Well our biggest challenges at the moment of teaching the listening, speaking, reading and writing skills was that we couldn´t talked in english to the kids because if we did it they felt like they were in the moon and stressed because they didn´t understand anything;furthermore, we lost the kid´s attention very easily also that sometimes some kids didn´t like the activity we were carrying out and they didn´t wanted to participate.
Another problem that our classmate "Ramón" had was that he had kinder 4 and 5-years old in the same classroom and it was hard to carry out activities that challenge at the same level all the kids.
Anyways, the book "Teaching English to Children" that we were studying in the class gave us a guide and various activities to develop in our teaching practicum
Activities that we tried in our classes
We tried a lot of activities, such as:
LISTENING AND ORAL WORK
Moving about is a very nice activity we used it while teaching specific topics like body parts, or with some chunks of speech whit songs like "head, shoulders, knees, and toes." that they rally loved dancing that song and "good morning teacher" that they already knew it.
Color by number was a kind of challenging activity, but they liked it
Songs were a very useful tool for us because with them we caught the kid's attention very easily and also was nice to break the ice at the beginning of the class.
Head, shoulders, knees, and toes
Old McDonald had a farm
If you are happy and you know it
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Coloring drawings was also something that the children enjoyed doing. we usually gave them the drawings as the last activity in the class obviously the drawing was related with the topic. Many children always asked us at the very beginning "Teacher, did you bring drawings for coloring?"
However, not all the activities we tried worked well. We fail while carrying out activities like:
- Put up your hands
We couldn´t develop this activity because when we ask the kids to put up their hands if they wanted to participate the whole class raised the hand but when she/he had to developed the activity did not knew the answer or were too ashamed to say something.
furthermore. if we asked one to come to the front the whole class wanted to come to the front and it was a mess
- Pair work/Group work
These activities were hard to develop because little kids do not follow instructions correctly and also most of them are not capable of working together because they start bothering or fighting.
- Filling in missing information
Reading and Writing
We taught “kinder 4”, and “kinder 5” students. As of now, our kids cannot read, and they cannot write. We observed that they were learning the vowels and consonants. Some kids can write their names, but that is about all. We did not really use activities related to the reading and writing skill. We preferred to focus on the listening and speaking skill.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
These are some activities that we didn´t try at the moment of carrying out our teaching practicum
*Silhouettes *Questioners
*Role play *Puppets *Whole class activities *Rhymes
*What is she/he doing? *Chain work
Here we have the activities that we think can work well and those that cannot.
SILHOUETTES, PUPPETS, RHYMES, AND WHAT IS SHE DOING? are activities that may work at the moment of teaching because they are very inclusive and catchy, also they will learn more because they will be really interested in the class and they will be very participative.
On the other hand, we are of the opinion that activities such as questioners, role plays are very stressful for the little kids because as we know what they like is to play and we have to look for a way for teaching them by playing. Furthermore, activities like chain work and whole class activities may be time-consuming.
