Workshop With the Drama Teacher

In the last two Wednesdays we were working with a drama teacher. The drama teacher told us that there are some important aspects that we as future teachers need to take control of. These aspects are about how to treat with children and people in general.

This activity was really funny. My classmates and I had a really good time doing all the things that the drama teacher told us to do.

Those activities had a purpose. For example: One of them had the purpose of showing that we had to give the best of us without the fear of looking ridiculous. If we are going to work with children we have to be like a child. We have to do all the things that they do. Why do we have to do that? We have to do that because in that way we can create an environment that is cool for children. They will feel comfortable with us and they will learn better because children identify themselves with the teacher.

  

Also the drama teacher told us that we have to project our voices, we have transmit confidence through our voice. We need to have a good attitude any time because in that way people will feel good with us. People will see something in us, and maybe that something will inspire them to learn or to give their best while learning.

Also we identify some toggles that we have when we are speaking in front of people. All of us have some aspects that we need to improve. And the drama teacher helped us to do it. In the second wednesday I could not attend to the activity, but my classmates were practicing about focus in things but they had to perceive what was happening around them.

There is another thing that I would like to mention and it is that the drama teacher gave us some advices about walking around the classroom. We do not have to let any space without passing there because we need to know our environment. We need to be in contact with our children. We need to transmit our desires of teaching because children feel that.
All the things that I practiced and I learnt in this workshop will be useful not only in the future, but they will be useful right now for me. We are learning and we have to put in practice what we learnt in order to get better results in our daily life.

Catching the Attention Of Our Students

In the first class for this week we were talking about some things that we as teacher could use in our classes for catching the attention of children. We were sharing some material in order to reach that objective.

Yaneth shared a “Spinning Wheel”. In my personal opinion a spinning wheel can be used at any level of learning and not only for children. There are many different ways of how to use it. We can stick some question in order to see how much the child had learnt in the class. Yan said that making that spinning wheel is not too difficult, and we saw that it is an interesting activity for catching everybody’s attention. Also we talk about puppets. I brought some ideas for this kind of material. So, I made two puppets with socks. I used wool in order to give to the sock hair. Also I pasted two little glass eyes. We know that kind of puppets are cheap and easy to make. Also there are sticks puppets that are easier to make. With puppets children can play, they can be in a role, they can act with the puppet and they will learn playing with them.

We talked about molding clay. I think that molding clay can be used for filling images. There are a lot of different colors of molding clay that students can use for expressing themselves in this activity.

Also we can make musical instrument and give a rhythm to our classes. I did not know how to make a music instrument, but my classmates and teacher told us how to make them. You can fill some cans of soda with sand or rocks. They are easy to make.

Flipcharts for telling stories are a good way to catch students’ attention because while we are speaking they are watching images related with the story. So. They can identify the principal idea of what teacher are saying and can understand better the story.

In conclusion, if we want to be good teachers we need to use this methods for catching the attention of our students. When students are comfortable with the activities that teachers develop in classes they learn better because they are enjoying what they are doing. They are having fun and learning.

Teaching with Songs

This week of classes was really interesting. We were using chants and songs for teaching children of 7 to 11 years old. The classes were really funny and we enjoyed them a lot. There are many chants and songs that we as teacher could use in order to give to our students the opportunity of learn while they are having fun. In my personal opinion this is an effective way for teaching because children love this kind of activities and they tend to memorize songs and assimilate what the song says.

The first chant that we sang in the classroom was “The Hokey Pokey”. This chant was brought by Yaneth. I think that this chant is a really nice activity for doing with kids because they have to move different parts of their bodies. Students hear what body part the song says, then they identify it. After that they have to shake it. Kids have fun while they are learning about body parts. The second song was called “The Opposites Song”. This song was brought by myself. In this song we were studying about adjectives. Even though kids are not able to understand what an adjective is, they will learn some vocabulary that will be useful in the future. The third song that we sang was “The Hello Song”. This song was brought by Gloria. This is a nice song which could be used in the first day of classes. It includes greetings and could result a very nice warm up for kids. The fourth song was “The old McDonald”. Luis brought this really useful song. With this song teachers can make a lot of things because it is about animals and their different sounds. With this song kids will know how to pronounce different names of animals. This song was really funny because it is a little challenging and in some parts of this song we did not sing at the correct pace. Sometimes we did not sing correctly the song and that was funny. Also, Luis gave a different animal to each of us, so we have lead once the singing with our corresponding animal. The last chant that we sang was about numbers from 1 to 10. This chant was brought by William. It is useful because is a nice way to teach children how to count from 1 to 10.

The second day of classes we had to bring with us a different song, but this time we had to bring the audio or a video of the song. Yaneth brought a song about moves. We had to listen what the song said and then we had to do it. It was funny and entertaining for us. That song will be useful for teaching body parts. I think that children love those kind of activities because they have a lot of energy and that is a good way to let it out. Gloria´s song was really nice and we enjoyed making mimics about what the song said. Children could identify the different feelings that the song presents and then imitate and pronounce them. The song that Luis used was about animals. In my personal case in all the song I could not say ‘Hickory dickory dock’. After seeing the lyrics I was able to say that. The song that William chose was about colors. This song has a nice rhythm and children could feel identified with it. Also the song could suffer some changes in order to teach our students other colors. My song was the same about opposites (adjectives). However, this time we were dancing and making mimics about the adjectives that appeared on the video. We had a really god time with it.

We were having fun with these chants and songs. However, we were analyzing them in order to take advantages of these interesting and useful resource: Chants and Songs. Children need something that catch their attention in order to have a better learning development. If the child likes the way of teaching, he is going to learn more and better. It is our duty to use properly all the resources that we have because we are teachers and we want our students to learn and acquire in a good way English language.