TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. THE YOUNG LEARNER

II. CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT AND ATMOSPHERE

III. LISTENING, ORAL WORK, READING, AND WRITING

IV. WHEN THINGS GO WRONG IN CLASS

V. THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE

VI. COMPARISON BETWEEN TRADITIONAL TEACHING AND 21st CENTURY TEACHING

VII. SELF-ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION OF OUR LEARNING IN THE COURSE

INTRODUCTION

We are English Students who want to show our own work as Kindergarten Teachers. In our blog, we will show our work in the classroom with our students, also we will show you our work as students at college. You will find in our blog some tools which can help you teaching very young children. We hope you like our blog.

Authors: 

• Jorge Alexander Mezquita Castro
• Wendy María Estrada Jovel
• Francisco José Ramón Cea

I. THE YOUNG LEARNER

What's to be a Young Language Learner?

Most of them are little kids, in our case we have met a lot of different kinds of children. Some of them are quite and some other likes to bother a lot, but every single child  is special for us.

The children have the particularity of being very lovely; since you get in the classroom, they stick at you as if they were snot. Also, they enjoy being with you outside the classroom and they appreciate that you spend time with them.

Furthermore, they love when you ask them to participate. In some occasion, they even argue among them because everyone wants to participate. Also, they adore playing, singing, listening to music and overall coloring drawings.

We as teachers of young learners have to aim to the activities or games we bring the classroom because is in those chances that kids really learn. Nevertheless, the class should not be just games; in fact, everything has it's own time.

II. CLASS MANAGEMENT AND ATMOSPHERE

Snapshot of my teaching practice

- Abilities

I created lots of worksheets for my students in order to practice what I taught. Also, I made a variety of charts for me to use them while I was teaching... Here I show you some of the material I used during my teaching practice...

- Attitudes

The first day that I was in the classroom just observing, the students were asking what I was doing there because I was a completely strange for them... When I introduce myself in front of the whole class they felt comfortable because now they knew that I was the new English Teacher in the School.

- Rapport with Children

I think all my students considered me as another friend in the classroom because I always played with them. Also, they respected me as a the English Teacher I was.

- Classroom atmosphere

Inside the classroom, I found a lot of material to the children such as color pens, paper, finger paint, pencils, scissors, etc. Also, the desks were arranged in a way that the children could pay attention to the teacher.

Furthermore, the classroom was decorated with a variety of pictures, with the numbers, the vowels, the ABC, and more.

- Grouping

I consider group work as an important class activity because it guides the learners to work together, but when you are working with very young people you cannot use group work because the children may star a fight and then the activity will be a mess.

In teaching very young people, I preferred using individual work instead of using group work even though they were arranged together in their little tables.

How can I adapt my own style of teaching to accommodate to the needs and motivations of young learners?

According to the areas mentioned above, the one I consider I have to improve is GROUPING because you as teacher let the students to participate or to work actively among them and then they have to express the idea's group and the rest of the group could support themselves.

My own short- and long-term goals as an ELT practitioner

- To not to be afraid when talking in front of a class even if they are very young, teenagers or adults.

- To be patient when explaining what the students have to do at the moment of developing an activity. 

- To be more active when teaching a class in order to motive the students to participate during the class or in an activity.

I recommend you this websites where you could find a lot of downloadable material, such as flashcards, songs and their lyrics, etc. which could help you when teaching.

- American English, a website for Teachers and Learners of English as a Foreign Language

http://www.americanenglish.state.gov/

-Bluebloc Notes

http://www.blueblocnotes.com/

By Alex Mezquita

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 SNAPSHOTS OF MY KINDER PRACTICUM

*RAPORT

  Actually I could achieve a very good rapport with all the kids since the first days at the kinder. I think it is because I am like a little kid. Nevertheless, at the moment of teaching I changed from being just another kid there to become their teacher.

ABILITIES

At the moment of preparing the classes, I faced a challenge "How to bring activities to the class that makes the kids feel like learning  and also to catch their attention."

I tried a lot of things like telling stories, songs, make them dance and most of them worked well.

Songs like the wheels of the truck and dingo the dog were very useful at the moment of the class.

ATTITUDES

I am not going to lie, the idea of going to a kindergarten and teach was not that fascinating for me. At first sight, it seemed to be easy but handle a class with 44 kids was not easy.But I said to myself "What do I really want? Just a grade? or the satisfaction of having planted that seed in the children minds of the English." I did the best I could, and it was just a matter of changed my mind and focus on what I wanted.

CLASSROOM ATMOSPHERE

The classroom atmosphere is one of the most important  things a the moment of teaching because if the children feel comfortable in the classroom the experience of learning will be better. I tried to follow some of the tips that the book teaching to very young learners gave.

*I tried to put as many things o the walls as I could.

* At the moment of develop an activity like coloring I gave the kids some crayons and  left aside some other crayons  in case they wanted more colors but i put the crayons in boxes and jars for them to know where to find what in where.

*And finally there is this one thing that I really liked. that the desks were arranged in a way that there was always space at the front and in the middle of the classroom to perform and walk in the classroom.

GROUPING

Grouping was a bad idea if it was not coloring in my case because they were too many kids and the time was not enough. I had a bad experience while trying to carry out this if I wanted them to do something in groups. Nevertheless, their desks were arranged in groups.

How can I adapt my own style of teaching to accommodate to the needs and motivations of young learners?

Well, everyone has different abilities and points of views. I think that I have to bring to classes things that I'm good at . in my case I know how to play some musical instruments and it would help with the classroom atmosphere and to create a better rapport with the kids.

Nevertheless, there are things that I have to work on like my patience, also learn how to handle classes with big groups because it is a big challenge.

My own short- and long-term goals as an ELT practitioner:

 Well some of my short term goals as an ELT practitioner are 

 *  To learn how to left aside that feeling that i get when I'm in front of a class because the students expect that we handle the language and topics as the palm of our hands , and we are simple human beings and we make mistakes.

* Improve my interpersonal skills for when the moment of teaching huge groups of students that a process of creating boundaries be easier.

* Keep studying  and learning more about the language, and about teaching people in subjects like Didactics of the English Language.

As a long term goal, the principal is to finish all my practices in every stage successfully.

Some material I found on the Internet and may help you is the following:

If you are a kindergarten practitioner this might be as useful as it was for me.

*  A list of nursery rhymes

In this page, you will find a lot of sheets for coloring.

http://www.coloring.ws/coloring.html

Here is a podcast of an exercise about a conversation.

by FRANCISCO RAMON

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Snapshot of my teaching practice

Abilities

The first time that I went to the school, some of the children were happier than others when they knew that I was there to teach them English and when they realized that they were

good at learning some words in English, they became more interested in learning and also, they could play and learn at the same time and that made the process of learning more easier. That made easier everything because I knew that I had to motivate children to learn and I think I did it because in the end they were using most of the words that I taught them and they were thankful for that.

Attitudes

As we know, children like to play a lot and they easily get distracted with other students or toys, so the first week was kind of difficult for me to get their attention but then I tried to learn from them and I changed some activities to make them more attractive for the children. After that change, in my second week they started to participate more and I started to rewarded them with recognizing their work in front of other students. 

 Rapport

 From the first day I went to the school and met the children, most of the them created a good relationship with me and the fact that they showed interested in learning English was helpful at the moment of teaching. Kids are very lovely, especially girls, but I was surprised that some boys change in a positive way their behavior and wanted to learn more.

Classroom atmosphere

Like in most of the classrooms of kindergarten, the walls were decorated with pictures related to the topics that they have seen and with some of their worksheets to recognized their work in front of all the students. I used to leave them my materials in the wall for them to remember during the week, what they had learned with me. Also, I arrange the desks in order to they behave better and learn more.

Use of grouping

In the beginning, I did some group activities, but I realized that was a really bad idea because children tend to talk a lot when they are with their classmates, so I started to think about how I was going to make them word. I understood that they work better alone. Of course, this was not all the time, but they work better individually. I developed some activities in order to them could learn and enjoy, I realize that they loved to paint.

 

*How can I adapt my own style of teaching to accommodate to the needs and motivations of young learners?

I think that I´m good at decorating the material that I´m going to use my the class, this helps to catch students attention and also, I tried to be confident with my little students. But something I need to improve is how to manage some situations that disturb the class, because not all the children behave the same way and you can't treat them like would treat a younger student.

- Explain your short- and long-term goals as an ELT practitioner and how you plan to reach them. 

One of my short-term goals as an ELT was to create a bond with my students and teach them most of the basic things. Also, to have a teacher's attitude because I couldn't ask them to pay attention in a polite way, or to speak too loud while I was teaching, but I did it. 

About my long-term goals as an ELT, I could say that I was expecting to have a high final grade, to learn how to teach and be more confident. I expected to enjoy my teaching practice and I did it, too.

By Wendy Estrada

III. LISTENING, ORAL WORK, READING, AND WRITING

     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

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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

The children were not at all capable of understanding the directions given for them to fill in the blanks.

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.

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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.

IV. WHEN THINGS GO WRONG IN CLASS

- Situations I faced in my teaching practicum

• An external disturbance, once the ambassadress of Chile was visiting the school because the embassy helps the school with its needing, the ambassadress entered the classroom and the children were surprised because of her visit. I had to stop the class and let them greet the ambassadress.

• An activity was too difficult, as a review on the colors and the number I used a worksheet in which the children had to color the drawing according the number in each section on it. They did not understand what they had to do at the moment I was explaining, so I had to explain it again but in a different way what they had to with the drawing.

By Alex Mezquita

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The process of teaching kindergarten kids was a priceless memory, but not everything worked well always there were some moments where I had to face some issues like:

An internal disturbance:

I was teaching  my class and like in the middle of my class a guy, "Steven" ,  pissed  and everyone started mocking at him. Also, once in the middle of an activity a kid stood up crying and went out of the classroom.

In both cases, I tried to calm down the other kids and help the troubled kids with their problems, and tell them tat there was no problem that it was something normal.

Extra time

Once I don't know why but my class lasted one hour and a half, and  I  was like damn what do I have to do?  

I improvised some activities and the time passed flying.

By Francisco Ramón

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- There was an internal disturbance.
I rarely had an internal disturbance but, as we learned with the TVYL, I tried to use that disturbance to explain the topic that I was teaching. For example, one day I was teaching colors and a boy screamed just because he wanted to do it and I called him to the front of their classmates and I asked them the color of the cloth that he was wearing.

 - The class went out of control.

This was one of my biggest challenge because children used to play with the toys that were in the classroom and also, one day I realized that a group of girls were using makeup and I didn't know what to do, if take them out the make up or just to warm them, but at the end,  I just asked them to pay attention in a polite way I and tried to make them participate more.

By Wendy Estrada

V. THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE

In the presentation below, we show you some of the materials we used in our teaching practicum... We hope you like it

In these collages, we show you some of our classmates in their TVYL presentations

VI. COMPARISON BETWEEN TRADITIONAL TEACHING AND 21st CENTURY TEACHING

Just to reflect upon on how the process of teaching has changed by the pass of time lets see this image

As we can see teaching has not the same influences that it used to have. Furthermore; the changes that our society has suffered  had impulse the process of teaching to change.

Nowadays a teacher most has some characteristic, we think that the top 5 of those characteristics are:

 *Anticipate for the future

     we have to think of preparing the children for the world in which they live and will eventually work, not the current world in which we as teachers navigate.

*Foster face to face communication and also the interpersonal relationships.

   Nowadays technology can foster isolation. it is very common that students have 1000 friends on social networks, but they don't know how to be a friend.

We as teachers have to teach and foster those interpersonal skills in the classroom because they will be helpful for our students.

*Can teach and assess all levels of learners.

The 21st century teacher must be a situational leader, he or she must have the ability to assess what level each and every student they teach is  and try to bring them to the level they most are.

*Is able to assess effective vs. non-effective technology.

 The teacher of the new age will need to be adept in judging the educative and non-educative use of technologies made available to them and to their students at school and at home. The potential downside of technologies is their potential or non-productive use wasting time and resources.

When we were talking about technology a question popped up; WHAT TECHNOLOGICAL TOOLS SHOULD BE REQUIRED KNOWLEDGE FOR TEACHERS?

We reach the conclusion that  it is not about tools. Tools come and go, but  being able  to see the forest for the trees is the important.

*It is a long life learner

         It´s curious about the subject matter- in our case English.

         Interested in student´s world :what they listen to, watch, wear, talk about, etc

        Able to reflect on how he or she teaches.

As a conclusion, we think that what makes really different the traditional teaching is what it used to be focused on traditional teaching was just about to each the subject matter, but the 21st century teaching is focused not only on  the subject matter but also on developing the others student´s skills like interpersonal skills, development of critical thinking  and others.

VII. SELF-ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION OF OUR LEARNING IN THE COURSE

Taking this subject had been a great experience, first this subject had helped me to improve some skills as speaking because sometimes I felt afraid to be standing in front of a class and now I don't. Also, I have learned to use some tools as Knovio presentations that could help me when working at a school in the future.

Furthermore, I have learned about English has been changing and how it has been adopted by many countries around the world as a second language and it continues been studied as a foreign language in countries as our, El Salvador.

Also, I enjoyed working with children at Kindergarten being the English teacher. I loved when they called me TEACHER ALEX.

By Alex Mezquita

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Well, actually I used to think that this subject was a waste of time because I don't want to be a teacher. But as the time passed I realized that  it is a very useful subject because we had a glance of what is to be a teacher like; however, this haven't changed my mind  and I still don't want to be a teacher.

Regarding of all the other activities we did in the subject I reckon it has been such a great experience because it involved a lot of group work an encounter with new tools that we can use later.

I have some pieces of advice to somehow improve this teacher  training course:

* To bring more didactic material to the classroom not only the typical laptop and lcd projector, whiteboard. nowadays out there are more tools that teachers can bring to the classroom.

* I think that it will be nice if they take the time like to take us to some kinder to see different styles of teaching.

By Francisco Ramón

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My teaching practice was a great and beautiful experience because at the beginning of my career, I was afraid of that, but in my second week of teaching I was really enjoying what I was doing because kids are so adorable, they learn quickly and they are full of energy. I found many kinds of kids in the kindergarten, but all of them were good at learning English. I think that I learned a lot, even how to interact with other teachers.

By Wendy Estrada