Sixth class

So today we started the classes in out third and last period in practicum one, so we were really motivated for teaching one more time to the children. This time there was a small change on the schedule so my team was not the first to pass, instead it was the turn of; Monica, Gisselt and Cristela. Now this is the way that the class was developed.

This  was the lay out of the classroom before the children arrived.

The first one to steep up was Monica, she was in charge of the song, all the students followed her instructions precisely, she also did a great modeling job in all her activities, she also used her activity of the roulette and was great because the purpose of the roulette was achieved, at least in my opinion, and the students were able to understand most of it. She presented some numbers and with the aid of some vounteers and choral repetition she made the class start to internalize the information. Something that I admire form Monica is her patience and her unique ability to make discipline present in the class, this was an important factor in this class.

The second was Gisselt she asked students about the days of the week, this was the vocabulary that was presented also the calendar was used by her. In this time of the class she made the students remember and practice the day of the week and review the colors and numbers, this was something great, because she always was practicing and reviewing so this was a great for the students because they will remember this new vocabulary and they will also remember the things that they had learned before. She also used her activity of boxes as she did in the workshop.

 

 





Third was the turn of Cristela, she used all the new vocabulary, she reviewed the days of the week in an interesting way, because she mixed thing s a little, in other words there was a variation on the activities. What I found really interesting is that she was changing the order of the days of the week and asking the students to put them in the right order but they also had to say the name of the day. She also used her activity of using clay in the class, it was about painting with the clays some words in sheets of paper.

 

I liked the ways this class was develop I will probably have some variations when doing it myself but I would use this planning and class as my guide, with the only small change of using the clay to paint or model something, the reason for this is simple , I am not good at using the clays so I do not want to ask my students to do something I am not good at.

For my case of study, this class was a great opportunity to observe the progress that Alan is going through right now, from the moment that the class started he was answering correctly the questions that involved past topics. However not everything is always positive, at the end of the last activities Alan had started to misbehave, he was moving around when the activities were still going on and was trying to play with other students, this tells me that he has good cognitive skills but that he losses focus pretty quickly.

Activities workshop

This week we took a break of the classes to have a workshop to improve our teaching, we brought different activities to show and share with our peers, I found this workshop very useful because I am already planning my next class and I will definitely will use some of the activities that my peers did.

The first activity was about memory cards, the cards were made of a special materials that was very resistant and attractive to the view so I think the kids will love it, this could be done with small groups and give a set of cards to each group to develop the activity, or also this could be done as a whole class by doing the memory cards bigger and paste them in the board.

The second activity was about boxes, I had never imagine how to use boxes before this class, the idea was simple and effective, so I really like it, it consist in making different boxes with vocabulary previously studied, using drawings, and making students choose the correct one and throwing a ball to the box. I think this is really simple and useful activity.

The third activity was  the roulette, it was mention that this activity could be used at any time in the class because it can make the students more active, and can also raise their concentration to pay attention to the class. The best way to do it was to create the roulette with different categories of topics that were already studied, I am almost sure this activity in my next class because I love it. Something that I would really like to add is a small chance to win a reward and the same chance to have a penalty, because I think it will be more interesting.

The fourth activities was about telling stories, this was said to be an activity that would work better if used as a warm up. The activity uses a story to tell the students, in here the techniques to keep their attention are moving the arms to give intensity to the story, the use of pictures to raise the attention of the students and variations in the voice tone and manner to make the students feel the different emotions of the story.  My personality does not really match this activity so I will stay away from it.

The fifth activity was name tags, I used to believe that name tags had only one use that was to have the name of the students, but now I know that they can be used to assign the desk in a way that is beneficial for the teacher and the class; also they can have pictures inside of the name tag, and when the students have them, they will have to say what objects are in the pictures.

The sixth activity was modeling clay, this activity was really interesting because we got an opportunity to do it ourselves in the class, I recalled my memories from when I was a little kid and I used to do it every day. This activity could be used to investigate about the motor skills that the students possess, so I think that with a new class this would be perfect to discover their motor skills.

The seventh activity was about music, what we have to do to properly use a song as an activity is to consider our students, explain step by step the procedure, use the body to model the activity and if possible use pictures to aid the song. Because I really like the music this activity is really interesting to me, what might become a challenge is to find the proper song for the students.

The eight activity was about disposable plates, a bag was created from the disposable plates and inside there were small picture of words that have been already students so the students get top practice with the images and they also get to keep the bag to take it home, in this case the bag is done by the teacher.

 
















The ninth activity was about the use of recycled materials to create something that could be use in a classroom, I was thinking that this could be really difficult but I was wrong, with the use of materials that are found in any house like; a can, color paper, glue, rice and rocks, a great tool was created, this tool can be used to call for silence or for the attention of the class.

The tenth activity was about hats and crowns,  this is an activity in which the students can show their personality by adding different things to the hats that they create, this can reflect what their mood is so this can be really helpful when working with children, also it can be used to show reward for a good behavior if a hat is given at the end of the clas.

Fifth class

This was the last class of the second period and it was in charge of Iliana and Jc, they arrived very early and organized the classroom in a different way than it had been done before, they remove most of the desktops from the classroom, this let them sit the students in a wide area in the floor, also they had a bigger space to do activities, this is something that the students found really good, at least their behavior gave signals that they were excited about the activities. Also I want to mention that today five children were absent due to school activities, so the number of students was less than usual.

  The element that caught my attention the most, is that most of their materials were visual, auditive and tactile, not at the same time but they used them in these different ways to perform some activities, they used these materials more than one time so I think that they did a great job with the materials. Also their activities involved a lot of movement which made the students fill up with energy, they used this to make the environment even better when delivering the activities. Something that I loved about the class is that they perform an excellent team work, they knew how to help each other, the modeling was done in a great way and the overall discipline in the classroom was outstanding. They sang different songs that the students like a lot, because the songs had good sound and the teachers did awesome movements with the song.
If I have to teach this class again in the future I would change nothing.

For the case of study, Alan, being in a class with less students than usual could have been the reason why he was speaking with other boys during the different activities this was the cause that the teacher Iliana separated him and the other boys in the activities, when some of the activities were being explained and done Alan was moving around and it seemed to be impatient, he had a not so good performance when answering the questions, even though he was eager to participate in the activities that the teacher did, he had problems with some of the answers. And for last in most of the activities he was exaggerating all his movements, this was done in order to get more attention, in other words being the center of attention.
While talking with him about many things, he mentioned that he did not like the school because it was very boring, that the teacher in the school was not interesting. And Alan also said that he really liked to come to the university because it was interesting and fun, that all the teachers were fun. This is important in my analysis because he thinks that in order to learn something the class has to be interesting and fun, so with this I can deduce that the more interesting the class, the more Alan learns.

Fourth class

In this fourth week the class was given by Raul and Juan, I had the feeling that because they were the only pair of teachers which was formed by males only the children would somehow react different, yet it seems that there was no difference. From my experience I can tell that students, including myself, develop better in the presence of a female teacher, so this is the reason of my feelings.

The class started with some exercises of encountering new words, counting the number of letters, spelling the words, and pronouncing letter by letter the words. This was a great way to review what the students have previously learned. They used a lot of visual aids which gave the classroom a nice atmosphere, furthermore the visual aid also became tactile in certain activities, this was great because it keep the students attentive to most of the activities. The complete class was greatly planned and I felt that the students were really focused in the different tasks. If I were to teach this class again I would not touch the planning yet I think that some changes of the way that the teachers delivered the class could be improved because at some point there was some confusion about how to continue certain activities, this was due to nervousness in some extend, but the teachers manage to cover it from the students, but this was the only flaw that I will change if I were to teach this class again.

For my case of study, in this class Alan brought a toy from his house, this made that he was a little bit more energetic than usual, also he was showing his toy to the other children, this happened before the class started so there was no problem with the toy, Alan was still energetic though. When the class started he payed attention and in the activities from the beginning he did as he was told, however in the later activities he started to move around, he had too much energy, I think, and that made him move around. Alan answered all the questions that he was asked. At the end he behave properly because the class was doing the activities properly so I believe that he followed the example of his classmates.

Third class

This third class was in charge of Abby and Ingrid, from what we saw and heard from them, I concluded that they tried a different approach to the children in which, they used different physical task to keep the children off their sits for most of the class. With the action of making the children sit in other places and participate in the class in a different way I believe that it was a friendly environment that was more comfortable for the children. Aby and Ingrid did an amazing job, they developed their class in the way that they had planned, there were no big set backs in the development of the class
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I would happily teach the same class with one only change to the planning, this being the last activity; this activity made the children create, individually, 6 members of their families with materials already given, they had to paste together different elements to create each family member. This I believe was an awesome activity, nevertheless I would have change only the amount of family members requested, or made the individual task something to work in groups, because I felt that the task was a little bit extensive, but not impossible, think that only that small change is what I would do to this class.

About Alan, my case of study, he was really eager to participate in this class almost since the beginning, for what I noticed was due to the fact that he was not sitting on his desk as he usually does, this might have caused his mood and interest to rise in the first moments of the class. Overall I think he had a great performance in the class,  he also participated a lot in the activities, he answered most of the questions he was asked correctly, in the last activity when they had to create the family members he created just two with the materials that where given, yet he knew the name of the members that he had created. All these actions show that he has retained the knowledge that has been shared in all the previous classes.

Second class

The second class was in charge of Gisselt, Cristela and Monica, in my opinion they did a amazing job, with a heaven to earth difference when comparing to our class, so I took many notes about what should I take into consideration when planning the next class, also there were many other factors, when the class was developed, that I will also keep into my mind to do a better job. 

In my personal opinion I really believe that almost everything in this class was great, from the planning to the execution it was an amazing job, if I have to take something from this class and apply it to another class I would change nothing, just one little thing in one activity. It was in the middle of the class when the students in were doing an activity in which they had to be standing in line, there were some charts pasted in the ground,  and when the teacher said the name of one of this item the whole class had to run to that specific chart, overall I think that this is a great activity the only little thing that I would change is that I would paste the charts on the wall, because i think that it will be easier for the students to identify the charts. This is the only thing that I would change if I had to teach the same class.

(This is the activity that I was talking about, the charts are in the ground even if they cannot be seen)

In this class Alan, was not to enthusiastic about participating in the activities in the class, well that was at the beginning though. At the time when the activities had develop to certain extent he began to participate more actively in the class. Also in certain activities that had a competitive feeling in them he tried to win by doing his best effort. In the time before the class started and also after it finished he was talking to other children about thins unrelated to the class, in other words he has already made several friends in the class.