Learning Log n°3:  Some important reflections about the course

 teaching English to children.

This is my last learning log of this course. In this opportunity I want to share some reflections about the course regarding the topics we saw and some important activities we did.

To start, I want to reflect on this question: What is teaching English to children?

One of the most important challenges for a language teacher is to teach English to children. Many students of foreign languages start their teaching experience with children but their experience become a mess when they realized that children don’t pay attention easily, they are extremely active, self-center, and they don’t understand some abstract concepts.

To overcome these kinds of situations is necessary to take into account the following when it comes time to teach English to children:

1.      A teacher must be informed of the children development: It is important to know about the biological, cognitive, affective and the social development of a child, this will guide the teacher when it comes time to plan the class. The teacher can read some important authors that have made some researchers about these topics like Piaget, Bruner and Vygotsky.

2.      A teacher must be informed of children’s interests:  Nowadays children have a variety of entertainment through TV programs and a lot of computer games, so is important for a teacher to be updated on this to take into account when planning a class.

3.      A teacher must know how to plan a class:  The backbone of a class is the lesson plan. A definition of a lesson plan is ¹ “a progression of interrelated activities which reinforce and consolidate each other in establishing the learning towards which the teachers is directing his efforts”. There are many ways to do it but the most important is to take into account in which kind of syllabus our English class is placed. The book ² “The Primary English Teacher’s Guide Book has good examples of how to plan a class, before while and after the class.

4.      And last but not least a teacher must enjoy the classes with his/her kids: This point is important because students’ attention depends on the teacher’s attitude toward the class, and especially with kids is important to have enthusiasm and energy.

Those were some important aspects I learned in this course.

I can learn a lot of thing from readings but if I link the theory with the practice that learning will become meaningful. Through this course we did some “microteachings” that gave us tools to analyze some activities we usually do with our students, and we learn some others. One of the most meaningful and challenging activities for me was to do the final demonstration.  It was challenging because before presenting it we watched in class some videos about previous demonstrations. Some of them were not so good even when they took the same class, so for me and my group was a challenge to try to do the things right, taking into account all the things I mentioned above.

I can say this course gave me great tools to continue teaching English to kids, I love to do this but I love more to learn new things in order to improve and to give the best to them.

REFERENCES 

^{1.        Rivers, W. 1968. Teaching Foreign language skills: University of Chicago Press.}

^{2.        Brewster, J. Ellis, G. & Girard, D. (1992). The Primary English Teacher's Guide. London: Penguin Books}