is important to know for my future as a teacher that comprehension is an active process that involves all these strategies and behaviors, in order to make meaning from the texts. We saw four readings styles –skimming, scanning, extensive and intensive -.

After that we saw different examples of activities we can do with children, always giving them a context. One of the important points I can use in my future is that we can do lots of actions to maintain the motivation of the kid to read.  

sábado, 10 de noviembre de 2012


WEEK 6                 
                                                                                                       
DATE 05/11/2012          
                                                                                                                             
Children routines and storytelling

This week we started focusing the class in preschool children, concretely with their routines. We saw that the repetition part is really important, also using short sentences. It’s common and useful to use short expressions in the beginning and last of the class, in order to make them memorize it.

We saw a video with Catalan children attending an English lesson. I really liked how the teacher did it. For example, when they say a word in Catalan the teacher repeated in English as well. That makes them to associate the same word in both languages to the same object or concept.

Moreover, some word the teacher said in English she repeated them in Catalan or the opposite (ex: Molt bé / Very good). The teacher used storytelling to work in her lessons, and they can be a useful resources for my future. The first book was about animals, where they work the colours and the names of the animals; Duck is dirty book, where she uses songs during the story; Bee and Sara, where a Bee asks the Is this a flower? and makes the children involved with vocabulary of the parts of body; finally, the story about Miss Polly had a dolly.




I think storytelling is really useful and productive working with young children. Usually can help to introduce a new topic or project, and it’s catchy for the kids. In my future, I will definitely use storytelling with my students and get the most benefit of it.


DATE 09/11/2012          
                                                                                                                             
A practical class

In Friday’s class we started working with our groups. The teacher gave us the program of a “possible” class, and we chose a “teacher” in the group to guide it. The rest were students and we prepared the class, in order to expose it in front of the rest of the groups.

Most of the activities consist with routines, songs or ideas of how to present the names of the children in class. I think they were original and they gave me new ideas to work with children. A question I've raised is: Is it always useful to work with songs with children? I think that some songs are repetitive and they help them to memorize some concepts, but some can be difficult for them. As a teacher, I have to choose the correct and appropriate song for each moment and topic.


At the end of the class the first group has exposed the Microteaching they had prepared. The activities were original and I think that they did a really good job. The resources they prepared were appropriate for the activities and they used them to achieve the lesson successfully.

jueves, 1 de noviembre de 2012

WEEK 5

DATE 29/10/2012 
                                                                                                                                      
EXAMPLE OF EXERCISES

This week we continued watching videos with examples of possible exercises to do with children, in this case mathematics.

We watched another video with a Halloween story*. We talked about what we can work with the kids after the video: colors, traditional customs, parts of the house, etc. moreover, it’s a perfect video because the vocabulary and language it’s not complex and they repeat some parts several times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_f95a4MX7M

Being a future teacher I saw in any case you can link Science and Mathematics with other resources and subjects. This exercise*, for example, shows how to some Mathematics during Halloween celebration and children really enjoy it.




Some of the videos are really interesting and can give me new ideas. The teacher recommended us to download them.

For example, another possibility is doing short exercises when you have some free time in the morning or after the break, and dedicate some parts of the day to work on it. 

Interesting links:

-http://archive.teachfind.com/ttv/www.teachers.tv/videos/group-activities-in-pe.html

-http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Teachers-TV-Primary-Maths-Calculation-6038949/