TASK 4 AND TASK 7

REFLECTIVE ON MY TEACHING PRACTICE

JOURNAL

Wednesday, September  25^th

^{MAPPING                      ...................-...}
INTERPRETATION       ......................
CONTESTING                ......................
ACTING                           ......................

On this day, I design a lesson for first graders in which the topic was some prepositions of place such as In/On /under. Before this class, I had already taught them a song related to the three positions objects could be placed. With their hands, they had to do the movements in the song.

As warming up activities, I begin chanting some rhymes we usually chant when starting the English class. The purpose of these chants is for them to feel comfortable and to let them know it’s time for the English class.

As shift classes is a situation in which students stay alone for a minute or two waiting for the teacher to arrive to the classroom, and as they are little kids, there is a high possibility they have to stand up, playing, and hitting to each other.

As I was entering into the classroom some students were playing around and shouting, and a girl was laying on the classroom floor, so I asked them to sit down and I started chanting the chants for them to make silence and start responding in English. After they were on their chairs and organized, I started the warming up activity by doing three movements with my hand so they remember the concepts introduced the previous class. The children responded to the activity by imitating the movements and then chanting with me.

In the while activity, I had the students cut three little balls to glue them on a worksheet in which there were three boxes with the preposition word in front of each one. In this case, I recognize I made a mistake since I did not cut the pieces of paper beforehand, and the students take advantage of this to stand up, start talking and being distracted by other factors.

Once all the children had their papers, not all of them had scissors to do the task I asked them to do. So I remind them the value of sharing and I also lent them some. Then, when the children were working, a child started taking some school objects from another classmate without permission (stealing), so he complained  and told me what was happening. I talked to the boy and asked him to get the school supply back to the owner, but he did not want, so his sister, (another classmate) took it from his hand and get it back to the boy.

Minutes later the boy took again another object (scissors) from the same student and he resisted to get it back, this time his sister helped me again and took it from his hand again. I asked the boy why he did that to his classmate, and he did not answer and he was mad at the others students.

The students continue working on the activity and they colour and placed the balls on the right place, some of them practiced the preposition with hand movements and chanting the rhyme, when almost all the students had finished I explained the exercise on the board and its solution, some students volunteer themselves to do it in front of everyone. Almost at the end of the class, a student was asking from whom was some hair cut with some scissors. To avoid indiscipline a ask him to throw it in the thrash bin.

Finally, some students pass in front of the class by turns to practice the concepts. Chanting the rhyme and showing how to do it with their hands.

In general, I consider the class was good since the students did the activity proposed and practice the concepts about placing objects. However, I have to take into account different aspects that can interfere in the development of the class. Those aspects are related to have the material ready to work on and foresee possible students’ misbehaviour.