Primary practicum
- 1. Primary practicum reflection What did I do? I did my practice in 6th grade of “Sagrado Corazon” primary school. The first day I observed the dynamics between learners - teacher, and learners – learners. During the second day I paid attention to how the teacher introduced the main topic and taught it. Besides I observed some strategies and methods used by the teacher. During the last day I kept observing how the teacher taught and some other strategies that would be useful for my practice. For example, how the children were sitting, how the teacher started the lesson, how she finished it, the use of clarification to check a sentence error, etc. I also interviewed the main teacher to know more about her and the group in which I would do the practice. She told me how the group usually worked, the level of most of the students, what book they were using, among other important information. The information helped me to plan the lessons and to bear in mind some useful tips. My main point during the lessons was developing students’ speaking and writing abilities. Therefore, I made activities to help learners to develop and improve these two main skills. I also included pictures, charts, posters, listening, readings, writing example, etc. How did I do it? Every class I entered to the classroom and greeted students. Then I asked them what day it was and took note of it on the board. After that I asked them some questions to start with the main topic. In some cases, this served as a revision of what they had learned the previous lesson. Then I introduced the main topic with pictures, a poster or a reading task and once they finished we checked the activity together and did some developing activities of the main topic such as TV programmes or the time. At the end of the lesson we did an activity just to enjoy and relax like a puzzle or a movement activity. In some classes, we did not have time to develop this part. What can I do differently? I have to organize my time during the lessons. I usually did not have enough time to develop all the tasks. I think this was because I included too many activities in a class and/or students work a bit slowly. So I believe that the time would have to be developed better in each step and include fewer activities. What plan should I implement? I think that I can usually shorten the presentation step and focus more on the development step in which it is very important to put into practice what children have learned. I also believe that I must include only one or two activities that exploit learners’ performances. For example, in a class I can include tasks that prepare students to develop a skill like reading, writing, or listening, and on the following lesson I would include the developing of one of these abilities.
- 2. Some activities that help learners to develop their skills could be: Underline the tittle, cognates, dates, numbers, places Skimming and scanning the text Guess the meaning of a word through the context Look at the pictures in a text and analyze them Write some sentences Recall information about the writing Questions or true/false tasks Learn vocabulary about the text or audio Know about the author Know the main points of the reading or listening Some activities during the skills’ developing could be: Stop the reading or audio and ask some questions for thought or guess what will happen Complete blank spaces Order the paragraph or sentences Write a subtitle for each paragraph Connect pictures related to each paragraph