Dealing with differences

This last week I worked on simple present tense with my students from 3° to 6°, the activites were easy for them and they finished them without any problem. They copied from the whiteboard and without asking they worked. Talking about my students from 1° to 2°, they worked on objects, quantities and colors, those were a little difficult for them, but they understood and worked on it. The last two days of the week I started working on speaking activities where they went in front of the whiteboard and talked about them and then we read a tail, that after they one by one were reading it. 

I think they are responding well to the activities and that is good for me. 

A hard, but happy week!!

This week as we know was a very special week for children, so I was very kind with them.
Three days of the week, we worked on activites for review, because they had their english test last Thursday and Friday, so I helped them with the activities. They were very accesible and disposed to work on that because they wanted to remember what they worked on in the normal classes and get a good grade on the subject. 
They copied some activities, I explained what they had to do and they worked and asked all the questions they had. 
On the other hand, because it was their special week, I played with them some activities in order to make them feel happy, they really enjoy to play in the class. When they play, they learn without notice themselves. I always play a lottery that I made and sometimnes they say (oh nooo, no that game again), but I explain to them that they need to learn the verbs and this is a very good way to learn them without  being writing. 
I´m happy to see that they are leaning so much, but on the next weeks we will start working on speaking activities which will be very good for them.  

Partner proffesional dialogue

It was a very good activity that I liked because it was diffferent to the others. Students had some problemns as I said  before with the simple present and on the other hand the students on first and second didn´t have problems with the quantities. For the conversation they had a little problem with pronouncing the words.  

This activity was very useful and funny. There were some reasons why I think that. At first I was nervpus about the parents going to the classroom and work with me and they looked anxious too, some of them don´t know the language. The students had fun working with their parents and also their parents learned too, about how to use the verbs. Finally they were happy and said that they had fun, but they still have some problems on writing sentences in simple present tense.

Post-reflection dialogue report

1. What aspects of the development of your unit plan did you find useful? I think that all was useful, but the fact that students had to write some opinions about the class and that their parents go to the classroom was good. 
2. What did you find was not useful? I think that all what we were going to do was good and useful.
3. Suggestions for improvement? I think that if students give opinions about the classes can be good to find more and better ways to work. 
4. Do you have suggestions for how we might continue or follow up this work and dialogue? It may be good if we as teachers do a dialogue at least once a month with others to give some advices on how to improve our classes. 

Lesson plans:

What we did?

This week I worked on simple present tense with my students from 3rd to 6th grade. This topic that we can think that is not too difficult. for some students it is very difficult and confusing, so they get in troubles by trying to understand it. even when they have problems, they give their best and try over and over to write complete and correct sentences. We just started working on simple present tense in affirmative and I am entrusted that they will be able to get the idea. 

I want them to learn it because it is a very important part of english, on that way they will be able to talk about situations of their everyday lives. I will tell you how it will be when they have tolearn in negative or interrogative, maybe it can be more difficult or easier, who knows, every student is different.  

With my students on first and second I worked on quantities, they had to say what they can see using objects and numbers. It is a very easy topic for them, in fact they don´t need me to explain them, some of them get very fast the idea. And for last as it has been done we played on Thursday and Friday, we play the lottery of verbs and numbers, where they a card with a number and in two teams they will go in front and form the quantity the heard. They get confused, but I really like this game, they are learning to build quantities in the two languages.  

Situated learning

Well, first sorry I´m late I didn´t see we have to do this activity.

Now after I read the article about situated learning, I understood that is when the students learn from helping each other and being a part of a community, students can also learn by practicing what they learn. Besides students learn from observing the environment. 

Now according to my receiving institution and the work I´m doing with the students there I found some points on where I see that situated learning is matched to my social service. Learnig is a process where students need to acquire the knowledge taught by the teacher. Since the moment when students get in the classroom in fact they can learn many things talking about the environment, social behavior, friendship and topics seen in the classes. All these can be done in the classroom working with my students.

As I have seen learning a subject can be matched to other one, according to the topic is being worked on. Being a teacher in elementary I have seen that as a teacher we have to teach using transversality, that is when students learn about two subjects at the same time. I think this is one of the parts of situated learning. When I work on numbers for example I can then work with my students on math problems, as an example, or children on first grade that are learning the alphabet, they can learn it in english and spanish at the same. In my opinion transversality can be one of the points.

Sometimes students need to learn in other contexts not just in the classroom, being sitting on the chair and listening to the teacher talking all the time. Students need to learn outside the side, studen ts can learn a lot being out of the clssroom, because the practice what the learn. It is not the same when a student just write and copy from the whiteboard than when they practice it,for example they are learning verbs, so it will be easier if they go out of the classroom and act out the verbs by listening them or even in the classroom, but playing a game board using the verbs. It is proved that students learn a lot when they play too not just by writing.

For last, beign a part of a community is very important, too. Here is where students learn by helping others. In the class, when students finish their activity first, some of them tend to help others who hasn´t finish, they also learn by helping because they see again what they did or maybe explaining to others, they can remember more by repeating.

In my social service I think  that these can be the most important, working on transversality, practicing,changing the environment (the place) and helping each others. Here I share a picture of the cards for a lottery that I made some years ago and I still use it to play and they learn the verbs at the same.

   

Getting to know

I know it is late, but after trying to find how to direct my plan, now I´ll start writing about my work in school. Well, I´m doing my social service in the place where I work, but in the afternoons. I´m going to work with students from 1st to 6th grade in elementary. These students go because have some learning problems, so I will help them to develope some skills. The first class was a little difficult and complicated, because the difference of ages. I took some activities to work with, but first we introduced to our classmates using sentences like: my name is, I´m ------ years old and they had fun on doing that. After that, I started explaining the wy we will work in the course and how they were sexpected to react about. Then I ask them to write down in spanish a text where they say how they like, enjoy or don´t like the language. The I revised them to see their comments about what they feel or not. That day we worked around two hours and is the time we will work every class. It was good working with them and they were very

Working on different topics

As I said before, I work with students from 1st to 6th grade in elementary. I divided them on three groups, this in order to work with each group the same topic. We are working on different topics and vocabularies according to their age. 

This week I worked with group 1 (1°-2°) some verbs in gerund, at first they didn´t remember the meaning of them. Then we worked on quantities with objects, they had to read and draw what it said, I think they liked that activity because it wasn´t difficult. 

For groups 2 (3°-4°) and 3 (5°-6°) I started to work with simple present tense on the three different ways. They first started with some verbs, next with personal pronouns because they still get confused with them, then they combine ten verbs in present tense  and finally we started with the structure of simple present tense in affirmative. When they started with the last activity that was to build sentences using the structure they got a little confused, but we will be working on that until they get how to do it. 

I like to see how they are learning and advancing on the language, obviously they have no the ability to write complete paragraphs, but they are working to continue learning. Some of them have some understanding problems , I see that it is hard for them to learn how to build sentences, in fact there are about three the ones that have that problems. I hope that when this finishes they will have gotten better.