Workshop

This week we had to make a lesson for listening and speaking skills, then we had to make a lesson for reading and vocabulary. Here is my first lesson. My teacher, my classmates and I were analyzing some lessons and identifying some mistakes that we made when we create the lesson.

I had some mistakes. For example. My objective could be more specific. I could mention the number of words that students will learn. Some parts of my during activity should be done in the Pre listening activity. Also I forgot to write some details such as the interaction that would be in the classroom and others. Another mistake that I made was to call my wrap up, “final activity”. Also this activity needs some changes in order to take more advantage of it.


Don Bosco University

Teaching Practicum I “Teaching English to Young Learners”

Teacher: José Eduardo Escobar Vásquez                                                           

Date: August 24, 2015

Topic: My Classroom

Objective: SWBAT identify and pronounce some of the different objects that they have in the classroom. Also they will use some information questions such as: What is this? What Is that? And they will answer appropriately with: This is … That is …

Target Skills: Listening/Speaking                                                                           

Planning Framework: PDP

Time	Stage	Activities/Description	Details
5 Min.	Warm Up	Students will play to pass a ball while teacher is playing a song. When the song stops the student with the ball has to choose a partner for a little role play in order to make a short conversation using structures from the previous classes such as: Hi, I am _____. Nice to meet you. How old are you? I am _____ years old. Bye, Bye. He is my friend ____. He is _____ years old.	Aim: It is to refresh knowledge from previous classes. Materials: A little ball, CD player.
10 Min.	Pre	Teacher will present the topic: The Classroom. Also he will present the vocabulary that will be used for the class. Teacher will show some picture and some objects that are in the classroom to the students in order to get familiar with the topic and the pronunciation that they will be using.	Aim: To know the vocabulary that students should use in the class. To get familiar with the pronunciation of them. Materials: Pictures of some classroom objects. Also some classroom objects
15 Min.	During	Teacher will present the information questions that will be used in the class and the appropriate manner of answer to them. Students will repeat with the teacher how to ask them. What is this? This is …     What is that? That is … What are these? These are …    What are those? Those are …	Aim: To identify and apply the correct way of asking for what are things. Materials: Pictures of different classroom objects, the board and markers.
10 Min.	Post	Students will practice by themselves asking and answering each other: What is this? This is ____ What is that? That is ____ What are these? These are __ What are those? Those are ___	Aim: To put in practice what they understood from the lesson. Materials: Different objects from the classroom and the pictures used before.
10 Min.	Final Activity	Students are going to do a similar activity as the Warm Up, but this time they have to answer to the teacher the questions that he ask to them. This questions are from the lesson.	Aim: To see how much students had understood from the lesson. If they can ask and answer correctly the question studied in class.

MY SECOND LESSON

Don Bosco University

Teaching Practicum I “Teaching English to Young Learners”

Teacher: José Eduardo Escobar Vásquez                                                           

Date: August 27, 2015

Topic: My Classroom

Objective: SWBAT pronounce and write in the correct way at least 8 objects from the classroom.

Target Skills: Vocabulary/Writing                                                                          

Planning Framework: PPP

Time	Stage	Activities/Description	Details
5 Min.	Warm Up	Students will a play a game called Sharks are coming. In this game students have to walk around the classroom, then the teacher say “Sharks are coming”. Students have to answer “How many?”, and the teacher has to say a number, then the students have to form groups with the number of people that teacher said before. The student without a group has to answer a question that the teacher will ask.	Aim: It is to review knowledge from previous classes. Materials: --- Interaction: T-S
15 Min.	Presentation Writing	The vocabulary that will be used for the class will be presented by the teacher. Teacher will show picture of some objects that are in the classroom to the students, with their corresponding name. Also some information questions will be presented in order to ask for those things. This questions will be: What is this? This is …     What is that? That is … What are these? These are …    What are those? Those are …	Aim: To know the vocabulary and the questions that students should use in the class, also to know how to spell/write their names correctly. Materials: Pictures of some classroom objects with their corresponding name Interaction: T-S
15 Min.	Practice Writing	Teacher will practice with students the questions presented before. The correct pronunciation and the correct application or use of them. A sheet of paper with some pictures should be resolved by students. In these exercises they have to filling some blank spaces with the answers that they consider correct.	Aim: To identify and apply the correct way of asking and answering for what are things. Materials: Pictures of different classroom objects, the board and markers. A sheet of paper with some exercises   Interaction: T-S
10 Min.	Production Writing	Students will practice by themselves drawing and writing in their notebooks. Students will write the question: What is this? And then they have to draw a classroom object and write the answer for that question. After that they are going to change notebooks in order to see what their classmates drew.	Aim: To put in practice what they understood from the lesson. Materials: Their notebooks, pencil, colors. Interaction: S-S
10 Min.	Wrap Up	Some students are going to pass to the board and draw and object, then they will ask their classmates what is that object and another participant is going to the board and write the answer that their classmates gave.	Aim: To see how much students had understood from the lesson. If they can write correctly some objects that we were learning about in the class. Materials: The board, some markers. Interaction: T-S; S-S

Case of Study

In my case of study I wanted to see the behavior and the reasoning of children. And I took Kohlberg theory in order to base my experiment.

I have the opportunity of being working with children at church. I work with children of 1 – 12 years old. And the experience that I have been going through is a really interesting because you can see them interacting with other children. People might think that there exist some groups of children and that they get in group with their similar, but most of the “elder” children enjoys to play with younger children. In my analysis I could say that not all the children think in the same way. Not all the children act in the same way. They are unique and the fact that in some cases they act in a similar way does not mean that they are exactly or have exactly the same mind.

I would like to mention many cases of the children that I see every week at church, but I have to choose only one for my project.

Objective: To probe that Kolhberg theory about Pre-Conventional Morality is presented in children, in this specially case, a six yeras old girl.

Child’s Profile
Name	Keyry Abigail Carrillo
Age	6 years old
Likes	Play soccer, Running, Going to school
	She is a very active child. In some cases is a little bit difficult to control her.

   

Kohlberg in his theory in the preconventional morality said that: People make decisions based on what is best for themselves, without regard for others' needs or feelings. They obey rules only if established by more powerful individuals; they may disobey if they aren't likely to get caught. "Wrong" behaviors are those that will be punished. Moral code is shaped by the standards of adults and the consequences of following or breaking their rules.

I told the children in general a story, but I paid special attention to Keyry’s answer. This story was similar to Heinz’s story that Kohlberg mentioned. I told them that there was a family with nothing to eat. The family was an elder brother of 15 years old and two little children of 5 and 6 years old. The elder brother go out to look for something to eat for him and his brothers but at the end of the day he could not get anything to eat so he decided to do something and he went to steal some bread for him and his little brothers.

I asked to the children if the elder brother’s action was ok or not. The answer of this little girl was that it was a bad action, she told me that steal thing or food is bad. I asked why it was a bad action and I explain to her that they were hungry and they needed to eat. She told me that her parents told her that steal is a bad action.

I could see the reaction of this little girl and I could understand better the theory of Kohlberg when he said that moral code is shaped by the standards of adults.

It could appear that children know what is good or what is bad, but when they are in an early age they just know what parents say. When they are growing up they know the difference of bad and good actions by themselves.

Also Kohlberg said that Children recognize that others also have needs. They may try to satisfy others' needs if their own needs are also met ("you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours"). They continue to define right and wrong primarily in terms of consequences to themselves.

I noticed that when I was talking to them, Keyry wanted to go out, but I told her that when I finish then she could go out. After that she tried to stay quiet and pay attention to what I was saying. In this little situation I could see that she for almost 2 minutes approximately was paying attention, but after that she got distracted and started to do other things. In this situation I perceive that she wanted to go out because she was trying to behave. I asked her to wait and she waited for a moment. We both had an objective I wanted to finish my talk to them and she wanted to out. It was “you pay attention, you go out”.

My conclusion is that the behavior of children is pretty similar in many cases. Their attitudes could be predictable and maybe the strategies that we as teacher have to use with them could result similar too, but there will be some variation depending of the children and we have to modify our strategy for any child.

It is really interesting see how is children development and knowing the different theories of child development created for some psychologist is really useful in order to understand their stages. 

Children development theories are necessary for teachers in order to look for some strategies that will help young students to learn better things, in our case, English.

Learning Disabilities and Disorders

In this week we were talking about some learning disabilities and some aspects that can make a child learn in a slower way than the others students. We talked about these in order to know how to identify some alert calls. We know a little how our students should behave and if we see something strange we have to deepen in the situation in order to know how to treat that specific child. There are some problems that we have to know.

Learning disabilities are neurologically-based processing problems. These processing problems can interfere with learning basic skills such as reading, writing and/or math.  They can also interfere with higher level skills such as organization, time planning, abstract reasoning, long or short term memory and attention.  It is important to realize that learning disabilities can affect an individual’s life beyond academics and can impact relationships with family, friends and in the workplace.

Since difficulties with reading, writing and/or math are recognizable problems during the school years, the signs and symptoms of learning disabilities are most often diagnosed during that time. Learning disabilities should not be confused with learning problems which are primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor handicaps; of mental retardation; of emotional disturbance; or of environmental, cultural or economic disadvantages.

A learning disability cannot be cured or fixed; it is a lifelong challenge. However, with appropriate support and intervention, people with learning disabilities can achieve success in school, at work, in relationships, and in the community.

Here are some disabilities that we were mentioning in classes:

Dyscalculia: A specific learning disability that affects a person’s ability to understand numbers and learn math facts. Individuals with this type of LD may also have poor comprehension of math symbols, may struggle with memorizing and organizing numbers, have difficulty telling time, or have trouble with counting.

Dysgraphia: A specific learning disability that affects a person’s handwriting ability and fine motor skills. Problems may include illegible handwriting, inconsistent spacing, poor spatial planning on paper, poor spelling, and difficulty composing writing as well as thinking and writing at the same time.

Dyslexia: A specific learning disability that affects reading and related language-based processing skills. The severity can differ in each individual but can affect reading fluency, decoding, reading comprehension, recall, writing, spelling, and sometimes speech and can exist along with other related disorders. Dyslexia is sometimes referred to as a Language-Based Learning Disability.

ADHD: A disorder that includes difficulty staying focused and paying attention, difficulty controlling behavior and hyperactivity. Although ADHD is not considered a learning disability, research indicates that from 30-50 percent of children with ADHD also have a specific learning disability, and that the two conditions can interact to make learning extremely challenging.

It is really important for a teacher to know some characteristics of these disabilities because if we have a case of these type in our classroom we could take it into account and modify our method in order to facilitate the learning of our student with a disability. We are not psychologist, but we as teacher could go with one of them to ask for help and advices for our students.

I found this page useful in my research of the types of learning disabilities: 

http:// ldaamerica.org/types-of-learning-disabilities/

How to Teach the Concrete Operational Child

In this week we were talking about some good methods that we can apply in order to make an effective class for children. We are dealing with concrete operational children. This information is really important and we have to take it into account if we as teachers want to bring out the best effort or result from those children.

The concrete operational stage has some important aspects. For example. The concrete operational child has the abilities of conservation and reversibility. Their thinking is more organized and rational. They can solve problems in a logical fashion, but are typically not able to think abstractly or hypothetically.

Conservation is the understanding that something stays the same in quantity even though its appearance changes. To be more technical conservation is the ability to understand that redistributing material does not affect its mass, number, volume or length.

Classification is the ability to identify the properties of categories, to relate categories or classes to one another, and to use categorical information to solve problems. One component of classification skills is the ability to group objects according to some dimension that they share. The other ability is to order subgroups hierarchically, so that each new grouping will include all previous subgroups.

If want them to learn we must show and give a lesson with clear information and not with abstract methods.

We as teacher have to take into account the typical attention span. Typical attention span: When trying to estimate realistically how much time a child can focus on one activity, you can use the following formula (source unknown):

Attention span for learning = chronological age + 1

Knowing this factor our lesson should not last for more than ten minutes. We cannot waste time giving long lessons. We have to take advantage of the attention span.

Behavior: Young children often do not have the words necessary to express themselves; they express themselves through their behavior. Children are not mean, but in some cases yes they are. It is a little bit complicated to explain this situation because some people say that children do not know what they do, but in my personal opinion they does.

Choice theory: all behavior is motivated by an individual’s internal desire to satisfy basic physical and psychological needs. These needs could be:

1) Love and belonging

2) Freedom

3) Power

4) Fun.

If a child chooses an inappropriate behavior, he is doing so because his desire to meet one of the above basic needs is stronger than his desire to follow the tutor’s instructions. The tutor should view the child’s inappropriate behavior as a teaching opportunity. It could result pretty difficult to know how to deal with this, but we already know why they are acting in that way and there is the opportunity to apply an activity. Teachers should not threat or use rude attitude with children, but I think that in some cases we need to be firm with what we say.

Also in this week we learnt about Authoritative, Authoritarian and Permissive teachers.

The authoritative teacher manages the best of both worlds with regard to control and student involvement. He maintains not only high behavioral expectations but also classroom rigor and relationships; he usually encourages interactions and is warm and inviting to students. He is open and friendly, even though his boundaries are clearly established; he is a steady and reliable role model. An authoritative teacher praises and motivates students; he encourages respect and cooperative learning among students.

Authoritarian teachers are the antithesis of permissive supervisors, as they set out insuperable barriers to student-teacher involvement, which effectively distance them from personal connection to pupils. Their rules are copious and absolutely enforced; in a classroom setting, the authoritarian is a dictator who frequently lectures, encourages little interaction and establishes fervent competition among students. Inevitably, the authoritarian's atmosphere is fearful and punitive, as this teacher exercises rigorous control but shows little interest in involvement.

Permissive teachers are popular, but have a low control threshold; their locus is self- rather than other-centered, they make few demands on students and they generally show apathy toward student progress. This particular style, despite its lax control and relaxed student involvement, is suitable or a learning situation in which advanced students, the kind that need little or no supervision, complete independent studies or advanced projects on their own. The teacher isn't required as an educator; his role is only as a supervisor, and a dissociated one at that

In my opinion I think that we need to apply the three of them, but not at the same time because that is impossible. There is a time for being authoritative. There is a time for being authoritarian and there is a time for being permissive. However I consider that authoritative teacher is the best option that we can apply most of the time. Obviously you cannot be too much permissive with children perhaps you can be like that, but only in minimal things or situations.

Early Childhood Stages

Human beings develop themselves in the same way. People have to follow some stages when they are growing up. Since a child is born he starts to learn things. In this two first weeks of classes we were studying about some theories of children development that some psychologists develops in order to understand the process that children follow in the early childhood.

We were talking about the theories of these four men:

• Lev Vygotsky

• Jean Piaget

• Lawrence Kohlberg

• Erick Erickson

Some psychologists agreed in their theories, but they also add some other aspects In order to demonstrate their points of view.

The work of Lev Vygotsky (1934) has become the foundation of much research and theory in cognitive development over the past several decades, particularly of what has become known as Social Development Theory.

Vygotsky's theories stress the fundamental role of social interaction in the development of cognition as he believed strongly that community plays a central role in the process of "making meaning"

Piaget's notion that children’s development must necessarily precede their learning, Vygotsky argued, "Learning is a necessary and universal aspect of the process of developing culturally organized, specifically human psychological function". In other words for Vygotsky social learning tends to precede development.

Level 1 - Pre-conventional morality

• Stage 1. Obedience and Punishment Orientation. The child/individual is good in order to avoid being punished. If a person is punished they must have done wrong.

• Stage 2. Individualism and Exchange. At this stage children recognize that there is not just one right view that is handed down by the authorities. Different individuals have different viewpoints.

Level 2 - Conventional morality

• Stage 3. Good Interpersonal Relationships. The child/individual is good in order to be seen as being a good person by others. Therefore, answers are related to the approval of others.

• Stage 4. Maintaining the Social Order. The child/individual becomes aware of the wider rules of society so judgments concern obeying rules in order to uphold the law and to avoid guilt.

Level 3 - Post-conventional morality

• Stage 5. Social Contract and Individual Rights. The child/individual becomes aware that while rules/laws might exist for the good of the greatest number, there are times when they will work against the interest of particular individuals.  The issues are not always clear cut. For example, in Heinz’s dilemma the protection of life is more important than breaking the law against stealing.

• Stage 6. Universal Principles. People at this stage have developed their own set of moral guidelines which may or may not fit the law. The principles apply to everyone. E.g. human rights, justice and equality. The person will be prepared to act to defend these principles even if it means going against the rest of society in the process and having to pay the consequences of disapproval and or imprisonment. Kohlberg doubted few people reached this stage.

Erikson was an ego psychologist. He emphasized the role of culture and society and the conflicts that can take place within the ego itself, whereas Freud emphasized the conflict between the id and the superego.

According to Erikson, the ego develops as it successfully resolves crises that are distinctly social in nature. These involve establishing a sense of trust in others, developing a sense of identity in society, and helping the next generation prepare for the future.

Erikson extends on Freudian thoughts by focusing on the adaptive and creative characteristic of the ego, and expanding the notion of the stages of personality development to include the entire lifespan.

In my personal opinion the study of the stages that we follow while we are growing up are really interesting and they will be useful for us as teachers and for parents too. We could determine the most properly way for teaching if we know about our students. I think that even when our parents did not know about these stages when we were children they did a great job taking care of us and helping us in our learning. There is the possibility that they use wrong methods in order to teach us something, but see us, we were not affected for those “wrong” strategies. 

About Myself

Welcome to my Teaching Practice blog.

Hi everyone. My name is José Eduardo Escobar Vásquez. I am 23 years old. I am a student of languages with Teaching English option at Universidad Don Bosco. In my free time I like to watch movies or to play soccer. Also, I enjoy listening to music. I could say that I do not have a favorite music genre. I like all kind of music.

I really like English language and that is the reason why I am studying this major. I want to be a good teacher. I want to help people to learn this interesting and really important language.

My impression in this class was a little bit weird maybe because I had never thought about teaching English to children before. So, it was a kind of surprisingly the idea of thinking about teaching methods for kids around 9 to 11 years old.

I have experienced teaching to kids at church, but I think that it is not the same situation as teaching English. When you teach at church the methodology that you use is a lot different because most of the time you are talking to them and they just give some comments about what you are talking.

We know that if you are teaching English students need to get more involved with what you are teaching. They need to repeat. They need to clarify the meaning of words. They need to memorize some things. I expect for the end of this course to know different techniques that would be useful for teaching children. We know that children have more energy than adult. Also, they tend to get distracted easily. Those are things that we have to take into account in order to get the best of our students.

We have to know different strategies that we could use with our children. In this stage they have the facility to learn a lot of things. We as teacher should know how to take advantage of this.