Welcome to our second chain of debate
Last Monday we all talked about teaching English to children, now please start debating on the following aspects:
1) Which aspects must be considered when teaching English to children?
2) Which methodological approaches might be the most appropriate to plan our lessons to teach children?
3) Click on this link http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/ and write a lesson plan for third graders using the internet as the main tool to learn.
REMEMBER: Use academic writing in your participation.
Deadline March 8th 2013
Go ahead!
The first thing that needs to be considered for teaching English to our students, its first of all taking into account their needs, what they want to learn and how they want to learn, we need to find out the way to increase the motivation, if we have the human part the other are the academic aspects , as the level, the activities, the age, the social problems, and the other difficulties. For taking down these problems I would like to implement the Communicative approach, because gives the student the satisfaction of making himself understood, also the Clil, because in that way we can see the language as a tool to learn more not just as a language, and of course the TPR, that will make the class dynamic will help them not to only develop their minds, but also their bodies making a complement between mater and mind. And the thing that would like to use as a lesson plan its that we cannot only read words we can also read images, and each student can create and interactive story created by images by clicking in the appropriated one, they will be creating, generating and proposing, the students will be using their imagination.
ResponderEliminarWell done dear student, but how would you deal with CLIL in your classroom? Would you mind sharing some examples for the third graders?
EliminarWell, i would use clil in a 3rd grade course involved with science, we can create an appropriate environment given In Science classes we can teach about the space the forces that are in the earth, the components that are in the space or in defect the lack of them we can create a rocket and try to find out with the students what will be missing to make it lift off, Social Sciences and Geography we can give the students a compass and gave them instructions to go to certain places like in a hunt of a treasure, they will learn the cardinal points,to follow instuctions, and will know how to get to places mean while they learn complex vocabulary trough games.
Eliminar(Karen P.)
ResponderEliminarI agree to some extent with Natalia when she says that we have to take into account the students' needs, that is according to her, to work around what they want to learn and how they want to do it. However, I do not consider that a child will know what is necessary or appropriate to learn of a language they do not even know. I do believe tough, that is important to teach them in a way they like it or that they will enjoy. Furthermore, it is convenient to keep in mind that children have a very short concentration span. As a result, we have to prepare different activities in order to maintain their interest in the class and also as a way of controlling the discipline because it will give them no time to mess around in the classroom.
Regarding the methodological approach, Theory says that the most suitable approach is Total Physical Response since children are still developing their motor skills (especially the little ones) and even though I agree I also think that this method applied to real contexts will go from a great help to fostering behaviors in the students that will get in the way of having a successful class. I mean, when we are starting to teach one of our main concerns is to manage the students' discipline, to prevent them from running around the classroom and shouting and playing. So, if we use many activities that will make them very active and that (as in TPR) they have to use their bodies and move, it may end up being totally different as expected and the children may get "out of control". Of course, we have to learn how to manage that, but in the beginning using this approach might be a double- edged sword. However, I think is the best approach to work with children.
Lastly, if we could have access to internet there are great things that we could do. Using the given page as an example, it has games and song and stories, to mention a few. For third graders I will use mainly games, stories and a song now and then. I would try to implement images most of the times if not always because it is easier to learn something when it can be related to an image for example. And also, the fact that we are using a computer is exciting for children, especially for those that perhaps do not have access to one at home.
Hello,
ResponderEliminarBased on my own experience I would say to say children is a wide range, because with that word we must to consider children from public and private school and all contemplations regarding age, previous knowledge, proximity to English and resources school provides and students own. As usually all those aspects tend to complicate teacher’s mission nevertheless, when door is close and teacher is in classroom he/she most to do the best effort with the tools and abilities he/she has and student have, so taking into account the student as the center of the learning process I consider Theory of Howard Gardner about Multiple Intelligences a very useful information that may guide us in design and employment material to catch students’ attention and to build up knowledge through activities they enjoy.
Also as Karen mentioned in her comment, Total Physical Response is a very effective tactic especially for little ones and no matter if it seems to be old fashioned and repetitive, it always works.
Even when it is quite hard to apply with children who do not have enough contact to English, the natural approach is my favourite one because of its focus in language in terms of communication so, I try to get from my student their best struggle in a conversation and I can see the results when in the next activities they have displayed a better performance and a little bit more confidence to speak, which is one of the most challenging skills to work on.
Good Evening
ResponderEliminarUndoubtedly, when we as teacher bear in mind an aspect such as teaching English for children, a lot of ideas come up as a result of the extremely necessity to handle several drawbacks at school, in order to being able to lead our lesson until a satisfactory stage. For that reason and from my point of view I consider that exist a lot of aspects that we ought to analyze inside our real situation. First of all, as my classmates have said I consider essential to have in mind students interests, needs, perceptions and their skill and in such a way students would get involved on their leaning process.
Moreover, I think that one of the most appropriate methodologies to apply would be CLIL, because in this way children would learn different issues through English, as well would give them the chance to connect their prior knowledge or perhaps being able to learn English from different, interesting and meaningful subjects. Therefore, students would built intellectual knowledge and might improve their communication skills and oral production.
Otherwise, I consider that sometimes we as teacher stick to one approach, when we have plenty of them, for that reason I would highlight Total Physical Response, Natural Approach and Task-Based Language learning as good methodologies to take into account when we plan our lessons.
Lastly, I would say that for me I would plan my lessons based on CLIL and Task- Based Language Learning because those approaches give students the opportunity to connect their knowledge with English, while they are doing several kind of activities, role plays, sketches, dialogues, different kind of projects, in order to upgrade their skills and communication would become natural.
Good evening
ResponderEliminarWell, in my opinion I think some aspects are more relevant than others. As we were discussing the last Monday and in others classes, the more pertinent is the social aspect. The social aspect gives us much evidence to know what the needs children are. For example is entirely different to teach English in a public school where is place in 0, 1, or 2 statuses than a 3 or 4 statuses. And totality pole apart teach English in a private school. As we know children who live in low-strata do not have internet access, libraries or not much time to develop the task at home. So, we have to think the only moment and place that they have to learn English is at the school. In the second place, I think what children like. Nowadays, the teachers can know easer what the things are that the children like thanks to Internet and television. For example if we want to teach English trough songs, we should use bands like “one direction” or “Justin Bieber” because they love those artists and teaching English will be cooler to teach itself. And the third aspect is, do they really like and need learn English? Obviously the answer is YES. Nevertheless, we as teachers must have to create that necessity. If they really feel the necessity the learning will very interesting for them and for us.
Which methodological approach might I use? Well, I would teach with the natural approach. As we could see in the last discuss on the blog the theory´s Dr. Krashen is the best way to teach English. I chose this theory, because it gives the opportunity to children to use the language very soon. As I wrote before they will have more interesting in the language if they feel that the language is useful and they are communicating with their classmates. And the natural approach provides to the teacher more freedom as Dr. Krashen said The Monitor hypothesis explains the relationship between acquisition and learning and defines the influence of the latter on the former. The monitoring function is the practical result of the learned grammar. According to Krashen, the acquisition system is the utterance initiator, while the learning system performs the role of the 'monitor' or the 'editor'.
Hello!
EliminarFirstly, I strongly agree with your opinion dear Carlos regarding to the social satatus of the learners and also the low access (in certain cases) to internet as a learning tool. Aditionally, in some public schools there is no access to internet, even worst, there is no computers at all. In those terms, it would be difficult to a teacher to teach english through internet activities. In my personal opinion, before teachers create or stablish a way of teaching they have to analize the social problems of the students, their needs and the interest they have to learn, not only English but also other subjects. Teachers need to consider what resources are avaliable for they to use in their classes, and what kind of method is appropiate to apply in certain school.
On the other hand, as a teacher I would use the natural approach because, for me, is very useful in English classes (specially in cases when children are exposed to the language at the first time) in order to give a very wide input of vocabulary and communication.
Finally, I would say that nowadays teaching English is, mainly, a very huge challenge for teacher who do not have a big amount of resources. Thus, the creativity and imagination of teachers take place in classroom, and the use of different approaches become necessary in terms of propose a meaningful teaching environment.
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ResponderEliminarGood evening everyone!
ResponderEliminarFirst of all, and regarding the different aspects that should be taken into account when teaching English to children, I consider that there are numerous conditions and situations that in some or another way will always influence our teaching labor. For example, the social and family background of the children is one of the most important aspects to be considered by a teacher, since their context and socioconomic status always has any type of relationship with the students' perception of the world and life conditions; since, for instance, it is not the same to teach to a group of children who live in a high social status, and teaching to some who live in a lower one. That is the reason why, in my opinion, the students' context and surrounding is the key factor in order for the teacher to carry out a satisfactory teaching process. In addition, other points that I consider as importan are the students' motivation, likes and interests; because from these, you can start finding out which is the best way to approach them, to get them into the world of the subject (in our case, languages), and to accomplish the diffferent goals of the course or class.
On the other hand, I strongly agree with my classmate Carlos, because he mentions that the best methodological approach to teach English to children is the Natural Approach. As we could learn in the previous debate, this theory by Dr. Krashen claims that the students can learn by practicing and using the target language both inside and outside the clasroom, intracting with other students, the teacher, and nowadays, with the diverse number of tools that can be found in the internet, TV, mobile phones, etc... In that way, I think that such approach is the best one to help children acquire a language, with the use of 'implicit' grammar and structures, just in the same way as humans learn a mother tongue.
the students' needs are important for thinking in how we can teach in classroom, making the subjects really interresting for them, but we have to think also in the materials and the resources taht the class can have, and if there are not many available, we have to think what things are close to them and they can bring class.
ResponderEliminarwhen are taking a position in the way of teaching we must understand that certain schools- public schools mainly- do not have the materials that help a lot when we are teaching a new subject, for instance if we are teaching pets, it would be great if we had fluffy toys of each one, because those figures showed the vocabulary connected with the image of the word, and w ith that our students could learn it easier, but theif we do not have those resources we could bring poster, flashcards, pictures, etc, because as we have learnt with approaches like natural approach, language is learnt in using, in this case materials are part of the process.
materials are basically a complement for the vocabulary, but it is valuable, because it reflects the meaning of the word, for that reason no matter what is the approach you use for teaching, if they are not present, eve if you are a good teacher, learning becomes difficult to carry out, and teaching children are a gold key, they learn through their senses and abstaction is nor acceptable in the first stages of their anguage acquisition, wecan not stablish subjects with not elements of interaction, if they use a communicative language with the materials taht they use, they are going to learn, obviously helping them to understand with sympathy, because it is also important for them.
ResponderEliminarOn average, children who are learning English face different conditions for it. What I have been able to observe, in my very short teaching experience as well as other sorts of interaction with people, is that - most of the times - members of our culture (sadly stretching to kids) do not like learning English, if not any language and that is a drawback already. Of course I am not stating that this implies conceiving our labor as a lost cause, but it is something to bear in mind. Furthermore, we must take into consideration the fact that most schools, at present, do not provide the correct foundations even for the native language and this fact becomes a block that we will encounter eventually during our work. Fortunately, there seem to be new ideas -sadly very few- worthy of note; that consist of creating an environment of appropriateness for English language to be used during all the activities, not only English classes: a remarkable fact that deserves our attention. On top of that, and what appears as the main hindrance for a successful teaching-learning process is the -admittedly not strange- fact that children will not practice at home what they learn in the school in terms of language. But not everything is wrong; I believe that as long as you engage your students the best you can the results will be great and that is your reward.
As regards to methods and approaches I consider them all quite useful in a holistic point of view, without one of these ways of working overtaking another one. This is a subject for further discussion in depth.
I agree with Daniel, that we have weak bases in our mother tongue, but sometimes its not necessary for the second language, it would help but we can work without the L1
EliminarAs my partners have just post, the most significant aspect that we, as a Pre-service teacher of English have to keeping in mind are the student´s needs, framing the “what” and “how” they want to learn, but, on the other hand, this statement would be a double edge sword, due to how can we ask a second or third grade student about his or her interests if he or she doesn´t know what they want, in other words, they don´t know what are their language needs, this phenomenon could be explain if we understood that the students are not interested to know what is supposed they and to learn. As a solution, which doesn´t solve this problem at all, but is a good beginning, is implementing all the methodologies in which the students will gather the language implicitly like TPR. This was the first aspect to keeping in mind when we are going to teach a language to children.
ResponderEliminarThe second aspect, is the context in which the student in immerse, this aspect implies seeing the student as a human being, not only a person who only spent two hour per week in a desk, studying something that may be is not significant for his or personal growth. When I wrote the word “context”, i´m framing all of them: the affective, the social, the cultural, even the economical context of each student, may be, we cannot reach all the students through the language teaching, but, If we could help the students to being better every day, I think that our labor is done, because, for me; “Teaching” is not giving information, is helping to the personal growth of the other.
And finally, the last aspect that I will mention is the motivation, as the cohesion and motor element that could be found not only in education and in all the aspects of life in general, the motivation could be seen from the “teacher perspective”, when he or she realizes why he or she is in a classroom and what he or she is doing for the students; and from the “students perspective”, understood as a good mood to the learning process and for all the aspects of the class.
About the methodology that I will adopt in order to prepare my lesson plans for a primary classroom would be a mix between the “Total Physical Response”, the “Communicative Language Teaching” and the “Natural Approach”, because for me this two methodologies will complement each other, providing a good learning environment for the students and even for the teacher. And it would be a good result. In other words, the students are supposed to gathering or approaching to the language in a very natural way through the use of the body, acquiring a functional language. About the grammar component of the language, I think that I’m falling in the same never-ending discussion about the teaching or not of grammar, which personally I consider that the grammar has to be taught from the beginning, this was the reason for choosing CLT methodology. Due to through this methodology I could give some theoretical support (grammar) to my students.
First of all, I think that several aspects must be taken into account when teaching English to children. Firstly, The context in which they live is highly important, because teachers have to know all the economic and social aspects, it is not the same to live with financial facilities, than to live almost without money; or to have a violent environment or a peaceful environment. All these features determine in some way how the students act or are motivated to study.
ResponderEliminarIn addition to this, I think that is quite useful to analyse the group and try to select an appropriate approach which suits appropriately, due to the fact that not all groups are the same and respond in the same way to an approach. Bearing that in mind, I would try to apply two approaches: The Total Physical Response, and the Task Based Approach.
I would use the TPR because I think that is one that best fits on children, because they do not like to be quiet and still, they like to jump and move around, so if a teacher is able to adjust TPR in the English teaching, without losing the discipline of the students, the process of learning English would be successful.
On the other hand, I think that the Task Based is greatly helpful, because with his type of approach, students learn by doing, in other words, they learn, in this case English, indirectly, without any boring grammar lessons.
Well, I will try to answer the questions from two perspectives. The first one from what I have learned the different theories I've seen, and the second, from my short experience as a pre-service teacher.
ResponderEliminarTo start with, before the design and implementation of a class (not just aimed at children) is important to recognize what the children need to or should know, and within this is found the identifying of the level at which they are and the amount of students. Furthermore, the recognition of the constraints that the educational institution has for the design and implementation of materials, because with them we can create motivating classes and not so monotonous. Also, the social characteristics must be analyzed in order to teach not only the subject but to pretend providing an integrated learning. In Addition, bearing in mind that it is for children, the didactic classes accompanied by games or play activities (such as videos, role plays, songs, colors, and so on) are the most appropriate way in which children pick up information spontaneous and fun. Finally, one of the theories that I get more attention for learning (apart from those that have been mentioned by my classmates), is developed by Vygotsky: the zone of proximal development, which emphasizes the shared learning with the help of others, and the interaction is vital to the learning process.
By the other hand, aspects that have led me to consider for my practice are the material that I can design or I can contribute. The fact of analyze the students' needs has not been possible because the curriculum is already designed and I just get the topic that I teach. Apart from this, I haven’t conducted an analysis of the social aspects of the institution but an analysis on the number of students and how they respond to different activities have taken place in my practicum. Furthermore, not all recreational activities have been successful and some have caused disorder in the class, which lead me to think that for children not everything should be dynamic and playful, but a constantly changing activity is necessary. Finally, the interaction with small groups of students gave me satisfaction and empathy with teaching. This means that I have obtained positive results when I’ve interacted with each of the students in groups, asking questions, listening to their comments, correcting errors nicely, where I feel I have their full attention even proving importance for their learning.
When we are teaching English to children is strongly important to take into consideration not only students’ needs as Natalia said but also their age, previous knowledge, level of English, their learning styles; because it leads us to adopt or adapt a suitable methodology based on what we identify they need to learn or improve. Not all the time we can teach or do what our students wants for the reason that as Karen said they don’t know what they need to learn or what methodologies are more appropriate to them.
ResponderEliminarAs regard the most appropriate approach, I agree with my classmates that TPR is one of the most suitable approaches because i it gives us the opportunity not only to manage discipline class discipline but also to teach our students standards of behavior and basic respect.
Nevertheless i wouldn’t implement only the TPR approach i would combine it with communicative approach, although this approach is more suitable for teenagers and I would implement it in terms of “Teacher as a facilitator, a person who is an empathetic listener, capable of even expecting have one to one classroom relationship with learners and Teacher as a director, in which the prime function is getting students to do things with language by establishing short term objectives which coincide with the interest of the majority of the class”. 1
Lastly, regarding the lesson plan and I have worked with my third grade students using internet as the main tool, this is the lesson plan I designed for them:
TEACHER’S ACTIONS: For starting the class teacher gives to each students the lyric of the song “If you are happy and you know it”
*Teacher plays the song in order that students and teacher sing together and act as the song indicates.
*Teacher will do the movements indicates on the song
*Teacher guide students on how to work and manage with all the resources in there.
*Teacher organizes students in Technology room and explain them how to access to internet, and what they are going to do.
*Teacher access to the web page http://contenidos.proyectoagrega.es/visualizador-1/Visualizar/Visualizar.do?idioma=en&identificador=es-an_2009043063_7960400&secuencia=false#
*While students are working on the web page, teacher has to write the main concepts worked and its definition on the blackboard in order to sum up key concepts.
STUDENTS’ ACTIONS: Students repeat and enjoy the song. Keeping with them the lyric.
*Students will participate singing the song and acting as the song indicates
*Students organized by group in the technology room access to the web page http://contenidos.proyectoagrega.es/visualizador-1/Visualizar/Visualizar.do?idioma=en&identificador=es-an_2009043063_7960400&secuencia=false#. And start to find out how to manage the resources in there.
*Students do the exercises proposed on the web page
*As soon as students finish the exercises, they should write down the main concepts and their definitions on the notebook.
1.Cambridge. University Press. 2000. A curriculum developed on communicative goals. Pg. 78 y 80
The main goal of any teacher, without a doubt, is to provide an effective and meaningful learning to our students. To achieve this goal, as most of my partners mentioned, we have to have in mind several aspects regarding the way in which children learn, the context in which they are involved and the resourses with which the teachers count.
ResponderEliminarThese three aspects are the reason why there is not a perfect, complete or ideal approach / methodology to teach. Teachers can prepare their classes with the methodologies they considered are the best but they still cannot work because at the moment of apply them in an specific group of students, teachers could realize that the learning needs of the students, the environment or the availability of resourses in the institution weren't considered.
This the reason why, I believe we cannot stablish certain methods, approaches, or even activities to teach until we have the opportunnity to know the children and their context. But, to have a basis to start, I think the TPR, The Natural approach and the Zone of Proximal Development, theries that have been explained before by my classmates, are the most suitable in a general view.
HELLO
ResponderEliminarAs i have not taken my practices I do not have a clear perception or a deeper point of view about what can work or not with children as my classmates do at the time of teaching and learning.
I think it is really important develop all the skills during our classes due to depending on the way we create the activities on the class children will be interested on learning the language. Also, if we work on another goal like beyond learning or get a gift they can find different aspects really important like the fact of singing in another language and get information about things that they like or want to do using the language.
Something really important and that called my attention was a comment on the class. A child has said his mom was proud of him because he was speaking in English and as a teacher a think that is really touching and right there is when we realized about our task as teacher. I have been thinking on many options to teach English I do not know if I am right or not because I do not have any experience on teaching but it is what I think could work.
Children love play and do things that are not related with writing on reading however we know we must develop these activities, so at the beginning of the class we have to keep students’ attention by doing these kind of activities we can play a song and make the read the lyrics and then sing them together in that way they will develop reading and listening as well as their pronunciation that is something teachers do not keep in mind but it is important. Later we teacher will give children some sheet of papers with some parts of the song as the had sung the song the will have to complete according to what they remember and then each one of them will have to use two words given by the teacher, according with the vocabulary of the song and they will have to say if they liked the song or not and why, it is a little bit difficult but it will help them to get in contact with the language. On the other hand we can try something else we can divide the class in teams each one of them will have a name and a prize depending on who is going to be the winner. Teacher is going to put different images and some sentences. Each group will have to create a story as soon as they get it teacher will ask them to represent that story through a role play. After that they will have to vote to choose a winner.
In my point of view I think those activities will work due to we are involving all the students and we are encouraging them to develop their skills to learn English and getting them interested on learning. Also, it is important to reinforce on the idea of learning by themselves by giving them a song just to sing or maybe a tail, they will find the things that they could be interesting on.
Thanks a lot to all who are really concerned with this activity of debating, we will not probably change the world, but at least we will make up our minds.
ResponderEliminarTo my way of thinking, one of the things we should consider when we are teaching English to children should be aspects based on the context that commonly lived due to from this we may have a clear idea about certain elements that they have been able to work throughout their formative learning process.
ResponderEliminarFirstly, we must determine whether the children have had some process of English as a foreign language or if they have never been exposed to that language, as this determines which aspects we can work to be strengthened.
Secondly, for the reason that not all the schools have the same tools at their institutions (especially public schools) is necessary to observe the infrastructure and to recognize which resources there are in order to we can use it to develop dynamic activities in spaces as playgrounds, libraries, materials to create crafts, ICT, etc..
After this, we must determine which language skills the children handle, as this allow us to seek strategies to teach a foreign language; in my experiences as a Pre-Service teacher of children in primary and after applied them a needs analysis activity, it showed me that most of the children have not develop properly skills of reading and writing, so many of the activities to implement should be based on pictures, songs (sounds) and games.
For this reason, and based on my experience, I would say that Total Physical Response is a great strategy to develop activities in which children are able to relate naturally the acquisition of a foreign language due to their bodies the answer this, because the learners become listeners and performers.
Furthermore, the task based language teaching provides an opportunity to allow children to use the language through Meaningful tasks, as this occurs spontaneously and strengthen the concepts previously learned by them.
From my point of view I totally agree with my partner, because we need to know what the bases of the language are and what can be done to increase the language, so we have to take into account the physical, emotional, pedagogical and the items of the institution itself, so in that way we can recognize the needs of each student to create a harmonious environment, that will increase the acceptance of the language
Eliminar