In our opinion, as future teachers, it is important to know what students think about learning English: if they like, if they don’t like, why... Thus we have gone to a pre-school English lesson to have some contact with real situations.
We went to E.E.I. Noalla in San Cibrao. It is a one-room school where there are fifteen educated children. They have English lessons twice a week and each one is about one hour. In this post you could read how is a pre-school English lesson.
After the break, children sat down on the floor to start an assembly. First, they greeted the English classes’ mascot, a monkey bear. One by one were saying “Good morning, Monkey, how are you?” After welcoming Monkey, they revised the days of the week and vocabulary in relation to weather (it is raining, it is cloudy, it is sunny…). To revise vocabulary of weather, students played a game called “the gangster”. This game consists on say the word of a flashcard that the teacher shows them, they have to do it quickly because the last one is eliminated. Next the children stood up to dance while they were visualising the following video:
The last activity in the assembly was practice a short stage play to represent the Mayos’ Day. After twenty minutes of rehearsal, the students sat down again to watch an episode of Magic English.
Finally, we asked the children if they like learning English, why and if they would like to change something about their English lessons. The majority answered that English is one of their favorite subject because lessons are enjoyable and they usually are playing games. Some of their answers are:
- “Me gusta porque también jugamos jugando”.
- “Me gusta porque mi palabra favorita es butterfly”.
There were some children who don’t like English because they sometimes don’t understand what the teacher tell them. For example, one student said:
- “A veces, porque a veces no lo entiendo”.
In relation to if they would like to change something they have different opinions:
- “Yo quiero cambiar la mascota porque es fea y su nombre no me gusta”.
- “Yo no quiero cambiar nada porque son muy chulis”.
To sum up, children are satisfied with their English lessons and they feel happy in them.
I find this post very interesting because I'm not sure If teachers usually ask their students if they like or not English, and maybe this should be the starting point to work with them and change the previous idea (in case they don't like English) that in my opinion can set a bad English standard for them that may last until their adulthood or their whole lives. I also wonder if eliminating those children who don't say the word out loud quickly is a good idea at preschool. Couldn't they find it frustrating?
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion this is a very interesting English lesson, it is important to keep the children interest through fun and participative activities. As they are very little, teachers may be careful with the way they teach because here is when the pupils start “loving” or “hating” English.
ReplyDeleteI find the idea of having a mascot very interesting, but I agree with Andrea in the previous post, the thing of eliminating the kids of a game could motivate or frustrate them, maybe it is something to take care of.
Anyway, the post was very interesting and I think it can inspire us for preparing lessons in the future. Good job!
Good work, especially for show us a little bit about how a pre-school English class could be.
ReplyDeleteI think the same about eliminating a child of the game but always are going to be some mistakes that we will commit on in our future as teachers. We are here to learn!
Very interesting post! I liked the way you worked with it. Thank you for showing us how pre-school is when teaching English and for your job.
ReplyDeleteHi Beatrice and Marta, I think your text reflects a good initiative, going to a school and finding out what children think – and it seems quite encouraging, doesn’t it? Most very young learners, at least in the centre you visited, seem to enjoy English, and as we know, getting off to a good start is very important, because otherwise we just put them off English for life! I also agree with Andrea and Reyes, that the idea of “eliminating” children from a game might be counterproductive, though not necessarily, it all depends how it is done, I suppose…
ReplyDeleteI really liked this post !!
ReplyDeleteI think it's very important to know likes and dislikes of pupils and how can we teach them , talking in terms of likes , because i think that if we teach them something and they are having fun they will be more prepared to learn .
Thank you for this post !