ABOUT ME

 Hi, this is me 

and welcome to my blog!

First of all, I´ll be clear. My greatest passion are kids and the second one is teaching. As you can imagine, I looked for some degree that mix both of them, and here I am, studying to be a teacher someday! 

In this blog I´ll be posting some interesting things of my degree, specifically, for a subject called “Teaching ELF and Children's Literature”.

I hope you find it useful!

INTRODUCTION

Working with children

There is no definitive research evidence or universal agreement about the best age to start learning a foreign language and, as has been said, it is optimal conditions rather than an optimal age which counts.

All children are unique in what they bring to the classroom and in their ability to process information and learn through different facets of their Multiple Intelligences.

They are also unique in their personal preferences and emerging learning styles. Whether you are working with four year olds or twelve year olds or any age in between, you may like to consider the ingredients of the "C-Wheel" as a tool for helping you to create optimal conditions in order to maximize children's learning and enable everyone in your classes to blossom and thrive, both as engaged, responsible learners and as people.

The C-Wheel takes as its starting point the centrality of the child and the child’s learning. It is made up of eight principal segments showing a range of factors which contribute to creating optimal conditions for children’s language learning.

REFLECTIONS

The book;

At this subject, we’re working with a book called 500 Activities for the Primary Classroom which is written by Carol Read.

I think it’s a book so complet. You can find there a lot of things about how to teach a foreign language to children.

It’s very useful above all if you’re a teacher. This offers you some resources and methodologies about how to do some funny and interesting clases. Doing this, you can call children’s attention and it’s more easy they will finish learning.

In conclusion, I recommend it for the reasons I’ve just mentioned before.

The team work;

About the team work I have little tos say.

I’m really satisfaced with my mates and our work. They are great, it’s too easy working with them. All group members provides information trying to do the best that we can.

We always want that our effort will be rewarded with task’s result. In that case, it has been so good, we are surprised with what  we got.

As you as can imagine, if I will have to choose people to wirk again, I will select them anew.

On the other hand, talking about to work in groups, I think it’s a good way to learn, because four people know more than only one. We share all our knowledge and we reflect about which are the best ideas for the task. And that’s all.

ICT;

Now it’s turn to talk about ICT. If someone doesn’t know what ICT is, I will try to explain it in summary:

Richey defined educational technology as "the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using and managing appropriate technological processes and resources". The Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) denoted instructional technology as "the theory and practice of design, development, utilization, management, and evaluation of processes and resources for learning”. As such, educational technology refers to all valid and reliable applied education science, such as equipment, as well as processes and procedures, that are derived from scientific research, and in a given context may refer to theoretical, algorithmic or heuristic processes: it does not necessarily imply physical technology.

In my opinion, I think it’s a good way to teach children because it calls more children attention than learning only with a book. And it’s more easy children will be motivated.

Storytelling;

Well, I imagine lot of people know what storytelling is, but if simeone doesn’t know it, in one of my posts it is explained. It’s so simple and interesting too.

Storytelling is one of the methodologies that I have seen and learnt in class and more I like.

With this kind of activities you can have fun with children and they like it so much. Children are having fun at the same time they are learning, so it’s too important to bring importance to this activity. They love stories, so why don’t we usually use this advantage to teach them? They can learn a lot of vocabulary, tune their ears, and therefore they can learn some new forms to speak English (the language you want they learnt).

I really like this activity, I had fun with my team when we worked it, I think everybody has to try out, I recommend it. Remember, it's necessary a lineal sequence, the pre-telling, the telling and the post-telling have to be connected.

Class activities - Creativity - Flexibility;

Class activities were great, I’m too satisfied with what I learned, I think that all my knowledge of this subject will be useful in a future when I will be a teacher.

The teacher taught us how to use creativity in various activities and how to be flexible with children. She always has provided freedom us to do the task (above all in the storytelling), it was a way to learn why important is the children's creativity and to have a flexible attitude with them.

Creating the blog;

Finally, I’m going to talk about the idea of create a blog. To be honest

, I found it difficult because I can’t say all that I want to say in another language that it’s not my mother language.

On the one hand, I feel I have spent a lot of time with this task since I’m not so good working with new technologies such as the blog. That is the first time i have used this tool.

In addition, working with the blog I think it’s a good form to introduce the ICT in the society and in education. And it’s too great can share my knowledge with other people.

“SIMON SAYS” and “THE VERY HUNGRY CATERPILLAR”

Simon Says

“Simon Says” is a game that you can use with children, with it you can to work children’s pronunciation; also you can work learning some vocabulary and orders.

How to play it?

Choose one person of a group of children who will be the leader (Simon), then “Simon” has to give orders to the group, the order should beginning with “Simon says” and the others have to do that this person says. But there is a mystery, if someone obeys an order which has not been said beginning with “Simon says”, that person will be out of the game. You have to repeat these instructions until only one person is left.

For instance, "Simon says: “stand up” which, of course, all obey; then perhaps comes: “sit down” which should not be obeyed, because the order did not begin with “Simon says”.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a children's picture book designed, illustrated and written by Eric Carle. It features a caterpillar that eats its way through a wide variety of food before pupating and emerging as a butterfly.

You could to use this book with children to bring them optimal conditions to learn some things.

The synopsis of this book is the following:

A green baby caterpillar hatches from an egg, and from birth he experiences a perpetual craving for food. He eats a lot of fruits on five days, one piece on the first, two on the second, and so on up to five, and then experiments with a wider variety of foods. Soon enough he eats too much and nauseates himself. After recovering he spins a cocoon in which he remains for the following two weeks. Later, the caterpillar emerges as a bright, colourful butterfly with large, gorgeous, multi-coloured wings.

Help your child learn with “The very Hungry Caterpillar”

-Numbers; Count the colours, count the fruits, count the days.

-Food; What food does the Very Hungry Caterpillar eat? What are your favourite foods?

-Nature; Where does all the food the Very Hungry Caterpillar eats, come from? Do apples grow on trees or in the ground? What do plants need to grow?

-Days of the week; What did the Very Hungry Caterpillar eat on Tuesday? How many days until the Very Hungry Caterpillar will be eating pear?

-Colours; What colour is each food that appears in the Very Hungry Caterpillar? What colour food do you eat most often? What is your favourite colour?

-Alphabet; What letter does pear begin with? Talk about foods that begin with each letter of the alphabet.

SIGHT WORDS

Sight words refer to the words that are most frequently used and repeated in the day to day, which is why http://erasmusu.com/en/erasmus-kingston-upon-hull/student-housing words are also sometimes referred to as "high-frequency" words.

How to work sight words in class?

We can do a "dictionary-class", where we put a name at all things that we have in class, for example, if at our class there are tables, a computer, a blackboard, chairs, a window, a door, etc., we should to put a flashcard with the name.

The objective of this activity is that pupils learn vocabulary, which is most frequently used.

TONGUE TWISTERS

A lot of people don’t know how to work pronunciation with children; I think that tongue twisters are useful to practice it.

So, tongue twister could be use to practice saying a particular sound in a tongue twister; to raise awareness of how particular sounds are formed; to improve pronunciation skills.

- Draw the children’s attention to the particular sound to be practiced in the tongue twister and demonstrate how it is made. For example, in the case of /s/ followed by a consonant, hold your index finger to your mouth and make a hissing noise like a snake.

- Repeat, but this time turn the hissing noise into a word, eg Sssssss….snake! Do this several times with different words the children know followed by a consonant, eg school, spider, Spain, star. Demonstrate that there is no vowel sound before ‘s’ at the beginning of words.

- Say the tongue twister you have prepared slowly, eg Stupid Steve stole sixty scary spiders from a school in Spain and get the children to repeat it with you. If you like, write it in the board.

- Get the children to say the tongue twister again three times, going faster each time.

- Divide the class into pairs.

- Ask the children to see how many times they can say the tongue twister with their partner in one minute. If you have a stop watch, use it to time the activity.

-  Ask the children to report back how many times they managed to say the tongue twister.

- You can also ask them to tell you any tongue twisters they know in their own language.

EXAMPLES:

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers;
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked; 
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

She sells seashells by the seashore,
The shells she sells are seashells, I'm sure.
So if she sells seashells on the seashore, 
Then I'm sure she sells seashore shells.

Give your students the opportunity to imitate (you/recordings/songs/TV/internet). Reviewing the parts of the mouth can help your students clearly understand how to make appropriate English sounds. Practice the use of that sound or sound pattern.

SOME USEFUL LINKS

Here I post some useful links!!! I hope you find it interesting;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLXZV456Or0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R-aL4rXvto

http://supersimplelearning.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4WNrvVjiTw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnMSZFQinRo